10.7 Lion allows multi-user remote computing
iMac screen sharing with MacBook Air on a different account — Yesterday we told you that the popular Back to my Mac feature might go free with 10.7 Lion and we also told you the service received a few tweaks in Lion.
Context & Ripple Effects
This lands mid-run of 9 to 5 Mac's Lion teardown coverage — the day before, the site flagged a rumored Find my Mac feature for 10.7. The screen-sharing capability itself has lineage: Macworld documented how to push 10.5 Leopard's screen sharing well past its defaults back in 2007, so what Lion does natively is formalize a power-user workaround.
First-order effects
- A MacBook Air owner can now screen-share into an iMac while that iMac sits on a *different* user account — confirmed by the report — meaning one desktop Mac can effectively serve multiple people remotely instead of only its logged-in user.
- Back to My Mac receives confirmed tweaks in Lion, though the report's claim that the service will go free remains unconfirmed speculation by 9 to 5 Mac itself.
Second-order effects
- If Back to My Mac does drop its paywall, it undercuts part of the value proposition of a paid MobileMe subscription, forcing Apple to justify the bundle on other services.
- Households pairing a stationary iMac with a portable MacBook Air — the exact configuration shown here — get less reason to buy a second machine, shifting purchase decisions toward one-desk-plus-laptop setups.
Third-order effects
- Combined with the rumored device-location feature, Lion positions the Mac as something you reach into from anywhere rather than sit at directly — an operating system increasingly wrapped in Apple-hosted access and find-my-device services rather than standalone local software.
The trend: Apple is steadily folding remote access into OS X itself — screen sharing across accounts in Lion, tweaked Back to My Mac service, possibly device tracking — building a consumer remote-computing layer around the Mac.