Mac OS X Lion: The Missing Manual

Signing In, Logging Out

Once somebody has set up your account, here’s what it’s like getting into, and out of, a Mac OS X machine. (For the purposes of this discussion, “you” are no longer the administrator—you’re one of the students, employees, or family members for whom an account has been set up.)

Identifying Yourself

When you first turn on the Mac—or when the person who last used this computer chooses →Log Out—the login screen shown in Figure 12-1 appears. At this point, you can proceed in any of several ways:

• Restart. Click if you need to restart the Mac for some reason. (The Restart and Shut Down buttons don’t appear here if the administrator has chosen to hide them as a security precaution; see Setting Up the Login Process.)

  FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION: The Forgotten-Password Survival Guide

  Help—I forgot my password! And I never told it to anybody, so even the administrator can’t help me!

  No problem. Your administrator can simply open up System Preferences, click Users & Groups, click your account name, and then click Reset Password to re-establish the password.

  But you don’t understand. I am the administrator! And I’m the only account!

  Lucky for you, Apple has provided you with not one, not two, but three safety nets. None of them work, however, unless your friendly neighborhood administrator turned them on in advance.

  First: On your third attempt to type your password correctly, the ...