Once you’ve set up more than one account, the dialog box shown
in Figure 13-1 appears
whenever you turn on the Mac, whenever you choose 
→Log Out, or whenever the Mac logs you out
automatically. But a few extra controls let you, an administrator, set
up either more or less security at the login screen—or, put another
way, build in less or more convenience.
Open System Preferences, click Users & Groups, click the
and enter an admin password to prove your
worthiness, and then click the Login Options button (Figure 13-10). Here are some
of the ways you can shape the login experience for greater security
(or greater convenience):
Automatic login. This option eliminates the need to sign in at all. It’s a timesaving, hassle-free arrangement if only one person uses the Mac, or uses it most of the time.
When you choose an account holder’s name from this pop-up menu, you’re prompted for his password. Type it and click OK.
From now on, the dialog box shown in Figure 13-1 won’t appear at all at startup time. After turning on the machine, you, the specified account holder, zoom straight to your desktop.
Of course, everybody else must still enter their names and passwords. (And how can they, since the Mac rushes right into the Automatic person’s account at startup time? Answer: The Automatic thing happens only at startup time. The usual login screen appears whenever the current account holder logs out—by choosing
→Log Out, for example.)Display login window as. Under normal circumstances, the login screen presents a list of account holders when you power up the Mac, as shown in Figure 13-1. That’s the “List of users” option in action.
If you’re especially worried about security, however, you might not even want that list to appear. If you turn on “Name and password” (Figure 13-10), then each person who signs in must type both his name (into a blank that appears) and his password—a very inconvenient, but more secure, arrangement.
Show the Sleep, Restart, and Shut Down buttons. Truth is, the Mac OS X security system is easy to circumvent. Truly devoted evildoers can bypass the standard login screen in a number of different ways: restarting in FireWire disk mode, restarting at the Unix Terminal, and so on. Suddenly, these no-goodniks have full access to every document on the machine, blowing right past all the safeguards you’ve so carefully established.
One way to thwart them is to turn off this checkbox. Now there’s no Restart or Shut Down button to tempt mischief-makers. That’s plenty of protection in most homes, schools, and workplaces; after all, Mac people tend to be nice people.
Show password hints. Mac OS X is kind enough to display your password hint (“middle name of the first person who ever kissed me”) after you’ve typed your password wrong three times when trying to log in. This option lets you turn off that feature for an extra layer of security. The hint will never appear.
Show fast user switching menu as: The Fast User Switching feature lets you switch to another account without having to log out of the first one.
If you do turn on Fast User Switching, a new menu appears at the upper-right corner of your screen, listing all the account holders on the machine. Thanks to this pop-up menu, you can specify what that menu looks like. It can display the current account holder’s full name (Name), the short name (Short Name), or only a generic torso-silhouette icon (Icon) to save space on the menu bar.
Use VoiceOver in the login window. The VoiceOver feature (Seeing Tab (Magnifying the Screen)) is all well and good if you’re blind. But how are you supposed to log in? Turn on this checkbox, and VoiceOver speaks the features on the Login panel, too.
