Time Limit Setup Suggestion

I would like to suggest that this product follow in the footsteps of the product Mac Minder from Luma Code (which is now defunct) in so far as the time limitation section goes. The flexibility that that product provided was remarkable. I was very disappointed when the developer decided to just stop providing a valuable service to the Mac community, stating that Apple now provides the service, and therefore it is no longer need from him. Apple falls far short of the necessary flexibility required by parents when it comes to limting access to the Mac. Especially parents with children of varying ages, each of whom require different levels of access. Requests for this functionality in Parental Control seems to fall on deaf ears, as does so many other requests from the public regarding feature modification or update. Norton's OnlineFamily gives me a glimmer of hope that we may one day re-gain that functionality. the setup is now very similar to Parental Control. however, if anyone at Norton hears my plea, perhaps we can get the flexibility we need back to protect our children in a more manageable fashion.

 

Thanks for your consideration.

 

Mark 

I would like to suggest that this product follow in the footsteps of the product Mac Minder from Luma Code (which is now defunct) in so far as the time limitation section goes. The flexibility that that product provided was remarkable. I was very disappointed when the developer decided to just stop providing a valuable service to the Mac community, stating that Apple now provides the service, and therefore it is no longer need from him. Apple falls far short of the necessary flexibility required by parents when it comes to limting access to the Mac. Especially parents with children of varying ages, each of whom require different levels of access. Requests for this functionality in Parental Control seems to fall on deaf ears, as does so many other requests from the public regarding feature modification or update. Norton's OnlineFamily gives me a glimmer of hope that we may one day re-gain that functionality. the setup is now very similar to Parental Control. however, if anyone at Norton hears my plea, perhaps we can get the flexibility we need back to protect our children in a more manageable fashion.

 

Thanks for your consideration.

 

Mark 

Thanks for your reply Alan.

 

The biggest function that I would like to to see is granularity down to the day and hour as to limiting the time. I can't install Mac Minder any longer, as it is incompatible with Leopard Mac OS X 10.5.x, to get screen captures. However, there is a good example of how this functions in the parental controls on the World of Warcraft web site, in the maintenance area I believe.  I can't get a screen capture at the moment, as I am posting this from my office computer, and that site is not allowed from this network, but will try to get you one sometime tomorrow. If that would be helpful. Essentially, they have a grid containing hours along the top, and days down the right side (or visa-versa, can't remember at the moment). Each intersection of time and day is a box. When a box is green, that is an allowed hour. When a box is red, that is a restricted hour. In this way, if you want to changed the allowed time for a particular day, perhaps temporarily and then forget that you did it, the time will be changed just for that day, and not the entire week, or weekend. 

 

The other option was copying/duplicating profiles. This would allow one to set up a "template" profile, and then tweak the individual profiles from there. I only have 2 children, but even making changes for 2 can be cumbersome at times.  I can only imagine having 4 or 5 or 6 children sharing a Mac, all with their own logon id's and accounts for various services. =:-o

 

Also, I do still have the Mac Minder Disk Image file, which contains the Read Me and Help ("User Guide") PDF file. The Help file has several screen captures, and gives the basics of the product.

 

Thanks again.

 

Mark