Quote:Restart to Safari

It turns out that there is a feature in OS X Lion which no one expected and was never announced at WWDC. The feature wee are talking about is “Restart to Safari”. As you might have guessed from the name, this feature makes it possible to restart the Mac into just the Safari browser and nothing else. The “Restart to Safari” mode does not require any sort of authentication to use and users cannot get access to the filesystem.

Not a competitor to Chrome OS

The “Restart to Safari” of OS X Lion will draw comparisons with Google’s Chrome OS. However, the two are worlds apart. True – both offers only the browser with nothing else. However, with “Restart to Mac”, Safari’s password manager is deactivated and users of that mode cannot download any file as the filesystem is completely off limit. Restart to Safari does not remember anything that the user might have done after a reboot.

Chrome OS on the other had has password manager and has access to the filesystem. In short, Chrome OS has been designed with the browser as the main destination and OS X’s “Restart to Safari” feature is aimed for those time when someone asks for your computer to check something on the web and you do not want them to see your files or mess them up.

Source: http://digitizor.com/2011/06/12/osx-lion-browser-only/


Despite saying it's not a competitor to ChromeOS, what do you think?  Perhaps moving in that direction, along with Mozilla's Webian shell?

It's supposed to be used as a honeypot: http://www.slashgear.com/mac-os-x-lion-h...-13158931/

I've heard the theory, but I personally don't dig it.

To strip it down as much as they have.. it's not much of a "feature".

If it has a super fast loading time (which Mac itself already has really) then maybe but..