I just ordered a 2018 Mac Mini. I went for the 6 core,10 gigabit, 16gb ram and the 256gb ssd. It is going to run as a home server and last me for a while I am going to buy either one or two large external SSDs.
My wife and I both have our own iCloud accounts and iCloud photo libraries. I want to use this machine as the place where we will download the originals, which is where the HDs come in as they will have the photo libraries on them. This would be very easy to do with just one user but since both of us have separate accounts, will fast user switching work? The Mini will run headless a lot of the time
I hope that makes sense, it is hard to try and describe what I am exactly trying to do!
It ought to work, since each user account is separate and can log in to a different AppleID-based account.
Although fast user switching allows multiple ‘users’ to be logged in simultaneously, I do not know for sure, but suspect that user B will be unable to sync images from an iPhone (synced into iCloud) back into that Mac’s Photos account until user B is switched to being the active user account on the Mac.
Is there any kind of automation do you think that could schedule user logins through the day? For instance User A is logged in between midnight and 2am and then User B logs in between 2am and 4am
I’m not an automation maven but my feeling is no, because an Automator action or AppleScript would probably work for and within a single account only, and not be able to chain actions when switched to another account.
If you want to investigate that option you might find this link useful.
I am going to buy either one or two large external SSDs.