I'd like to suggest this--not because I particularly want it, but because I think this is the way the wind is blowing.
This has been available system-wide on Mac OS X for as long as I can remember via the Keychain--in general, system-wide functionality is an important, if little-known advantage of Mac as opposed to Win (c.f., keybindings, shared-clipboard, spellchecking, and God-knows-what-else).
Anyway, the KDE desktop has gained something similar with KWallet; and I just installed Mozilla Thunderbird on Windows to see what was there, and the password manager for that now asks on start-up for the master-password. Previously, setting a master-password merely shut you out from reading the passwords in the password-manager. Now it seems, it is standing guard over them. Of course, you don't have to set one--but you can--and my guess is people will be looking for that soon.
<p>I'd like to suggest this--not because I particularly want it, but because I think this is the way the wind is blowing.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>This has been available system-wide on Mac OS X for as long as I can remember via the Keychain--in general, system-wide functionality is an important, if little-known advantage of Mac as opposed to Win (c.f., keybindings, shared-clipboard, spellchecking, and God-knows-what-else).</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Anyway, the KDE desktop has gained something similar with KWallet; and I just installed Mozilla Thunderbird on Windows to see what was there, and the password manager for that now asks on start-up for the master-password.&nbsp; Previously, setting a master-password merely shut you out from reading the passwords in the password-manager. Now it seems, it is standing guard over them.&nbsp; Of course, you don't have to set one--but you [I]can[/i]--and my guess is people will be looking for that soon.
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