Why does Apple have a Safari-only mode in Lion?

As part of our reveal of FindMyMac last week, we detailed the browser-only mode that Lion can boot into as a security precaution

…Interestingly, when Find My Mac is enabled, Apple lets “Guest” users use Safari and nothing else on the machine.  That is a trick to help the Mac figure out where it is (IP address) and let you connect to it.

Macrumors expands on this by saying that the Safari-only mode could be used in Kiosk-only mode.

This browser-only mode is reminiscent of Google’s lightweight Chrome OS which is designed to offer the user a web-only based operating system.

Apple’s motivations for offering such a browser-only mode differs from Google’s. Google is partnering with manufacturers in order to build Chrome OS only laptops that offer cheap browser-only machines. Apple’s not likely to be going that route with Mac OS X Lion but is instead offering a nice sandboxed mode so Lion can easily act as a secure and anonymous web kiosk.

It isn’t likely that Apple is positioning Safari-only as a competitor to Google’s ChromeOS (Apple’s hardware starts at more than double of where Chrome is priced).  But for both of the above reasons, it makes sense to include a browser-only mode.

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