[Article author here]
No, it was not designed with multiuser in mind. However, in their eyes, and in mine at the time, this was a feature, not a drawback. No end-user computers are normally multiuser any more: people sharing computers was how things worked in the 1960 and 1970s, not in the 21st century.
Even servers are not generally multiuser now. They don't serve multiple *users*, they serve multiple *other computers* each of which has 1 user.
People have multiple computers now, not the other way round.
The only thing for which this legacy cruft is useful for most people today is enforcing security restrictions to protect your computers from malware, by having more and less privileged accounts. The fact that we have reused 1970s tech for this does not mean it is the only way to do it.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
