Multiple Users, 1 iMac, 1 iPhone

Question

Is there a tutorial which explains how OS X handles multiple users/accounts on the same physical machine with regard in particular to iPhoto, AddressBook, iTunes, other "built-in" apps?
Now that my wife has an iPhone, it seems her user account has "taken over".
Mobile Me has not made it any easier. Does Sync work on a user by user basis, or on an overall-machine approach?
Any help/direction appreciated.

Answer 1

Every account has it's own space, so to speak.
Look in the MacHD/Users folder - you will see a subfolder for each user on the machine.
Each users folder contains folders for documents, prefs, libraries, mail files, internet favorites, browser extensions, etc. They are entirely self contained; users folders do not 'combine'
Other users cannot access any other users sub folders in
/users/username/~
Each user can elect to share (or not) all or part of their respective iphoto and itunes libraries to other local users.
Documents that a user wants to make available (as read only) to other users on the machine can be placed in MacHD/Users/Shared.
Now, if for some reason, your wife logs in under your account id, then connects/syncs her iphone, it will cause issues, especially when she logs back in under her account and connects and syncs the phone.