Account management had everything to do with security & privilege containment. People got tired of every exe running in ring-zero and wreaking havoc. To author

Account management had everything to do with security & privilege containment. People got tired of every exe running in ring-zero and wreaking havoc. To authorize actions they needed authentication, so .. accounts. Multi-user operation and remote access were just fringe benefactors of the security. The system itself needed delegation of roles to operate safely. The fact that networking was becoming so widespread forced them to go for a full account management, instead of BeOS style dual-user mode.