Thread

macOS 27: Workaround to avoid downloading AI models and save storage

240 points · 123 comments · ano-ther

hbn · 1790009859 · focus · HN ↗
I'll say they definitely need to let people disable/offload the model, but if you haven't tried the new Siri, it's been great. Obviously it's not a state of the art LLM, but it's good enough, and the fact that it can search and take actions on your local data makes it incredibly useful. I definitely use it more on my iPhone where it's slower to get things done the traditional way, but I use it all the time now.
"What was the quote for my insurance claim?" - it'll look through your emails and pull the number with the source email so you can jump right to it.
The other day I asked "when did I arrive and leave Mexico City on my trip at the end of 2024?" and it nailed it based off my flight receipt.
Since learning Spanish I get a lot more Spanish stuff in my feeds, and if I e.g. don't understand a meme I'll just ask "explain the joke here" and it reads the screen and explains it.
You can have an article open in Safari and say "remind me to read this tonight" and it'll make a reminder with the link. Or you can modify reminders - "move my reminder to get groceries to tomorrow at the same time". Yesterday I told it to make me a reminder and it did, but I worded it in a clunky way so I followed it with "reword that to sound more natural" and it did it.
We've been trained for a long time to think Siri can't do anything but I urge you to try it once you're on the new one, it's quite good. And I'm sure I've barely touched all the things it can do. David Pogue published a pretty thorough test other day:
<a href="https://pogueman.substack.com/p/125-tests-of-the-new-ai-siri" rel="nofollow">https://pogueman.substack.com/p/125-tests-of-the-new-ai-siri
1. nunez · 1790018228 · focus · HN ↗
  Siri AI is very capable, but *I* should have control over when and whether *I* decide to enable or completely delete it.
  I wasn't expecting Apple to force-feed the AI into my mouth with this new Siri release, but turning "Apple Intelligence" into "Siri AI" and removing the opt-out toggle is gross.
  (You can't disable all of other fka Apple Intelligence stuff without disabling Siri AI, and you can't disable Siri AI without switching your Siri language to an unsupported region and turning a bunch of stuff off in Content Privacy and Restrictions. On Watch, Siri is front and center of your Suggested Apps carousel --- which they removed Recent Apps to create, an extremely useful feature --- unless you change YOUR ENTIRE WATCH'S REGION to some other unsupported country. None of this is okay.)
  Anecdotally, I can do all of the stuff you've listed can be done without Siri AI or "Classic" Siri and get correct answers almost 100% of the time.
  1. m463 · 1790019942 · focus · HN ↗
    Like all macos features you used to like/depend on...
    "privacy is a right"
    becomes
    privacy is a "defaults write <obscure-key>"
  2. lynndotpy · 1790027707 · focus · HN ↗
    As a side note, the Apple Watch changes have completely made Camera Remote unusable for me, a feature I loved.
    I don't know why, but I usually can only get Camera Remote to work when I close all of the recent apps on my Apple Watch, even when my watch and phone were the newest ones Apple released. Probably a bug with memory management they're never going to fix. Now, that's not possible, even when I reboot my watch :(
    nunez · 1790123791 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm with you. The new Watch update messed a lot of stuff up for me. I have Shazam linked to my Action Button; it's always been flakey but it feels flakier lately. Losing Walkie-Talkie is a big miss too, as my wife and I use that feature often.
  3. II2II · 1790035640 · focus · HN ↗
    I agree that you should have the ability to remove AI features, but that isn't the direction Apple has followed for the past decade or so. There's a lot of stuff in macOS that one should be able to remove, or at least disable, if one isn't interested in living within the Apple ecosystem.
  4. solarkraft · 1790041295 · focus · HN ↗
    > Anecdotally, I can do all of the stuff you've listed can be done without Siri AI or "Classic" Siri and get correct answers almost 100% of the time
    You mean the way that takes 20x as long?
    nunez · 1790059160 · focus · HN ↗
    Better for it to take 20x as long and be right than to be 20x faster but be wrong while looking right...
    coldtea · 1790084675 · focus · HN ↗
    The one that is almost just as fast workflow wise, far more capable, has more features, is developed at a faster pace, and is not forced on the user screwing their privacy.

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