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Turn off and restrict access to Apple Intelligence features on Mac

353 points · 223 comments · alwillis

  1. iAMkenough · · focus · HN ↗
    Note that storage space taken up by local models is not reclaimed and remains dormant on your Mac until you're nearly out of space.
    1. rgovostes · · focus · HN ↗
      Philosophically, what is the difference between empty space and space that will be reclaimed when you need it?

      The storage medium tracks whether a cell or sector is overwritable. The filesystem tracks whether a block is allocated. And the OS tracks whether a cache is evictable.

      At what layer do you consider the space “claimed”?

      1. paper2d · · focus · HN ↗
        Realistically, the 'claim space' service needs to run when the OS 'thinks' it has run out of space to reclaim it. And there can be M amount of waiting time for this and N number of issues that may arrive with it.
      2. kccqzy · · focus · HN ↗
        In practice the difference is whether the code that does this reclaiming is actually working. I’ve never gotten my Mac into a low disk space situation (other than maybe in Leopard days) but on iOS, it is quite frequent for me to trigger a situation where the free space including purgeable space is many gigabytes but actual free space is nil. Trying to commit a transaction in a SQLite database in an app? Sorry you can’t, there’s no space left on device. Now go to settings and observe that you have 15 GB left (which includes purgeable space). Even SpringBoard has trouble showing icons. I do not trust Apple’s OS level disk space purging at all. I trust the filesystem and the storage medium more.
      3. acuozzo · · focus · HN ↗
        > Philosophically, what is the difference between empty space and space that will be reclaimed when you need it?

        It makes large allocations fail which would have otherwise succeeded.

        "When you need it" is a state you can only enter into, AFAICT, when you approach the limit gradually, not abruptly.

      4. ProfessorLayton · · focus · HN ↗
        I haven't run into this on macOS yet, but on iOS the space is not reclaimed in time to avoid running out of space even with Apple Intelligence turned off:

        - Not enough space to update iOS without a computer tether, even though there would have been if that ~13GB on my phone was actually freed up. Instead I had to delete several GB on my phone.

        - Recordings stopping due to lack of space, and again the 13GB LLM model on my phone was not removed before running into this.

        I'm actually not where if/when I'll ever get my space back, and this is on iOS 26. It takes up even more space on iOS 27, and I don't have enough free space to waste on my 256GB phone.

      5. iAMkenough · · focus · HN ↗
        Beyond the technical differences already mentioned, there's also the difference in consent. The 8-16GB of dormant AI data is either on your $2K 128GB device, or it's not.

        In this regard, Apple did not learn from the free U2 album they automatically added to everyone's iTunes account at no charge.

        There was enough outrage at the lack of consent in that decision, Apple had to create a special support path for removing it from accounts.

        Given the divisive opinions about AI, it's odd Apple didn't include a "delete" button to completely remove it from your device if you wish.

        <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20141116221641&#x2F;https%3A&#x2F;&#x2F;support.apple.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;HT201396" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20141116221641&#x2F;https%3A&#x2F;&#x2F;support...

        1. rgovostes · · focus · HN ↗
          In my macOS 27 System folder there are almost 500 local models across dozens of frameworks. Do you want to purge all of them? Or is there some distinguishing characteristic about which ones are unacceptable -- transformer models vs convolutional neural networks, generative models vs inference, etc.?
          1. iAMkenough · · focus · HN ↗
            Why would I want to purge something from your system?

            I don’t give a fuck what you do with your device.

            Are you trying to argue you want to dictate what should be on my personal device? I’m not interested.

            My stance continues to be that owners should be able to consent to whether optional AI features are present on the device THEY OWN or not.

            It’s like you are arguing unremovable Microsoft Teams and Copilot365 is mandatory for a functioning Windows operating system.

            1. rgovostes · · focus · HN ↗
              You appear to have completely misinterpreted my comment.
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