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Turn off and restrict access to Apple Intelligence features on Mac

353 points · 223 comments · alwillis

  1. parable · · focus · HN ↗
    Is it possible to block Apple Intelligence from sending data over the Internet via Little Snitch? I would assume it is, but I'm not sure if anything significant has changed in macOS 27 that makes this impossible now. I don't really mind the local features - I'd rather they stay disabled, but it's not the end of the world - but I really don't want any data leaving my Mac.
    1. ActorNightly · · focus · HN ↗
      Apple OS will bypass any user space firewall.

      You can verify this yourself. Get an old laptop to act as a wifi hotspot and forward traffic over usb ethernet adapter to your actual router. Then run tcpdump on the computer. You will see the multitude of phone-home traffic.

      1. arcanemachiner · · focus · HN ↗
        Non-macOS user here. Does macOS not let you run things as root?
        1. nhubbard · · focus · HN ↗
          It does let you run things as root.
          1. VCFundedGenYer · · focus · HN ↗
            Not exactly.

            What is "root" in macOS is more or less a power user role. Apple took away the true ability to operate as root a long time ago with System Integrity Protection which walls off the critical parts of the OS from the user entirely.

            Unfortunately, SIP also restricts basic system functions that are trivial in other OSes. Apple made this very difficult, and MS would have loved to do this in Vista had they not received the backlash that they did.

            1. frizlab · · focus · HN ↗
              You can disable SIP if you want. You can run whatever you want on your machine. Disabling SIP is indeed a security risk… then again, so is running something as root. Having a Mac w/o SIP is no more a security risk than having a Linux w/o a r/o kernel AFAIK.
              1. asdff · · focus · HN ↗
                The way apple talks about SIP its like a miracle we survived at all pre SIP. Pretty sure I've had SIP disabled for years now when I got nagged for something or whatever and had to disable it.
                1. frizlab · · focus · HN ↗
                  SIP is a good thing and prevents a lot of (usually PEBKAC) problems. It is also the direction where Linux is going (is now? or maybe they gave up? idk, it’s been a while since I heard about immutable distros).

                  For tech-aware people, it is probably not necessary indeed. However, given that now “tech-aware” people are running completely random and unvalidated scripts w/o second thoughts (or even first thoughts actually) on their main machine, I’d say the “tech-aware” line is very very high…

          2. [deleted] · · focus · HN ↗

            [deleted]

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