Thread

Turn off and restrict access to Apple Intelligence features on Mac

353 points · 223 comments · alwillis

VCFundedGenYer · 1790017285 · focus · HN ↗
I want the disk space taken from the models back.
I will never touch this garbage and would rather use the disk space I purchased to be used for my purposes, not the industry's pointless fad bubble endeavors.
1. mort96 · 1790018375 · focus · HN ↗
  Absolutely 100%. Now I'm very biased against this "AI" stuff in general, but even fans of "AI" can't want this, right? I mean I know some people who are heavy "AI" users and they all either have a setup with Cursor/Codex/Zed/VSCode/whatever or their preferred local model, they'd never ever want to use "whatever Apple happens to ship with the OS". Same with the model Google bundled into their browser, growing Chrome from roughly 200MB to over 4GB. Who's the target audience here?
  It's investors isn't it.
  1. logancbrown · 1790018548 · focus · HN ↗
    You can't imagine a singular person and reason who would want an improved Siri?
    mort96 · 1790018611 · focus · HN ↗
    On their laptop? No, not really. I guess the selling point is that your computer now suggests file names for you?
    wat10000 · 1790019035 · focus · HN ↗
    The selling point is being able to say things like "remind me about the next early release from school the night before" and it'll dig up the info from your emails and then create the reminder.
    mort96 · 1790019190 · focus · HN ↗
    And people really trust the bot to do that stuff for them? They risk letting down their kid by not being there to pick them up just to save half a minute of finding the right email? That sounds crazy to me, creating a reminder isn't exactly hard
    wat10000 · 1790020253 · focus · HN ↗
    It shows where it found the information. In this case, it included a link to a text message from the school which had this info, and quoted it so I could see that it got it right, and it shows the reminder it created so I could see that it's correct. I don't really have to trust it, I can see that it's working.
    pawelduda · 1790022435 · focus · HN ↗
    Maybe you have 5 relevant calendar events but it lists 3 and calls it a day. That is from my experience far bigger type of problem with AI. Hallucination by omission
    prmoustache · 1790054246 · focus · HN ↗
    Do people have so many calendar reminders per day (heck, even per week) that:
    - they need an llm to sort through them all?
    - are at risk of having AI missing one among n entries?
    blauditore · 1790020369 · focus · HN ↗
    That's exactly what big tech executives and AI bros don't get: It would be useful to use AI for the grudgy but verifiable sub-steps of such a task, e.g. have it help with the email search, and have it suggest a reminder. Or even better, suggest creating a reminder when receiving/reading the email. But leave the user in control, and provide evidence and transparency. Instead, many companies put their bets on the long-shot, do-it-all assistent AI, but technology is just not there yet, or maybe never will even.
    mort96 · 1790021075 · focus · HN ↗
    I could definitely imagine using a system where I could type in Spotlight "that message about early release from school", hit enter, and have the e-mail or SMS or Signal message or whatever show up in front of me. Boring, non-sexy "better search" style "AI" which is actually useful but doesn't appeal to investors.
    wat10000 · 1790028280 · focus · HN ↗
    We have that now. The "remind me" part is entirely optional.
    mort96 · 1790029016 · focus · HN ↗
    I just tried, without disabling anything in Golden Gate. It did an iCloud Drive search. It doesn't seem to be working very well.
    EricE · 1790031155 · focus · HN ↗
    Did you go into Siri and join the waitlist for Apple Intelligence?
    If not, you’re still using spotlight so the behavior is 100% expected.
    Yes, Apple could do a better job making it more obvious but then again Apple Intelligence is Beta so I can see why they require a positive action right now to enable it.
    brailsafe · 1790032144 · focus · HN ↗
    Parents—in many places—already let themselves rely entirely on driving their kids to every activity, which puts them at much higher risk of getting maimed in an accident under a guise of efficiency and spurious claims of other danger imposed by living closer to people and the activities that their kids could get themselves to. Many people are lazy, fearful, and prioritize comfort and control over all else, therefore it doesn't surprise me at all to hear people would opt for the convenience whenever an opportunity strikes.
    wat10000 · 1790034360 · focus · HN ↗
    So, just to make it abundantly clear that this is all a bunch of unfounded generalization: the kid in question takes the bus, can get home and get inside independently, and the reason I'm asking this convenient machine for a reminder is just to avoid being surprised.
    Asking my phone for a convenient reminder makes me lazy, fearful, and prioritizing comfort and control over all else. Never change, HN. Actually, you know what? Please change, HN. This shit is tiresome.
    brailsafe · 1790051770 · focus · HN ↗
    No, I wasn't commenting about your kid, I was commenting on my generalized observations about the tendency for people, including parents, to accept the possible cost of risk when there's the prospect of even minor amounts of increased convenience. A friend of mine who doesn't earn much took out a large amount of debt to get a car so he could drive just himself to and from work even though there's a train that would get him there faster and more safely because he has weird prejudices and has control issues, which are not uncommon among parents who move to the burbs to raise their kids and keep a watchful eye in an isolated environment. My comment was about why I wouldn't be surprised by any shortcuts people take even if there's some risk involved, because being alive is time intensive and many people intentionally put themselves in situations where they feel they need a stack of shortcuts at their disposal to get even extremely trivial tasks done. Could be smoking or not going to the gym or not having a strong social circle or whatever.
    LoganDark · 1790063001 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't take transit because I don't like microtransactions. I'd rather have one car payment and be able to go anywhere I want whenever I want than have to pay a few bucks (or more) every time I move. A train ticket to visit some relatives would be like $70 while the same trip only costs me $20 in EV fast charging. (Would be less if I had access to home charging)
    ChickeNES · 1790068539 · focus · HN ↗
    > I don't take transit because I don't like microtransactions.
    HN is beyond parody sometimes
    LoganDark · 1790089942 · focus · HN ↗
    As an example, it costs like three dollars to board a bus here. The maximum cost per day is two of those, but come on. If I needed even just to take a bus to work and back each weekday, that's already over a third of my car payment, and I lose carrying capacity, climate control, social distancing etc.
    Also I have to walk to/from bus stops, which I can't easily manage due to my disability. That's why I keep an electric scooter in my vehicle nowadays, but I highly doubt a bus would allow me to bring one of those on board. So at that point just use the electric scooter without bothering with the bus, except when I did that, I got hit by a pickup and needed to go to the hospital and counseling, etc.
    I prefer to just pay in bulk. I care about more than simply raw cost, but the little microtransactions always seem to be a worse experience.
    brailsafe · 1790109626 · focus · HN ↗
    I mean it seems like you have a valid reason, but the raw cost in terms of just the loan payment isn't a trivial difference. "already over a third of my car payment" means your car payment alone is 3x the total cost otherwise, which is... a lot. Once you factor in maintenance, insurance, depreciation (which has been lower in recent years), it seems like it would be quite a leap if you didn't have a disability that made public transit more difficult.
    I think the difference between transit methods within a city that has built-in alternative options has been interesting to examine now that I have a motor vehicle myself (that I got for free, but costs a lot to actually drive). I went without one for 8 years before someone offered it to me, and I do value the flexibility to occasionally get out of town wherever I want, but the tires alone will cost $2000 when I need to replace them, and the gas is crazy, so it's perfect in the sense that it sits there taking up street parking until I really need to get someone that a bike, scooter, bus, train, or walking doesn't work as well for. I'm not encouraged to use it for anything that it's really not needed for, and if it died tomorrow I wouldn't replace it with anything.
    Relying on only the bus, even if the transit system is well-funded, has never been a particularly ideal situation, but the advantage is that I get that time back instead of being singularly occupied by driving. If there's traffic, I'd wildly rather be on the bus, but the train is always better.
    CyberDildonics · 1790122162 · focus · HN ↗
    It truly is, I couldn't even think of a joke like that if I tried.
    wat10000 · 1790079893 · focus · HN ↗
    And you were doing this in response to someone using the voice assistant on their phone to make a reminder about their kid getting home from school early.
    idinnoaname · 1790040079 · focus · HN ↗
    This reads like a comment from a non-parent, or a comment from the kind of parent who argues its okay for their kid to spend 16 hours with their eyes glued to a screen because "blippi is educational".
    brailsafe · 1790050784 · focus · HN ↗
    > a comment from the kind of parent who argues its okay for their kid to spend 16 hours with their eyes glued to a screen because "blippi is educational".
    This seems like the opposite of what I wrote
    burningChrome · 1790023714 · focus · HN ↗
    I had better success with earlier versions. For me Siri has regressed so much and had become so unreliable, that having to constantly repeat or rephrase or delete whatever nonsense it was doing was so frustrating, I stopped using it years ago.
    Its quite the paradox when Apple is pushing Apple Intelligence so hard, yet their assistant that's been around for 15 years can't do even basic things now.
    EricE · 1790031246 · focus · HN ↗
    And this right here is why I think Apple should have renamed the new stuff to something else. Go into Settings/Siri, enable Apple Intelligence (you will probably have to join the waitlist), give it a day or two to re-index and then try.
    I think you will be astonished at the difference in behavior. It's night and day.
    a34729t · 1790046997 · focus · HN ↗
    I remember chatting to some people behind Siri (it was an acquisition), and there was a feeling it was better before Apple nerfed and neglected it. Which is very Apple.
    pmontra · 1790055635 · focus · HN ↗
    Don't most people do that on their phone, maybe because they don't work on a Mac all day long? Anyway, being able to do it also on the computer is OK.
    wat10000 · 1790080010 · focus · HN ↗
    I’ll do it on whatever’s handy. In this case I was at the computer.
  2. howunfortunate · 1790018664 · focus · HN ↗
    It's pretty nice from an app developers perspective.
    It allows me to save money by calling a model on the users device rather than spending tokens (or forcing the user to spend tokens).
    mort96 · 1790018769 · focus · HN ↗
    What does your users want your app to do with a language model?
    californical · 1790020994 · focus · HN ↗
    I can imagine lots of things- mainly around making short summaries so the user can choose things more easily, or maybe as a smart autocomplete.
    I can imagine a home automation app helping you build a workflow with an LLM. Or an RSS reader giving you a short summary of each article. A health app being able to pull recipes into a standard format. Maybe a fitness app being able to search your workout history if you give it good tools.
    Idk I usually use my phone for reading HN on the toilet and listening to podcasts while cleaning, not much else. I don’t know what else people even do with a phone lol. But those are things I’ve done in the past that LLMs could be helpful for!
    mort96 · 1790021142 · focus · HN ↗
    Is this based on user feedback for your app? Do they want your app to feature home automation or making short summaries? Since you were using your app as an example I mean
    howunfortunate · 1790023926 · focus · HN ↗
    Not OP, but in my case they are features we already provide that we can make cheaper (for ourselves) by doing it on the user's device rather than paying OpenAI for it.
    howunfortunate · 1790023850 · focus · HN ↗
    Lots of use cases. Image understanding / labeling is what I had in mind.
    But also voice-to-text, (certain kinds of) search, document summarization, are common things that I could see many apps using Apple Intelligence for.
  3. MarcScott · 1790018694 · focus · HN ↗
    No, there are a tonne of Apple users that aren't developers, that will probably love this. They'll currently be using paid subscriptions to OpenAI, but only via the web app, and will happily switch to using Apple Intelligence.
    mort96 · 1790019878 · focus · HN ↗
    Is Apple Intelligence's local models better than free ChatGPT?
    alwillis · 1790025553 · focus · HN ↗
    Wrong question, even though Siri AI has a plugin for ChatGPT you don’t need an account for, even if you have one.
    At the same time, ask stock ChatGPT when your next dentist appointment is. It can’t but Siri AI can.
    bigyabai · 1790037997 · focus · HN ↗
    Real people don't need that. Siri has offered a modest set of voice-integrated features for over a decade, and made almost zero impact. Same for Google Assistant, which sucked less but was still useless.
    The average smartphone owner cannot be trusted to switch away from privacy-degrading technologies even if the alternative is good. Look at Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Spotify; it's a Keynesian beauty contest, and ChatGPT has more mindshare than Siri.
    dd8601fn · 1790024469 · focus · HN ↗
    I’m a developer.
    The pitch isn’t that it will replace claude or codex runing 284 agents vibeslopping for me. It’s that Siri is pretty damn good now, with safe access the data I kinda wish could be accessed safely by an assistant.
    It has a ways to go on some of the productivity stuff, and third parties have work to do, but that’s fine. They built a better foundation than anyone else has for its purpose.
    crooked-v · 1790036931 · focus · HN ↗
    All I really want out of Siri is something I can give actual natural language instructions to about smart home stuff, calendars, timers, "app stuff", without it actively leaking my info to other companies, and in theory this new Siri should be able to do that.
    Kinda slow, though. I'm hoping that's just early scaling problems.
  4. eastbound · 1790018862 · focus · HN ↗
    I think a large part of our ecosystem is:
    1. Lose the user, make him struggle to find items in the Start menu (Windows), struggle to type words on the keyboard (iOS), or struggle to manage find their subscription (Atlassian),
    2. ???
    3. Profit
    If it's a dark pattern, I'd like to know what step 2 is. Who knows, maybe the goal is to overwhelm the user and it's a spy operation from the KGB.
    dualvariable · 1790027454 · focus · HN ↗
    > it's a spy operation from the KGB.
    time-travelling KGB operatives from 1991.
  5. jm4 · 1790019287 · focus · HN ↗
    I actually like AI tools, but I don’t use Apple Intelligence. It’s literally the worst in class. It feels very late 90’s Microsoft. They are shoving it on us when we don’t want it and it’s worse than everything else out there. It’s the Windows Media Player of the AI industry.
    alwillis · 1790025314 · focus · HN ↗
    > It’s literally the worst in class. It feels very late 90’s Microsoft.
    1. I was around in the 90’s; nothing today is that bad.
    2. Siri AI is dramatically better than old-school Siri. You don’t realize how useful personal context is until you have it.
    Something like “When was the last time I went to that pizza place downtown?”—it just works.
    When you call the airline about your flight, your flight info automatically shows up.
    mort96 · 1790026635 · focus · HN ↗
    Yet something like "Call <name of a person>" will still immediately call someone with a completely different name without even letting me cancel, right?
    Siri is completely useless.
    zeagle · 1790040965 · focus · HN ↗
    Hah. Reminds me of carplay: "text (name)" "what would you like to know about (name)?" "f****** text them" dance daily while driving.
    mikestew · 1790043787 · focus · HN ↗
    Just today: “give me directions to the ferry terminal”. I’m on an island with one terminal, I shouldn’t have to be specific.
    “Here’s a list of three ferry terminals that are on different islands, none of which are the island you’re on.”
    “Give directions to the Orcas Island ferry terminal.”
    “Here’s directions to the Port of Orcas Island, which is on the side of the island opposite the ferry terminal.”
    If I weren’t driving a camper van on narrow roads, I would have taken her up on the “other island” option. “How do you propose we get there, Siri? Maybe start by driving to the g-ddamned ferry terminal?!”
    Bud · 1790050688 · focus · HN ↗
    You might want to update your information a bit.
    <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
    mort96 · 1790091191 · focus · HN ↗
    Oh, nice, they added a confirmation screen before you call! I'm not sure when they're planning to roll that feature out to Europe but once they do, maybe Siri will be occasionally slightly useful when I need to call someone while my hands are dirty or while I'm driving.
    jm4 · 1790031829 · focus · HN ↗
    I was around in the 90's too, which is why I can confidently say it is that bad. What Apple is doing with AI today is exactly the same formula as some of the worst stuff Microsoft put out back then. I'm not talking about the big things. More like the bundled apps where they see someone else getting traction with something and then they go and bundle their own K-Mart version of it that no one asked for.
    Bud · 1790038615 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    rightnutwingjob · 1790033793 · focus · HN ↗
    > Something like “When was the last time I went to that pizza place downtown?”—it just works.
    An absolute must have feature!
    Just kidding. Couldn’t give a fuck about that.
    lxgr · 1790087177 · focus · HN ↗
    > Siri AI is dramatically better than old-school Siri. [...] it just works.
    Yeah, after 30 seconds, assuming it doesn't fail outright. The only thing I use Siri for is to set timers on my watch when cooking. This used to take 2-3 seconds at most and even worked completely offline on the watch itself. That functionality is now effectively broken for me.
    Bud · 1790038566 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    dainank · 1790058850 · focus · HN ↗
    > It’s the Windows Media Player of the AI industry.
    I personally found WMP great. I never felt any urge to install alternatives (and the few times I did end up using another media player, I always thought it was a worse experience than WMP).
  6. devilsdata · 1790035511 · focus · HN ↗
    The AI in Siri is actually really good. I can ask it something like "what is Judy's favourite food?" and it will do a full search of the databases of all the default apps and find that info.
    As for the other AI features such as autocomplete, memoji, notification summaries... I'm really not a big fan at all.
    idinnoaname · 1790039841 · focus · HN ↗
    And poor Judy thought for just a moment that someone actually cared enough about her to remember her favourite food. Sorry Judy, youre just not that important I suppose. :|
    devilsdata · 1790060719 · focus · HN ↗
    I have ADHD and am not going to remember a lot about Judy. But I will write down the things that I know she likes in a note, and I'll occasionally ask Siri to list what Judy likes when I'd like to do something nice to her.
    ADHD and memory problems suck :(
  7. dyauspitr · 1790041976 · focus · HN ↗
    I think you may be misunderstanding what the Apple LLMs or models are used for. It almost certainly isn’t something you used to write code for development. It’s to power all the intelligence features on the phone like whenever you ask Siri a question.
  8. userbinator · 1790049404 · focus · HN ↗
    I played around with local image generation models not long ago, and I downloaded them myself along with the rest of the software I needed. Then again, the average Apple user seems to want to put themselves on a leash(noose?) with Apple on the other end.
  9. Quothling · 1790059328 · focus · HN ↗
    I would probably called pro AI these days considering how much I've worked on getting the people in my organisation to adapt and learn how to use it, and how much I use it professionally. I've not always been pro AI, I'm sure my previous comments have been quite the rollercoaster over the past year. These days I'm part of a process which will probably replace quite a lot of jobs with AI down the line. The morals of which is a different discussion.
    I don't use AI personally though. So when I found out that apple intelligence is currently taking up 10gb on my macbook m1 with the tiniest configuration at the time, that's massive. I've turned everything off and denied it access to training on any sort of apps and it's still using up 10gb of my 128. Meaning that Mac OS now takes up 53.76% of my drive. The AI I don't use being 12.8 of that. If Apple sold devices with large drives as default that might be less of an issue, but they don't. It's a little ironic, but I originally switched from Linux to Apple because I want my technology to work out of the box, but now it looks like I'll soon be going back for that same reason.

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