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Turn off Apple Intelligence on macOS 27 and get its disk space back

515 points · 323 comments · privacyisntdead

  1. mung · · focus · HN ↗
    I think the problem isn't the AI, it's the ridiculously small SSDs you can get on Apple products that make one quibble about 12GB in 2026.
    1. Gigachad · · focus · HN ↗
      It's so hard to manage storage space on mac as well. Every app leaves massive amounts of crap in deep system directories that are hard to find and persist after you delete the app. My 512gb mac is always running out of space so I have to use 3rd party tools to find where all the space went since macos just lumps it in "Applications" or "Documents" with no real way to see anything.
    2. FlowingRiver · · focus · HN ↗
      It feels like so much software was just anticipating storage to keep getting cheaper and processors to keep increasing in performance forever. Now that we have hit a significant road block on that path, we are seeing the big disconnect.

      I realized that in 2005(ish) my work station was a fully decked out Dual 2Ghz G5 Powermac that had 8GB of RAM. Yes, that was OBSCENE at the time but it was being used for generating light maps on 3D scenes and we were going to use all the memory we could get and 64bit processors with their memory addressing was a nice to have. But it was 8GB, a size that is still common today.

      New laptops and even desktop still come with 8GB some 21 years later, who could have seen that coming? It would be like selling a PC in 2005 with 2MB of RAM.

      1. incognition · · focus · HN ↗
        yes, it's totally bizarre. And RAM used to be a commodity, well sort of prior to the past two years. It definitely didn't drive the bulk of the bill of materials, however manufacturers honed in on it as a way of segmenting the market.
    3. otterley · · focus · HN ↗
      Which models? MacBook Pros start out at 1TB nowadays. Even the MacBook Neo starts at 256GB.
    4. sdcfgy · · focus · HN ↗
      It's also the ridiculous cost of the upgrades. I recently purchased an entire (second hand) PC with a Xeon, 16Gb RAM and 1TB NVMe in it for 5% less than the cost of the 256 to 512Gb upgrade. And 1/3 of the price of a second hand M1 Mini with 256Gb in it.

      They are taking the piss.

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