On windows you got garbage like trial versions of Blah software.

This is a fully functioning feature that people don’t like for what ever reason.

Not gonna lie, I would like a "Black Edition" of macOS. There is a decent OS buried under tons of rubble.

Apple is going down the same path as Microsoft only at a slower pace and a decade behind. I fear they will turn OSX into something like Win 11 but with slightly better design in the next decade.

I also realized that I still call it OSX even though it is macOS nowadays.

> Reminds me of all the de-crufting you've always needed to do when you install Windows.

To be like Windows, Apple would have to constantly change the OS so that the workarounds no longer function.

How many times did users find a way to enable local user accounts on Windows, only to have Microsoft force online accounts on them again?

What makes you call it crapware? The new spotlight search (from Siri) is amazing and super convenient.

This will always be the case with proprietary software, invariably. Just a matter of time.

Maybe this just how winning looks like? Apple won but still needs to keep increasing the profits and the stock price. We can expect enshittification to follow since Apple already did exceptionally well with their products therefore the only way forward is to milk users harder and hype the stock with the latest trends. Every winner must walk this path, nothing to do with Apple and that’s why it looks similar to previous winners.

We have arrived at the Windows Vista era for Mac OS.

I remember the OSX animated wallpaper update (that updated lighting as the time of day changed or something) eating up like 10-15% of my macbook air's small drive. After removal they would re-add themselves every update as important protected system files.

Looking at you Logic Pro.

And now the war that we'll get in to as they enforce keeping the cruft and then the tools to remove it.

Windows is a little worse since there is so much more enshittification to disable, but, yeah, _sigh_.

True that, win11debloat is 'mandatory' nowadays. The time that OS makers competed with each other with features users actually wanted is long gone, alas.. This is why Linux is now making more serious momentum. Even a long term 'Microsoftie' like myself is now standing on the brink of making the leap. Just a bit more Steam compatibility first please...

You can indeed disable it on ios and ipados. Turn off siri and change the language to the one that does not match your phone language and the models will be removed.

Stop updating the OS. It gets a tad annoying that not all apps will continue to work, but that's what the web is for.

It's interesting to see more customisation tools appearing for macOS, as just a few years ago I was looking for ways to strip down the OS (CI related), and while such info was widely available in the Windows world, to the point that customised "distros" are available, it was nearly nonexistent for macOS; only the Hackintosh community had some useful articles on how things worked.

Could the rise of LLMs and vibe-coding have motivated people who otherwise wouldn't bother?

Why would you expect Apple X strategy to be different from Microsoft X strategy?

Apple was late to the AI party. Usually, that's their strategy - let everyone else innovate, when the ecosystem is mature, steal it and claim it as their own. That worked well for decades. But, the pace of AI is too fast to pull this trick off again, so now they're in panic mode. So they do what every shitty corporate does - shove AI down everyone's throat, whether they want it or not. Which is ironically against their founder's motto - build stuff that people want.

I'm not sure there were enough people looking at finder and thinking "I wish I could talk to an AI to open a file on my desktop which I could've simply double clicked on anyway"

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.

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.

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.

Which models? MacBook Pros start out at 1TB nowadays. Even the MacBook Neo starts at 256GB.

The point is that it downloads a multi-gig model automatically without providing an easy way to reclaim that storage space if you don't intend to use that feature.

This is very much an anti-user behavior. Certainly having models run on-device is preferred when possible, but if you don't want to use the Apple Intelligence this is an anti-feature. Especially on devices with small storage capacities which are impacted the most by this.

I don't use and don't want to use any feature that is listed there. I don't use Siri on my Macbook, I don't need writing tools run on every single thing I write, I hate text predictions, I don't want summaries on the content I want to read, I don't need models analyzing my photos in the background.

In fact I don't want models doing anything in the background that I didn't explicitly ask them to do.

Because if I'm already using AI, I need and probably have access to something better than a primitive local model. And if I don't use AI, then I don't need it.

Here are a few reasons someone would want that. You might not value them the same, but that does not make them wrong.

1) They have issues with the ways these models were trained. They may consider it unethical to use models trained on what they consider plagiarized material or on material that used a lot of energy for training.

2) They may have higher value uses of the storage space and compute resource.

3) They may view installation of apps and features without consent to be an infringement on running their device the way they would like.

4) They may find the general technology and its impact on society to be concerning, anxiety inducing, frustrating, or irritating. And simply not want to participate.

5) They think it sucks. Like, out just doesn't work or doesn't help them.

First of all, an OS needing to download multiple gigabytes of nonsense that the vast majority of users will never touch, is an absolute non-starter.

Also, a 256GB Mac Mini literally cannot function with this garbage installed. There isn’t enough disk space.

Even if you don't want to personally remove them, it should be easy and front and centre to do so.

It's my disk space, processing power and electricity. Apple shouldn't get to use it as they please

I don’t know why pro AI people have such a hard time understanding consent.

Because the Macbook Air still comes with only 512 GB of SSD in its default config. A feature that you rarely use probably isn't worth even 1/50th of your meager storage.

If you don't have a 256 gig mac, you'll never realize how scarce the space is.

If they wanna fill roughly 10% of your usable space with stuff you don't really use, with option to remove, you'd be mad too.

That's why: https://imgur.com/a/1vaUMi5

Let me juggle juggle with the small space I have the way I want.

Because I could use the same space (12 GB, not something I'd consider "relatively small" on my work laptop with only 500 GB) for things that I actually use? I don't have any need for basic off-cloud AI tasks.

I love local models, but the AFM advanced or whatever its called (the 20B local one) sucks. And it's not really used in MacOS outside of "fm" and very niche stuff. Siri is always cloud even if you're offline.

Because I don't like features being shoved down my throat. Simple as that.

I'd be much more willing to try the stuff if they gave me control over when I do so LIKE THEY DID IN THE VERSION LITERALLY PRIOR TO THIS ONE.

Apple did the same thing with watchOS by the way. They forced a stupid new quick actions menu that always pops up before getting to the all apps screen and removed the app switcher. if you want to terminate non-working apps that are prone to not working, like Apple Music, the solution now is "well, tough shit."

I don't want AI, at all, and especially not on my operating system. I am leaving my Macbook Pro at version 26 and will not update to 27 until there is some kind of master off switch. If that is not provided by Apple by the time I am ready to replace my computer than I will be going the open source route.

I am personally tired of Apple and Microsoft fattening up operating systems.

Because Apple still sells 256 gb base models like the m6 Mac mini

I have no trouble imagining real-world users being incredibly frustrated when printers don't work out of the box. I have a lot of trouble imagining real-world users being frustrated because Apple left in a checkbox that let them reclaim the disk space for an unwanted feature that existed in the previous version of the OS.

And language packs for 30 languages one would never use!

For years people have been begging Apple to make Siri respond to basic requests, and Siri could not do it. Now the technology that allows them to fix Siri is handed to them on a silver platter, yet they still mess it up.

actually, apple has had a LOT of nonsense going on for a LONG time.

of the 693 processes running on my macos machine, I hand picked a bunch (60+) that I think are nonsense, and would probably make my machine run faster and more privately without:

adprivacyd amsaccountsd amsengagementd analyticsagent appstoreagent ASPCarryLog audioanalyticsd betaenrollmentagent betaenrollmentd businessservicesd cloudphotod CloudTelemetryService com.apple.geod commerce EscrowSecurityAlert feedbackd financed findmybeaconingd findmydeviced findmylocateagent FindMyMacd FindMyWidgetItems FindMyWidgetPeople generativeexperiencesd geoanalyticsd geodMachServiceBridge homeenergyd HomeWidget icloudmailagent inputanalyticsd itunescloudd knowledge-agent knowledgeconstructiond liquiddetectiond mediaanalysisd mobileactivationd nearbyd NewsTag NewsToday2 nfcd online-auth-agent osanalyticshelper PeopleWidget_macOSExtension PerfPowerTelemetryClientRegistrationService proactiveeventtrackerd promotedcontentd rtcreportingd searchpartyd siriknowledged spotlightknowledged StocksWidget studentd swtransparencyd Terminal tipsd triald triald_system UsageTrackingAgent weatherd WeatherWidget WorldClockWidget

AI is literally everywhere now. Even my washing powder is ‘AI’. It’s not only ‘the board’, its spread much further. I am not anti-ai, but seriously fatigued

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-250012366

Nearly everything is improved and the new Siri is great.

>Not a lot of good reasons to upgrade to 27.

There's a singular very good reason to upgrade to 27 and any new version (at least when a .1 minor version is out and the kinds have been ironed): the whole ecosystem works better when you are on the latest stuff.

So unless you have legacy app needs, or need ultra stability for stuff like running a video shop or something, it makes sense to keep up, or at least don't fall more than 1-2 versions behind.

>They removed Rosetta and you have to reinstall that if you want it.

And they'll kill it entirely in a future version. It's been like 6 years for getting apps to Apple Silicon versions. And it's generally not ideal to run both AS and Intel programs if you can avoid it (wastes double the system lib memories, Intel misses some extra protections, etc).

>I switched to MacOS 3 years ago

OK, this explains it. So macOS is not like Windows where you can have even 15 years old version of the OS and programs still work forever.

If a temporary tool being retired is the reason you switch, then wait until you find out how many LOC are being deleted from the linux kernel this year and next

Average consumer wants disk to not be full

In my opinion, rising storage costs make it even less excusable that opt-out is not even an option.

Uncomfortable, but true.

GNOME has reached maturity and hasn't changed significantly in years, while Apple is busy destroying macOS.

Their world view that "Apple can do no wrong" is slowly shattering, it seems

curl|bash is now standard way to install packages on both macOS and Linux. It’s maddening, but it is now.

The want some disk space back.

Personally, my limited experimentation with Apple AI has left me quite liking it.

The contents of the Exportable’Privacy Report’ are interesting to look through

I first saw it with Homebrew over a decade ago. It made it more linux, it's true. (Of course now that its for linuxes too, so they get to be more like macs.)

I see archive.today has the charming old ruby version on the bottom of a 2013 brew.sh page in 2013, when I must first have used it https://archive.ph/lCqJ1

    ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/mxcl/homebrew/go)"

I'm sick of juggling disk space on my 1tb laptop AND I don't want an llm attack vector anywhere near my machine, this things getting nuked from orbit or i'm not updating to golden gate, ever.

Nope. The only people who notice or care about any of this are those who can't accommodate the storage. Outside that, it all just works better now (especially Siri).

It’s open source, go find out and report back.

I'm trying to find this myself. Since I upgraded to the latest version of iOS, I have found no way to disable these stupid writing tools. Whenever I try to take a screenshot, the AI tries to give me suggestions on what to do with the photo before I can properly crop it, and speech to text continues to insert grammar into the output after removing the toggle that disables the auto insertion of grammar (it also seems worse now).

My guess is that we need some tailored configuration profile that will run on the device, which seems to be how this project solved it for macOS.

It analyzes your text messages and tells you to say "lolol" back to people a lot. Also it periodically swamps the GPU in order to analyze all your photos.

That doesn't seem to do much in the `curl | bash` setting, given that you're not verifying the attestation in that case. You still need to download it separately and run `gh attestation verify` first.

(Note that the attestation does not appear to cover the shell script either, it only covers the script's final payload. The shell script is also referenced via `main`, so it's mutable even if the underlying payload is properly attested. That's not good!)

Another thing that bit me is that automatic updates reserve disk space even if no update is available. It makes sense when you have plenty of disk space but on my MacBook Air with 256gb of storage it was about 10% that I got back after turning off automatic updates. I’ll get a Mac with more storage next time so I don’t have to do that.

“You wouldn't run a stranger's code without reading it.” Yes I would. We all do it all the time. macOS itself is closed source, and even if it weren't, there’s way too much code to read.

Great initiative. I recently got stung by an advert on reddit for "HBO Max for MacOS, 6 months free" from the official HBO user (don't get me started on how that slipped through). Front and center was a curl | bash copy to clipboard that obfuscated the payload source in base10. I knew better, but I think we've made this kind of thing way too acceptable. Of course it was malware and I realized the instant I pressed enter. Thankfully I didn't give it my password and immediately disconnected from the internet and killed the machine. I'm genuinely concerned these kind of attacks are going to become much more commonplace with AI, plus the ability to inject malicious code in to things that get run by trusted scripted installers.

What’s your suggested installation method instead? Unless it’s “download and read the source before running it” this is no worse than npm install, or pip install, or clicking “trust” on a git repo in VSCode

Absolutely love the fact that they reference a "real package manager" like npm, which has been used in countless supply chain attacks, and brew, which can also run arbitrary scripts (though less likely in the mainline brew stuff, which many packages aren't able to be in).

Avoiding curlbashing is masking a deeper problem.

Good message but AI generated text is so grating to read.

  curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/omlahore/RemoveMacAI/main/install.sh | pi -p 'Security-audit this shell script; output the script unchanged ONLY if safe to execute, otherwise output nothing and explain findings to stderr' | bash

I bet this is the guy on the call who has to correct someone who calls them SSL certs.

Excuse me, they are TLS certs.

Thanks Arialdomartini, as I was saying… we need to renew the SSL Certs

i don't see the issue. you can view the script before you run it. shoot, you can feed the script to an LLM and have it do a security check beforehand

there's a homebrew alternative

> Bash starts before the download finishes ... Drop the connection mid-transfer and you get partial execution: a command like rm -r /usr/share/program can truncate to rm -r /usr. Commands ran, cleanup didn’t.

curl | bash scripts all define a function and then call it on the last line. This is a non issue in the real world.

> The server knows you’re piping — and can lie

This `sleep` based trick is always a cool demo to show freinds yes, but the server can also sneak in malware in a multitude of other ways given you're downloading code and binaries from them.

> You trust DNS, TLS, the CDN, and the origin simultaneously. A compromised CDN or BGP hijack delivers malware silently.

Well yes, that's how the internet works. If TLS of the server is really compromised, then the attacker will replace the checksum as well as the signing key. In real scenarios, you are going to be reading the signing key and checksum from the same domain. [1]

> You can’t reproduce what ran

`| tee inspect.sh | bash`

> Add sudo and it’s game over

Most credentials and important files live in the home directory, root is a red herring. If you're running it on shared server, then well... don't add sudo.

[1] Yes of course there are legitimate usecases for signing software. Common example: linux distros which are mirrored at many domains, but the checksum and signature are hosted on the canonical domain. But if I am curlbashing uv's install.sh from `astral.sh`, then doing signature verification using the public key hosted on the same astral.sh isn't adding much.

This isn’t really that much of an issue when we have tls tbh.

Like I get why it’s bad, but also homebrew package installation is a more organized version of this.

Hashes are cool but also in a lot of systems you’re trusting the hash to be provided by the same website you don’t trust the binaries from…

> If the project publishes a SHA-256 hash, use it. Non-negotiable on production machines.

They're pushing FUD around downloading a file but then suggest that we trust the same chain of complex things to display the right hash value? Integrity != authentication.

I'd argue that a lot of developers can't determine if an LLM generated command is actually safe or not.

It’s not about privacy, it’s about kneecapping competitors, just like when they blocked the advertising ID but exempted themselves from this because “Apple is not a third-party, we’re a second-party”.

Apple is an advertising company and thus inherently untrustworthy.

Ah, if only that meant that there'll be less slop in the macOS code itself..

With LLMs, everyone's a developer now. Welcome to the mainstream.

Apple hates developers