Mac Users Are Nuking Every Trace of Apple AI on Their Machines: Sayonara useless AI features, and hello disk space.
a day ago by eicker to c/technology
Wasn't it always Apple's position: "We know better what users need and if we don't have some feature it just means that users don't need it"?
What's really crazy is that apple had this obnoxious attitude that "they know what users really want", the users would disagree, they'd complain loudly, then they'd use the software and say "damn... Apple was right, this is better."
But... That was all before 2010. I can't think of a single software innovation the company has had since then. Apple used to deliver overpriced, outdated hardware and they only managed to sell it by packaging it with the slickest OS on the market. These days the situation is reversed, Apple is developing their own silicon, they have some of the fastest consumer chips around, and they need it, because their software is nothing to write home about and their prices are still high.
They did some commendable things involving locking phones when lost/stolen/seized by cops.
They’ve also done some typical tech monopoly things with os bloat, slowing down old hardware and poor support for older hardware.
I think you're right about that. Apple's policies around user privacy and security from authorities are generally pretty good, certainly better than average for tech companies.
And... Apple has kind of always been monopolistic, and that hasn't changed a bit.
The slowing down phones was also "Apple knows what's best for you". They were doing it to phones that had seen battery degradation, so that the phone battery would still last the whole day even with the reduced capacity.
The lack of AI was actually a huge selling point for me with the Neo (even though the price was already a huge sell). It's a shame that they're now falling for the same trick as the rest of the industry.
Tim didn’t really resign/retire. They promoted him to Chairman.
Apparently an unpopular opinion here but I highly appreciate the move by Apple to embrace local AI. Sure it’s not perfect in any sense, but I like the direction.
I’m curious what this tool does that is different from turning off Apple Intelligence in the Settings because they already give you some degree of control.
The problem is there is no single switch to turn it off. You have to go to each nook and cranny in the settings and toggle a switch. And if you miss anything, that 20 something gigabytes of space doesn’t free up. I’m all for local AI features, but it should be a one toggle switch to turn it off or remove it.
The reddit user featured in the article had to create a script to automate it and keep it off.
But not curious enough to read the second sentence of this article.
I think the article is not being 100% accurate. They kind of conflated Apple Intelligence and Siri, you can turn off Siri still.
You can't turn it off anymore in Golden Gate. It is a mandatory download (in countries where it is supported) now.
You can still disable some specific AI-related features, but you can't block the models entirely.
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, that's a ton of disk space, and Apple is notoriously chintzy when it comes to storage. On the other hand, I do want the default to be local-only models, and giving developers easy access will make that the path of least resistance. Most of my problems with LLMs don't apply to moderately-sized local models.
chintzy when it comes to storage
Across the line, the cost to get a step up from 512gb to 1TB is $300, and on top of that, 1TB to 2TB is an additional $500, and you’re forever locked in. If that AI model increases in size, yikes.
Even for the off-device stuff it usually gives a direct answer, without fluffing up the user, and almost always mentions double checking validity or speaking to a professional for advice (such as medical advice).
I don’t need to tell people here how terrible AI like ChatGPT is at confidently misleading people and pretending to be a users friend.
I know one single person who uses a Mac as a personal device that isn’t involved in some sort of deep internet technology field. He works in biotechnology and got tired of wasting time and effort on Windows problems.
As for the rest? They use windows systems every day for work, where they’re often either fixing the internet or fixing people’s windows computers. They just prefer Mac for personal use.
I’ve begun to feel like people who trash talk Mac users are the ones who aren’t technically capable - or at least not adaptable. I can fix almost any Mac or Windows issue, and can muddle through most *nix problems. I just don’t want that to be my identity. I got more important things to do.
I’ve had the same MacBook Pro for 5 years now. I code on it, do graphic design, 3d model, play Steam games, and obviously use it as an internet device. It’s never given me a problem, and I imagine it’ll keep going for at least another 3-5 years. It’s fucking awesome, and “just works.”
My parents have used Macs exclusively for the last 20 years or so because they don’t require much technical knowledge. Before ChromeOS, smartphones, and tablets, they were the closest thing to an internet appliance. Most Mac users I know fall into that category. Heck my dad and older brother were both very capable and knowledgeable with PCs but Macs are so frictionless that they no longer feel like they need to know how it works. It just works.
I’d love for a law that made it illegal to use “X users” and require absolute numbers.
Is all rage bait. 500 real users on a forum isn’t a useful cohort.
They mentioned 2000 stars on the Github repo, which could be 1:1 or 1:1000 that have used it. What do you expect them to do, walk around and put a gun to the head of every mac user and ask them if they used it?
Absolute numbers in the headline. How much more explicit do I need to be? .002% of Mac users, at best.
How is this rage bait? It is simply properly used English language...??
Edit: To the lurking downvoters: Since when people started interpreting "mac users" to mean (according to the context here) semi-all? A qualifier of "some" i guess is what you would like, but it's not incorrect.
It's proper to just say "mac users", or for example "fishermen use worms as bait". Or maybe you'll like this example more: "linux users write open-source firmware for wifi routers"
Project link: https://omlahore.github.io/RemoveMacAI/
False.
The selling point for me when buying apple products was the shitty implementation of AI. That was the USP. Now they partnered with google so yeah… I don’t use google in my daily life, degoogled a long time ago, don’t want to come near them with a ten foot pole and the new AI shit is actually reskinned Google…
The T14 gen 6 is pretty upgradable and you can replace windows with Linux.
You can use Asahi Linux on Apple Silicon, but you can't replace Mac OS. I used it for a few years and just stopped because of the partitioning and update issues. I bought a T14 gen 3 and put Void on it. Works a lot better and I could finally upgradey SSD to a 2 TB one.
I've been using Asahi Linux on a Macbook M2 for about a year now and generally like the experience. There's a few things I'm hoping for future improvements, but its definitively "good enough" for my needs now to use daily.
I used it for a few years and just stopped because of the partitioning and update issues.
What issues did you run into?
Apple fanboys aren't automatically swallowing everything they're given? Probably a sign of the apocalypse.
For those Windows users who stumbled on to this post.
I wish I could do the same on iOS...
Does this unlock the neural cores to operate as regular cores? Cuz if not, who cares? I already turned it off.
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Apple used to brag that its products just work. Now your expensive Mac comes with a bloated AI experiment you didn’t request, can’t fully remove, and are expected to thank Tim Cook for. When customers start writing tools to delete your flagship feature, that’s not innovation.
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