One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; the AI bots will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new AI overlords. I'd like to remind them that I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground data centers.
In Screen Time -> Content and Privacy, there's a setting to switch Siri to 'Siri Classic' which strips out the Apple Intelligence-backed behavior specifically.
It's a joke. Microsoft has been ignoring user preferences and doing what is good for Microsoft for many years now, and the parent poster was implying that Apple is now doing the same kind of bad behavior.
I think the people who aren't greeted by this dichotomy when turning their PC aren't catching the reference.
At the risk of explaining a joke: Windows tries to get you to set up things like OneDrive on startup with a "do it now" or "remind me later", there's no "never ask me about this again".
Try disabling any of the launchd tasks related to it, odds are theres a service that starts at boot/login regardless of any user-facing setting that do nothing if they're all turned off (just like iCloud related daemons).
Odds are you'll probably run into something that requires you to disable SIP, like I did when I got tired of mediaanalysisd eating up CPU cycles on a 2018 Mac mini.
Thanks, I believe this is what the debloat script mentioned in my post does. I manually executed the `launchctl bootout` and `launchctl disable` commands on all Siri and AI-related services in the https://github.com/OleksandrKrupko/mac-os-debloat/blob/main/... script, but the "Siri" process ("Siri AI.app") still keeps running even after restarting.
The Siri AI.app is read-only, so I could not even remove it. But perhaps it would be possible to boot into Recovery, mount the system partition as rw and delete the Siri AI.app from the filesystem?
P.S. I did also disable mediaanalysisd and photoanalysisd, and those are NOT running. However, the Siri AI.app does keep running...
I've been daily-driving a mac for 10 years now and I've only ever triggered Siri by accident. I do use it pretty regularly on the phone, mostly to set timers, get directions, and call contacts, but I've been well trained over these years to not expect it to be capable of more than that.
I remember it being pretty useful on phone. Now, it can't even "like" a song when I'm driving and I want it to add a song to my Spotify favourites list. It could do a few months ago, now it refuses with "sorry there was a problem with the app".
I've had to resort to asking it to take a screenshot so I can go find the song later. Three quarters of the time it never saves the screenshot though, despite seeing the screen flash out of the corner of my eye.
Gemini is similarly a step back. Google Assistant could hear me speak up and ask it to like or skip a song being played, driving or otherwise. It would quickly beep at me, pause the music/etc, accept input, process, then finish and resume the music (or skip to next track if asked).
Now it takes 10-15 seconds to start after a voice command, won't audibly alert or even stop music to take voice input, and usually fails to hear anything then quit out. Half the time it does that it then pauses the music and quits...
With Tidal Gemini can't do anything using voice commands. Maybe SOTA models can help those on the bleeding edge, but 95% of tech users just want it to work and be cheap enough. Apple figured this out a long time ago but can't help itself with being too clever.
I've been using an iPhone 12 Mini since however long it's been out, never used Siri intentionally either, would prefer to disable it fully, but CarPlay for some reason cannot be used without Siri, even though I never use Siri. I consider it 1st party malware at this point.
It’s because they’d prefer you interacted with CarPlay with voice rather than looking away from the road.
An admirable objective, but given how “well” siri has worked in the past, an unrealistic one. We’ll see if 27 is a significant improvement. If I had to bet, I’d bet no, at least for the next year.
Just as a note, from what I see the problem is not only the privacy implications but also that the local AI comes with a baggage amounting to 10% of the space on the base mac models. Which is already severely limited.
I have not found the local/remote hand off to be very reliable either, so tasks that used to be almost instantaneous for Siri are now spinning to the point where I assume they failed. A simple 2 minute timer took almost 30 seconds to set the other day.
Oh look at that, there's a new update for Sequoia in settings!
It did take me a week to notice because the assholes keep spamming me about 26 or 27, but it's there.
> The new macOS'es always seem to add more restrictions, more bloat
The main reason I'm on Sequoia is the low contrast UI with the invisible resize points. The "intelligence" taking up space and probably having no off button is secondary.
Same here. Unfortunately, if you use Xcode to develop for iOS, then Apple basically forces you to install macOS 27 to be able to develop for the new iPhones. The iPhone 18 Pro requires Xcode 27, and Xcode 27 won't run on Sequoia.
If anyone knows how to make the iPhone 18 Pro work with Xcode 26 on Sequoia, and in turn with iOS 27, I (and I'm sure many other people) would be very happy to hear how!
But it is possible to run even the latest Xcode 26.6 by directly executing Xcode.app/Contents/MacOS/Xcode, and Xcode will run. This trick doesn't work with Xcode 27 anymore though. If you try that, you'll see a warning message that says something like "Xcode requires macOS 26 to run".
I'm still running Leopard. The built in X11 server, combined with X11 forwarding, and a Linux box works fine for my meager needs. I can run Chromium using X11 forwarding, seems to work fine for the most part.
There’s the old trick of setting your computer language to be different from the Siri language. I get the following error message when I open Siri in Settings:
> Apple Intelligence requires that Mac and Siri are set to the same language. Currently your Mac is set to English (United States) and Siri is set to English (Canada).
I think at one point they may have removed this limitation but then they reintroduced it in macOS 27.0.
Yes, I did something similar: prior to disabling Siri, I set Siri's language to French and kept the system language set to English (UK), but the Siri AI.app ("Siri" process in Activity Monitor) just keeps running despite Siri being indicated as disabled in Settings.
If you are on macOS 27, could you please open Activity Monitor, search (filter) for "siri" and see if a process called "Siri" is still running?
You are right. The UI shows Siri disabled and offers to turn it on, but the process is still running. That process seems to change its name based on whether the UI thinks Siri is enabled; it can be called either just "Siri" or "Siri AI" but it’s the same executable.
FWIW it's entirely possible (and not uncommon) for a single executable to behave differently depending on the name it was launched under.
I have no idea in this case, but it's possible that "Siri" and "Siri AI" are genuinely different in behaviours and interfaces and dependencies, even if they are the same binary.
Thanks, that's an interesting observation! When I double-clicked on the "Siri" process in Activity Monitor, I saw that it's an app called "Siri AI".
If the "Siri AI" app has replaced Spotlight, then I wonder if Apple keeps building "personal context" despite Siri and Apple Intelligence being disabled.
It for sure doesn't sound well to disable Siri and still see a "Siri" process.
This sounds similar to Microsoft and the start menu. A few years ago I went to extreme lengths to disable cortana (powershell guid uninstall). This invisibly and inexplicably disabled updates to the start menu search feature. The index remained the feature worked, it just never got updated again. No amount of manually reindexing the disk helped. Reinstalling cortana got it working.
I don’t particularly care for MacOS but Apple’s hardware is generally best in class, particularly for battery life, touchpad, and other laptop specifics.
Huawei has been shipping decent MBA-like laptops for some years now. The latest Panther Lake laptops seem to have made some leaps towards Apple on the hardware side as well. I still won't expect any Windows laptop in these form factors to outlive most MacBooks though.
Silly argument. It’s more like buying a BWM and being happy with everything expect a stupid decision like placement of the handbrake. Of course you can complain about it.
I think the counter-argument would be that one obviously should have gotten a Kia K4. Otherwise equivalent for everyone's needs excluding hand brake location.
Plenty of other operating systems out there? Yeah. Better? Depends. Hardware as a package? Absolutely not and it’s by such a wide margin there’s no competition whatsoever.
I started de-googling a long time ago, part of it was an iPhone (12 mini), 5 years later I really felt like de-Appling as well. The Appstore is a cesspool, privacy concerns are about the same as Google now (or perhaps always were?).
I went with GrapheneOS. Very good experience, but not without Google Play (store and services). It's all sandboxed, so presumably I'm only leaking consciously chosen data. It's really aimed at security, not so much de-googling. Something like Murena's /e/OS is much more aimed at de-Googling, but as GrapheneOS devs will usually be quick to point out here, they are "quite poor" with their security.
A de-Googled functional appstore on a FairPhone (+ with all the GrapheneOS required security bells and wistles) would be ideal for me. But it's still either optimal security focussed OR de-Googling/de-big-teching focused. Yes there is f-droid, but there are too many apps that require the Google services (like banking).
Atm 1 app does not work, one of my banking apps required the highest tier of Google control. I will happily install on devices that have been years without security updates though :s
Overall the GrapheneOS experience (base launcher etc) is very clean, fast, minimal, ad free.
One workaround that I know would work would be an enterprise profile. I know this because I’m one of the people tasked with blocking AI stuff at my org. How you’d implement this without a subscription to management (MDM) software I leave to you to research. I know it’s possible without proprietary tools because I’ve read about people using profiles to block software updates on their personal computers, but I don’t recall how that’s done.
My guess is that iOS, iPadOS and macOS are converging on some points, and Siri gets included.
It would be interesting on macOS if it had amazing computer use and was able to control all aspects of all apps, and you’d be able to instantly do anything with voice only.
Siri Actions are one tiny step closer to that, but we’re pretty far away from this.
Not sure. People are saying "Siri" but complaining about space utilization which I assume is for the foundational models. Those are used pervasively, and are exposed as a resource for third party app usage as well.
Apple's goal was to have a set of foundational models to discourage proliferation of small bundled models in first and third party software. So ironically, they exist to try to save people disk space.
I really can't believe how bad it's gotten. I know people on here have been complaining about the direction of macOS for years but in the last few years it increasingly feels like I'm being punished for using my computer.
A bicycle for your mind with squeaking brakes and a skipping chain.
I jumped to mac with Tiger when they started using x86.
Around 2006 I believe.
It was always to become more comfortable with POSIX, but I liked it and have stayed. My current laptop is a 2019 MBP and as they are now phasing out Intel support I'm now buying a thinkpad and finally moving on to Linux. Macos has just become too annoying, and macs too expensive.
You should make use of Cunningham's Law[1]. Instead of posting an "Ask HN" asking if it's impossible to disable, post a "Show HN" claiming that it is impossible to disable.
Then people will flock to tell you how it can be disabled by XYZ.
Garbage like this is why I'm never going back to a proprietary OS. I remember being unable to kill Cortana on Windows (it would automatically restart itself) being the last straw.
dosisking | 8 hours ago
andrekandre | 6 hours ago
chmaynard | 5 hours ago
Nata_Elisym | 8 hours ago
[OP] semidror | 7 hours ago
pixl97 | 7 hours ago
alexaholic | 5 hours ago
bigstrat2003 | 5 hours ago
card_zero | 4 hours ago
mh- | 3 hours ago
At the risk of explaining a joke: Windows tries to get you to set up things like OneDrive on startup with a "do it now" or "remind me later", there's no "never ask me about this again".
skort | 3 hours ago
wpm | 8 hours ago
Odds are you'll probably run into something that requires you to disable SIP, like I did when I got tired of mediaanalysisd eating up CPU cycles on a 2018 Mac mini.
[OP] semidror | 7 hours ago
The Siri AI.app is read-only, so I could not even remove it. But perhaps it would be possible to boot into Recovery, mount the system partition as rw and delete the Siri AI.app from the filesystem?
P.S. I did also disable mediaanalysisd and photoanalysisd, and those are NOT running. However, the Siri AI.app does keep running...
chuckadams | 8 hours ago
baggy_trough | 7 hours ago
lloydatkinson | 7 hours ago
I've had to resort to asking it to take a screenshot so I can go find the song later. Three quarters of the time it never saves the screenshot though, despite seeing the screen flash out of the corner of my eye.
selicos | 2 hours ago
Now it takes 10-15 seconds to start after a voice command, won't audibly alert or even stop music to take voice input, and usually fails to hear anything then quit out. Half the time it does that it then pauses the music and quits...
With Tidal Gemini can't do anything using voice commands. Maybe SOTA models can help those on the bleeding edge, but 95% of tech users just want it to work and be cheap enough. Apple figured this out a long time ago but can't help itself with being too clever.
embedding-shape | 5 hours ago
gumby | 5 hours ago
An admirable objective, but given how “well” siri has worked in the past, an unrealistic one. We’ll see if 27 is a significant improvement. If I had to bet, I’d bet no, at least for the next year.
runjake | 5 hours ago
nottorp | 8 hours ago
threetonesun | 7 hours ago
nottorp | 7 hours ago
saidnooneever | 4 hours ago
nottorp | 3 hours ago
It did take me a week to notice because the assholes keep spamming me about 26 or 27, but it's there.
> The new macOS'es always seem to add more restrictions, more bloat
The main reason I'm on Sequoia is the low contrast UI with the invisible resize points. The "intelligence" taking up space and probably having no off button is secondary.
elcritch | 4 hours ago
VCFundedGenYer | 8 hours ago
danfritz | 8 hours ago
Still holding off for now
avazhi | 7 hours ago
[OP] semidror | 7 hours ago
If anyone knows how to make the iPhone 18 Pro work with Xcode 26 on Sequoia, and in turn with iOS 27, I (and I'm sure many other people) would be very happy to hear how!
alt227 | 6 hours ago
dwaite | 5 hours ago
[OP] semidror | 4 hours ago
But it is possible to run even the latest Xcode 26.6 by directly executing Xcode.app/Contents/MacOS/Xcode, and Xcode will run. This trick doesn't work with Xcode 27 anymore though. If you try that, you'll see a warning message that says something like "Xcode requires macOS 26 to run".
dosisking | 5 hours ago
I'm still running Leopard. The built in X11 server, combined with X11 forwarding, and a Linux box works fine for my meager needs. I can run Chromium using X11 forwarding, seems to work fine for the most part.
kccqzy | 7 hours ago
> Apple Intelligence requires that Mac and Siri are set to the same language. Currently your Mac is set to English (United States) and Siri is set to English (Canada).
I think at one point they may have removed this limitation but then they reintroduced it in macOS 27.0.
[OP] semidror | 7 hours ago
If you are on macOS 27, could you please open Activity Monitor, search (filter) for "siri" and see if a process called "Siri" is still running?
kccqzy | 7 hours ago
quesera | 2 hours ago
I have no idea in this case, but it's possible that "Siri" and "Siri AI" are genuinely different in behaviours and interfaces and dependencies, even if they are the same binary.
galad87 | 7 hours ago
[OP] semidror | 7 hours ago
If the "Siri AI" app has replaced Spotlight, then I wonder if Apple keeps building "personal context" despite Siri and Apple Intelligence being disabled.
It for sure doesn't sound well to disable Siri and still see a "Siri" process.
cosmotic | 5 hours ago
kccqzy | 4 hours ago
jzemeocala | 7 hours ago
plenty of better operating systems out their
stackghost | 6 hours ago
jasonvorhe | 2 hours ago
victorbjorklund | 6 hours ago
dwaite | 5 hours ago
victorbjorklund | 46 minutes ago
ksnsiwxjek | 6 hours ago
pluc | 6 hours ago
teekert | 6 hours ago
I went with GrapheneOS. Very good experience, but not without Google Play (store and services). It's all sandboxed, so presumably I'm only leaking consciously chosen data. It's really aimed at security, not so much de-googling. Something like Murena's /e/OS is much more aimed at de-Googling, but as GrapheneOS devs will usually be quick to point out here, they are "quite poor" with their security.
A de-Googled functional appstore on a FairPhone (+ with all the GrapheneOS required security bells and wistles) would be ideal for me. But it's still either optimal security focussed OR de-Googling/de-big-teching focused. Yes there is f-droid, but there are too many apps that require the Google services (like banking).
Atm 1 app does not work, one of my banking apps required the highest tier of Google control. I will happily install on devices that have been years without security updates though :s
Overall the GrapheneOS experience (base launcher etc) is very clean, fast, minimal, ad free.
alsetmusic | 6 hours ago
jonathantf2 | 6 hours ago
seviu | 6 hours ago
Please tell me what the use case is. Somebody somewhere must find it useful otherwise it would not be so prominent.
This a genuine question btw not trying to be sarcastic or dismissive
jiehong | 5 hours ago
It would be interesting on macOS if it had amazing computer use and was able to control all aspects of all apps, and you’d be able to instantly do anything with voice only.
Siri Actions are one tiny step closer to that, but we’re pretty far away from this.
dwaite | 5 hours ago
Apple's goal was to have a set of foundational models to discourage proliferation of small bundled models in first and third party software. So ironically, they exist to try to save people disk space.
Razengan | 6 hours ago
It's depressing to see certain bugs persist in each new beta. You know they'll be in release.
I gave up reporting anything years ago.
jimbloat | 5 hours ago
A bicycle for your mind with squeaking brakes and a skipping chain.
Tistron | 4 hours ago
jasonvorhe | 2 hours ago
type0 | 4 hours ago
kdkdkcekckek | 6 hours ago
jodrellblank | 5 hours ago
Then people will flock to tell you how it can be disabled by XYZ.
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law
sklargh | 5 hours ago
toasty228 | 3 hours ago
Shuddown | 5 hours ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/1wlm6gd/apple_support_...
iAMkenough | 3 hours ago
If you don't manually delete the files, they remain on your Mac until your storage is nearly full.
throw0101a | 4 hours ago
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49787535
Someone | 4 hours ago
Is it doing anything (what are its CPU and memory usage like)?
Danox | 4 hours ago
card_zero | 4 hours ago
type0 | 4 hours ago
thrance | 3 hours ago