Reminds me of all the de-crufting you've always needed to do when you install Windows. Looks like we've gotten to the point on macOS too, where you need to run third party scripts on a new OS installation to gain back control of your system resources and remove unwanted crapware.
Recently switched to KDE on a linux laptop (600 USD lenovo) and stopped using my macbook (m1 16" pro).
Speakers, touchpad and battery life are inferior. Speakers are OK after installing EasyEffects and I don't use the touchpad while programming. And battery life is close enough
Cachyos with KDE is 10x better than MacOS. So it doesn't make sense to use macbooks for programming anymore IMO.
You can't even see the update download speed or progress percentage on MacOS, and have to approve 3 times to run a downloaded program, brew is terrible in terms of performance etc. etc. etc.
> Speakers, touchpad and battery life are inferior.
I suppose it depends upon the model, but I find my Lenovo Yoga's touchpad vastly superior to my MacBook Pro's touchpad. Tracking is fine on both, yet I'm having trouble trouble with the MacBook Pro consistently handling clicks. Granted, that is probably a software thing. As an added bonus, the Yoga has a touch screen which folds back, both of which are nice to have. (Agreed on the Mac speakers being significantly better though.)
> Cachyos with KDE is 10x better than MacOS.
That is subjective. I definitely agree with you, but a lot of people won't. Then again, I have been using Linux for about 30 years so modern macOS feels limiting and there is very little I can do about it.
Battery life optimization on Lenovos often involves installing and activating the correct GPU kernel module. My battery life on my P53 improved measurably after doing this, though installing new kernels involved a small build step. Are you just running with all the defaults?
Interesting. Why do you call out KDE? Does it add to the experience specifically for you?
I usually use XMonad, but then I nearly do everything in the command line, and I don't like to move my windows around via mouse. (Though XMonad supports that, too.)
XMonad works for me, but I wouldn't call it out specifically as contributing to the experience.
> You can't even see the update download speed or progress percentage on MacOS, [...]
What program are you talking about? You can customise eg Firefox on Mac, just like anywhere else, with extensions to look however you want.
> [...] brew is terrible in terms of performance [...]
I'm trying to fix at least brew's Python performance a bit:
I used to use XMonad (now on Hyprland) and feel that the tiling window manager experience you can get on Linux doesn't have an equivalent on macos. KDE is solid but yeah it's plain jane.
Or a server version. I have an M1 Mac mini as my home server and it really feels like I'm fighting the fact that it's a desktop OS with a GUI and full of components that really, really, really can't deal with being run on a headless system. Not much fun when your super efficient ARM processor suddenly uses 100% CPU for 6 days straight because WindowServer and CoreAudio are having a panic attack due to being unable to find any outputs.
And so much useless crap you can't turn off without disabling SIP, which it doesn't feel like you're meant to, because who knows what daemon will bring down the entire system when another it expects to be there isn't…
Automatically downloading AI models into disk space with no user-facing way to turn it off is especially hostile considering Apple as vendor of both the OS and the hardware is the same entity that overcharges for non-upgradable SSD storage in their machines.
That doesn’t work unless you’re actually able to offload stuff from disk, which is only the case when you store stuff in your iCloud Drive / photos / etc.
Case in point: the AI models can’t be offloaded to iCloud.
My understanding is that the controller is integrated into the SoC.
You can actually replace the storage on Apple desktops but it’s a bit of a pain and isn’t as cheap as m.2 2280 drives.
I don’t really know why Apple does this when their solution doesn’t seem to offer an obvious advantage. They aren’t faster than existing solutions or anything like that.
To gain the same effect as one that is soldered down, while giving themselves a simpler portfolio of assemblies and a cheaper FRU to swap in the event of failure.
Like it or not, Siri is one of the features of macOS and has been for a long time. It's not just some arbitrary AI model that Apple decided to store on your disk.
People have been doing the same thing with Cortana on Windows for ages. "Debloating" tools don't primarily target OEM add-ons like free trials of this or that; they very much target Windows components.
Fully functional feature consuming multiple gigabytes of storage and has questionable functional value. Maybe people don't want bloated AI crap on their desktops?
I’m not making any judgement on whether you should or should not like the feature.
I’m stating that the Windows problem was very different. Your machine would be loaded up with software for various vendors that the manufacturer did deals with to lower the price of the machine. They were all trials.
> I’m stating that the Windows problem was very different. [...] They were all trials.
Except it isn't and they weren't. MS Windows never came with trials, it came with shortcuts. OEMs bundled with their Windows image more of their (crap) full software than trials.
And to this day debloating tools are tasked with removing full MS bundled (or auto installed) software like Teams, Outlook, DevHome, Copilot, M365, Recall, etc. So exactly the same problem as Apple Intelligence. Whether you consider it useful is up to you. Whether it's bundled is up to Apple.
Apple's AI and harnesses are trash and a complete waste of space
Also suggesting that sacrificing 1/20 of your disk space is NBD is crazy. I have to prune space on my drive all the time because macs ship with the least amount of disk space that apple imagines they can get away with as possible.
This is going to shock you I suspect, it seems to be something many here fail to consider in any number of circumstances: You don't represent a majority of anything. A majority of people buying Macs, a majority of people they market to, a majority of who they design for, a majority of who they product test against. In fact I'd venture to guess that you like many here represent a vocal portion of a tiny minority that are almost impossible to please without the sort of full customization of hardware and software you want. It's much easier to neglect that small market in favor of the one that prints them money, and I'm always baffled that so many don't understand that.
People here misunderstand just how different they are to the norm. "I want x, y, z to be free so I can modify it!" Most people buying Apple products don't, hell most people buying any phone doesn't want that, they want a smartphone that works out of the box and never fails to be a smartphone. The walled garden is largely a feature and not a bug, it's just not a feature you want, just like the aesthetics, social factors, ease of use, etc don't matter to you as much as function.
Are you arguing that the icons did not occupy a scarce resource that could have been used for other things? Or that the value is so obvious it we worth it?
I don't need a more bloated operating system or greater resource usage for things I don't want, use, or need. i'd prefer a calendar app that doesn't suck, and an OS that doesn't decrease performance by 5-15% on every new upgrade for slightly older machines
It's the same reason IDEs have been largely supplanted by plugin-based editors & discrete toolchains. Integrating everything the user might want wastes lots of resources and includes things the user will never want.
Trial versions are installed by the OEMs so that's not a Windows problem.
Microsoft has given you the tools (Group Policy) for the last 25+ years to customize most of this.
My last install of Windows 11 was shockingly frustrating but with a little patience and discipline it's customized to Windows 7 levels of sanity using nothing but out of the box tools. Shockingly, it works better than writing angry blog posts about it.
They have to give you a choice because they have surly enterprise customers who would be upset otherwise.
> Microsoft has given you the tools (Group Policy) for the last 25+ years to customize most of this.
Morally, why should Home users have to pay a $70 upgrade (or whatever it is) to the company extorting them with forced-on crap they didn't originally have and don't want?
On Windows there are lots of fully features features/applications people turn off. It's not all trial versions and it's disingenuous to pretend it's just that.
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.
The new spotlight search replaced what I previously used, made it function worse for what I used it for, and uses 30GiB of already very scarce disk space.
For many users, it is a strict downgrade that was forced on them against their consent.
How was it "against their consent?" The Siri AI / Apple Intelligence feature required a user to explicitly enable it. It didn't just get enabled for you.
I know this because I just explicitly enabled it, and now I have the new Spotlight search. I didn't have it before I enabled it.
Spotlight search has sucked from Day 1 of OSX. You need to use Find Any File [0] or some equivalent tool if you want to search the actual file system without being limited by Spotlight's never-properly-updated "index."
The functionality of Find Any File was built in to Mac OS 9 and earlier. It was rock-solid reliable. So of course Apple removed it and now to get reliable search you have to use a third-party tool. Or 'find' in the Terminal.
I made my own “pseudo spotlight” and mapped it to ⌘-Space specifically for this. It just goes against old fashioned locate/updatedb, but with a very quick check against /Applications first + running the search query through bc and if it’s valid syntax, showing the math result.
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...
Mandatory for what? I run stock Win11 for the most part, haven’t have had any real issues with it. I think I disabled/modified a few mouse hotspots and key combos, and that’s been about it. Sure during major updates there’s the “buy our shit” rigmarole, but at this point I just click through and then forget about it for another month or two. Annoying yes, but compared to actual annoyances in my life…I just can’t be bothered to care or get mad, to be honest.
I got an old disk with a win10 installation on it. It lasted only three days. It was because of all the pinging from notifications and all the CTA buttons (like Sign in to Onedrive in the settings). It felt like a minefield where a click can blow your whole setup.
I wipe the whole thing and installed Fedora.
I could tolerate windows if I needed a particular set of software on it, but no way that I could use it as a daily driver.
Vista had an undeserved bad rep IMO, it was an important 1.0 milestone for many new technologies and improvements especially in the security model. It effectively was a beta of Windows 7, with 7 being Microsoft's "Snow Leopard".
Windows 11 still ships with the installer from Vista.
I no longer have a Mac as I’ve moved over to Linux, but my iOS device leaves me very frustrated that I can no longer disable this AI stuff with a simple toggle.
It seems insane given that Apple’s competitors (Microsoft, Firefox, probably others) moved toward a global AI switch to make the choice easy for their customers.
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.
This is simply not true. Things like "writing tools" were moved out of the global siri checkbox and enabled by default, and now require you to use screen time content restrictions or modify settings in individual apps to turn off these features.
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?
It’s hard to strip it down these days as the OS image and its core, immutable filesystem cannot be edited. Admittedly this helps keep idiots from destroying their filesystem and also blocks many malware attacks on the system, but, for example. I don’t believe you can delete the chess program.
The sealing of the filesystem can be disabled trivially, though, via a command line tool that Apple ships with MacOS that you run from recovery mode.
And then you can remount `/` as read-write, and create a new blessed snapshot with your changes made to it.
This doesn't actually delete the signed snapshot though, so the space consumed by `/System/Applications/Chess` still is consumed. I'm not sure if MacOS will allow deleting the final sealed snapshot for `/`. It might, I don't know that anyone is clamoring for it though.
and its core, immutable filesystem cannot be edited
That's a half-truth at best; I can just open the disk image in a hex editor if nothing else understands the format.
Hackintoshers have figured out how to add/modify drivers etc. It's certainly not without obstacles, but that's still very far from "impossible". If I remember correctly, you need to re-snapshot the FS and tell the bootloader to boot from it.
(And necessarily, ignoring the countless cries of "it can't be done" was how I was able to accomplish my goal... I knew that it was possible since I could edit any bit of the FS; figuring out which files I could remove and patch was the hard and undocumented part.)
This is one of those things where you have to ask yourself "how do you get it so wrong?". I get the idea of protecting from malware/self-harm, but to not allow removal of such a pointless app is just befuddling. At least Microsoft trying to say that Explorer was core to the OS, but a chess app? I never did buy into Explorer being core until the day I accidentally pasted an URL into File Explorer's path and it rendered the webpage. I don't understand why someone thought that was necessary to allow to happen, but there it was, core to the OS.
I think it’s because all those apps use core technologies so their bundle size is tiny. You hide them and never think about them (like the old windows media player). Most of windows optional features are very much in your face all the time.
Not that the are core technologies, more like they use whatever default libraries (Frameworks in Apple parlance) that are already there. Just like no one bothered to remove paint or wordpad in the old days (even with only 20gb of hdd)
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"
I remember 15+ years ago having to remove gigabytes of printer drivers from OSX. This was at a time where “drivers” were a whole, horribly frustrating thing and Apple wanted stuff to “just work.”
Lots of opinions for sure, but I’m curious how Apple actually tries to decide the cost-benefit of these kinds of things. Obviously they know they need added disk usage and some people will be upset. Do they have a model to estimate or do they just A/B test and see how it goes?
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
It's nice that the tool is open source tool. You can actually see what it's doing and not end up downloading something sketchy
What worries me is that Apple might to be heading in a bit of a bloatware direction with this stuff. Having to give up tens of GB of storage for an AI model that I may not even use feels pretty far from the old Apple approach of keeping the OS lean
The enshittification of Apple is going on. Debloating Windows, degoogling Android. MacOS/iOS was still decent a few months ago. And now they've put banners on iPhones, real advertisements trying to force you to subscribe to Apple This, Apple That. And you can't close the banner. Now they remove the option for you to remove the models. And Apple storage space is darn expensive. Now we have to use a 3rd-party tool to debloat Apple's OS too? To hell with that. Is this really the year to go full-time Linux? Steve must be squirming down there with the enshittification of Apple too. Let's shove AI (SI is different stuff, Bozo) down your throats. Jesus Christ. I suppose that's what the board members want. More revenue. Maybe it's time to start parting ways with Apple if they keep it like that. Corporate greed has taken over and user experience has gone down the drain.
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
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.
Ihave three screenshots on my iPhone taken two weeks apart. I have one point Apple Intelligence, while it’s turned off mind you, takes up four gigs of space, then it disappeared, and now it’s back to four gigs again. Can someone please explain this to me?
Ah yes, more enshitification. The other day Visual Studio 2026 brought in a mandatory update, lots of CoPilot stuff I didnt ask for, but they broke code search so finding who uses a structure is now harder to find. No way to revert to older version of VS2026.
Not a lot of good reasons to upgrade to 27. They removed Rosetta and you have to reinstall that if you want it. So is MacOS turning into something that more regular people are going to have to maintain in the future or end up with something like Windows 11?
I switched to MacOS 3 years ago because of Microsoft and the writing on the wall seems to say I got another year left before I'm forced into Linux. Because if I have to maintain my own OS then I might as well install Linux and do it once.
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
The alternative is maintaining backwards compatibility forever and then everyone will complain about some weird behaviour that still happens to retain that compatibility.
Keep in mind this is the second time they have switched arches and the second round of complaints of Rosetta removal.
Exactly, I remember getting similar replies - though probably on /. then - when the PPC emulator was removed, there are always some people eager to ridicule the idea and portray it as not being feasible. But it is. It is perfectly doable for a company like Apple with a net worth around $4.87 trillion and would probably take less disk space then the AI models their customers now try to remove because they don't need them. As ridiculous as this may sound to the naysayers, I desire very much for an operating system to keep backwards compatibility forever, it can be done and would be very useful for many people.
I didn't want the PPC emulator removed and I don't want the x86 emulator to be removed either. If that makes me a weirdo, so be it.
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!)
“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.
Code from trusted repositories is an entirely different thing compared to running 'wget some_github_repo_shell_script | sh' . That said, the likes of Tailscale are setting a bad example.
But then again, I'm a bit paranoid. At a minimum I would download the script and read it, and if it was too long or not written clearly enough then I would just drop it and find something better.
You download a dmg and run it blindly? You download an exe and run it blindly. I wish it were in an rpm or deb coming from signed repos, but it's not so here we are
App bundles (what's inside most DMGs) and Windows executables are signed, have been for a long time, and are required to be, by the O/S, in order to execute "normally". Apple uses centralized PKI (the developer's key must be signed by Apple) while Microsoft uses distributed PKI (the developer's key must be signed by a code-signing CA who in turn is approved by Microsoft).
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
It is actually worse than those examples. Pip and npm may be insecure, and that is a fault of those tools, but most user expect secure package managers and should demand it
Telling users it’s fine to raw dog arbitrary commands directly into their shell is dangerous and lowers the bar for all security. In fact by even making this comparison you are communicating that you are complacent with pip and npm’s issues and why shouldn’t you just execute arbitrary commands without even a second glance? Security doesn’t matter!
And for the record, even with pip and npm being the way that they are, they are still better than a curl pipe because they are versioned. In the case I get a compromised deployment I understand immediately if I got hit by the affected package, and the entire repo can then be audited. Not the case when I’m just curling whatever the internet wants to send into my process space
Why is this even an app? It looks like it just generates a mobileconfig profile on the fly. Instead, seems like they could be offering a download of a pre-generated mobileconfig, which seems like it would be much safer than installing some app via curl|bash .... but then I guess there wouldn't be a chance to have an "app", get github stars, and do whatever else.
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).
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
> 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.
I think that's missing the forest for trees. The problem with these curl-to-bash approaches is not that you are literally unable to intercept and inspect them with enough effort and planning.
The problem is that:
1. The effort and care needed to test is unnecessarily high. You've got to guard against way more tricks from an interactive source that can see you and choose what it's going to deliver and how.
2. With no "standard" artifact that can be exactly compared, that work cannot be shared.
In contrast, release_1.2.3.zip isn't going to mutate under you and everybody can agree on what its size/hash/bytes ought to be, and if it deviates from that it sets off alarm-bells.
> curl | bash scripts all define a function and then call it on the last line. This is a non issue in the real world.
Why would a convention often followed by good/careful actors bind what malicious/careless people create?
Well, if you're running software from someone you think can deliver malware to you (and not a middleman) then it's a lost cause anyways no? I don't see what the zip file adds. It's not like you're gonna be inspecting the code or binaries.
> 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.
Really? GNOME is not what I would recommend to people.
I should applaud their efforts, and I get that much of it is voluntary, but their bugs are numerous, notable and the way they interact with the rest of the universe (both people with accessibility needs, and the wider developer ecosystem on linux) can most accurately be described as arrogant and hostile.
KDE is the bastion of maturity here, and I would agree that it is mature.
I’m not sure how the love for GNOME continues when KDE (while not my personal choice) has clearly been running circles around it since GNOME3 and the gap has only widened since that change too.
Both desktops are pretty mature. I've run both of their Wayland stacks, and Mutter/KWin both perform great these days. It really comes down to personal preference for most use-cases.
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
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).
Also "those who can't accommodate the storage" is funny.
What's that? You didn't pay Apple's 1200% markup on storage, just so you can have enough room for your actual work after the OS fills your disk with a bunch of bloat? What are you, poor?
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.
Oh, things are about to get worse with the new macOS "privacy/security" measures. They are going to curb agentic workflows even more. I don't know how Apple just finds new ways to annoy developers, but we're in a minority after all. Of 200 million Mac users, probably just up to 1 million are developers, and the rest are normies who can't tell when they should authorize or cancel the pop-up.
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.
They love the ones that buy Apple hardware to develop apps for iDevices, pay the dev subscription and store fees for apps, or simply because they wanted a shiny UNIX and don't consider BSD/Linux OEMs worth their money.
Does anything like this exist for iOS, if you wanna nuke some AI crap you have no desire for and get some space back? My notebook is fine but my phone is painfully tight on storage.
Reminds me of all the de-crufting you've always needed to do when you install Windows. Looks like we've gotten to the point on macOS too, where you need to run third party scripts on a new OS installation to gain back control of your system resources and remove unwanted crapware.
Not gonna lie, I would like a "Black Edition" of macOS. There is a decent OS buried under tons of rubble.
Recently switched to KDE on a linux laptop (600 USD lenovo) and stopped using my macbook (m1 16" pro).
Speakers, touchpad and battery life are inferior. Speakers are OK after installing EasyEffects and I don't use the touchpad while programming. And battery life is close enough
Cachyos with KDE is 10x better than MacOS. So it doesn't make sense to use macbooks for programming anymore IMO.
You can't even see the update download speed or progress percentage on MacOS, and have to approve 3 times to run a downloaded program, brew is terrible in terms of performance etc. etc. etc.
> Speakers, touchpad and battery life are inferior.
I suppose it depends upon the model, but I find my Lenovo Yoga's touchpad vastly superior to my MacBook Pro's touchpad. Tracking is fine on both, yet I'm having trouble trouble with the MacBook Pro consistently handling clicks. Granted, that is probably a software thing. As an added bonus, the Yoga has a touch screen which folds back, both of which are nice to have. (Agreed on the Mac speakers being significantly better though.)
> Cachyos with KDE is 10x better than MacOS.
That is subjective. I definitely agree with you, but a lot of people won't. Then again, I have been using Linux for about 30 years so modern macOS feels limiting and there is very little I can do about it.
Battery life optimization on Lenovos often involves installing and activating the correct GPU kernel module. My battery life on my P53 improved measurably after doing this, though installing new kernels involved a small build step. Are you just running with all the defaults?
Interesting. Why do you call out KDE? Does it add to the experience specifically for you?
I usually use XMonad, but then I nearly do everything in the command line, and I don't like to move my windows around via mouse. (Though XMonad supports that, too.)
XMonad works for me, but I wouldn't call it out specifically as contributing to the experience.
> You can't even see the update download speed or progress percentage on MacOS, [...]
What program are you talking about? You can customise eg Firefox on Mac, just like anywhere else, with extensions to look however you want.
> [...] brew is terrible in terms of performance [...]
I'm trying to fix at least brew's Python performance a bit:
https://github.com/python/cpython/issues/158283
I used to use XMonad (now on Hyprland) and feel that the tiling window manager experience you can get on Linux doesn't have an equivalent on macos. KDE is solid but yeah it's plain jane.
Or a server version. I have an M1 Mac mini as my home server and it really feels like I'm fighting the fact that it's a desktop OS with a GUI and full of components that really, really, really can't deal with being run on a headless system. Not much fun when your super efficient ARM processor suddenly uses 100% CPU for 6 days straight because WindowServer and CoreAudio are having a panic attack due to being unable to find any outputs.
And so much useless crap you can't turn off without disabling SIP, which it doesn't feel like you're meant to, because who knows what daemon will bring down the entire system when another it expects to be there isn't…
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.
Automatically downloading AI models into disk space with no user-facing way to turn it off is especially hostile considering Apple as vendor of both the OS and the hardware is the same entity that overcharges for non-upgradable SSD storage in their machines.
They'll rent you more iCloud space when you fill up the SSD. That's good, holistic customer service.
That doesn’t work unless you’re actually able to offload stuff from disk, which is only the case when you store stuff in your iCloud Drive / photos / etc.
Case in point: the AI models can’t be offloaded to iCloud.
Maybe someone can explain why their SSDs, when not soldered down, are a proprietary form factor and can't be replaced with a standard M.2 device?
I believe they have a special kind of SSD, where the controller is locked into the motherboard. This is serial locked in some form.
(Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is how I understand it)
My understanding is that the controller is integrated into the SoC.
You can actually replace the storage on Apple desktops but it’s a bit of a pain and isn’t as cheap as m.2 2280 drives.
I don’t really know why Apple does this when their solution doesn’t seem to offer an obvious advantage. They aren’t faster than existing solutions or anything like that.
To gain the same effect as one that is soldered down, while giving themselves a simpler portfolio of assemblies and a cheaper FRU to swap in the event of failure.
So vendor locking to make more money. :)
Like it or not, Siri is one of the features of macOS and has been for a long time. It's not just some arbitrary AI model that Apple decided to store on your disk.
People have been doing the same thing with Cortana on Windows for ages. "Debloating" tools don't primarily target OEM add-ons like free trials of this or that; they very much target Windows components.
Cortana was heavily integrated with bing. It was essentially a way to get people to use bing.
I swear didn't they lose a big antitrust case for doing this once already?
Fully functional feature consuming multiple gigabytes of storage and has questionable functional value. Maybe people don't want bloated AI crap on their desktops?
I’m not making any judgement on whether you should or should not like the feature.
I’m stating that the Windows problem was very different. Your machine would be loaded up with software for various vendors that the manufacturer did deals with to lower the price of the machine. They were all trials.
> I’m stating that the Windows problem was very different. [...] They were all trials.
Except it isn't and they weren't. MS Windows never came with trials, it came with shortcuts. OEMs bundled with their Windows image more of their (crap) full software than trials.
And to this day debloating tools are tasked with removing full MS bundled (or auto installed) software like Teams, Outlook, DevHome, Copilot, M365, Recall, etc. So exactly the same problem as Apple Intelligence. Whether you consider it useful is up to you. Whether it's bundled is up to Apple.
“Some people” arguments always hold true.
Old classmates back in the day used to hate the 128 × 128 px icons macOS shipped. A waste of space for eye candy.
12 GB is at most 4.68% of your Mac. Improving on Apple Intelligence is something of value, as is consumerizing local-first AI.
We’re not talking adware here.
That’s a whole 4% of my disc. Get that out of there.
Apple's AI and harnesses are trash and a complete waste of space
Also suggesting that sacrificing 1/20 of your disk space is NBD is crazy. I have to prune space on my drive all the time because macs ship with the least amount of disk space that apple imagines they can get away with as possible.
Useful or not there should be an option to turn it off and get space back (plus avoid LLM) if you want.
4% of my disk on a computer with soldered storage hardware?
Is the marketing really getting this good?
This is going to shock you I suspect, it seems to be something many here fail to consider in any number of circumstances: You don't represent a majority of anything. A majority of people buying Macs, a majority of people they market to, a majority of who they design for, a majority of who they product test against. In fact I'd venture to guess that you like many here represent a vocal portion of a tiny minority that are almost impossible to please without the sort of full customization of hardware and software you want. It's much easier to neglect that small market in favor of the one that prints them money, and I'm always baffled that so many don't understand that.
People here misunderstand just how different they are to the norm. "I want x, y, z to be free so I can modify it!" Most people buying Apple products don't, hell most people buying any phone doesn't want that, they want a smartphone that works out of the box and never fails to be a smartphone. The walled garden is largely a feature and not a bug, it's just not a feature you want, just like the aesthetics, social factors, ease of use, etc don't matter to you as much as function.
Most people aren't like that.
Are you arguing that the icons did not occupy a scarce resource that could have been used for other things? Or that the value is so obvious it we worth it?
I don't need a more bloated operating system or greater resource usage for things I don't want, use, or need. i'd prefer a calendar app that doesn't suck, and an OS that doesn't decrease performance by 5-15% on every new upgrade for slightly older machines
It's the same reason IDEs have been largely supplanted by plugin-based editors & discrete toolchains. Integrating everything the user might want wastes lots of resources and includes things the user will never want.
This simply isn't true.
Trial versions are installed by the OEMs so that's not a Windows problem.
Microsoft has given you the tools (Group Policy) for the last 25+ years to customize most of this.
My last install of Windows 11 was shockingly frustrating but with a little patience and discipline it's customized to Windows 7 levels of sanity using nothing but out of the box tools. Shockingly, it works better than writing angry blog posts about it.
They have to give you a choice because they have surly enterprise customers who would be upset otherwise.
> Microsoft has given you the tools (Group Policy) for the last 25+ years to customize most of this.
Morally, why should Home users have to pay a $70 upgrade (or whatever it is) to the company extorting them with forced-on crap they didn't originally have and don't want?
I just don't use it. I'm on a laptop with 500gb. I don't want to lose on so much disk space for a feature I won't use.
On Windows there are lots of fully features features/applications people turn off. It's not all trial versions and it's disingenuous to pretend it's just that.
"fully functioning feature" -- more like fully functioning forceware/crapware which holds significant space.
So, it's not for "what ever reason", it's quite a reason to reject this.
IE is also a fully functioning feature, so are snap packages.
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.
This will always be the case with proprietary software, invariably. Just a matter of time.
What makes you call it crapware? The new spotlight search (from Siri) is amazing and super convenient.
The new spotlight search replaced what I previously used, made it function worse for what I used it for, and uses 30GiB of already very scarce disk space.
For many users, it is a strict downgrade that was forced on them against their consent.
How was it "against their consent?" The Siri AI / Apple Intelligence feature required a user to explicitly enable it. It didn't just get enabled for you.
I know this because I just explicitly enabled it, and now I have the new Spotlight search. I didn't have it before I enabled it.
I never asked for it, I had to disable it
I don’t want to make my search more ambiguous. That is the opposite of what I want.
The existing search on macOS was almost completely useless to be fair
Spotlight search has sucked from Day 1 of OSX. You need to use Find Any File [0] or some equivalent tool if you want to search the actual file system without being limited by Spotlight's never-properly-updated "index."
The functionality of Find Any File was built in to Mac OS 9 and earlier. It was rock-solid reliable. So of course Apple removed it and now to get reliable search you have to use a third-party tool. Or 'find' in the Terminal.
[0] https://findanyfile.app/
This is why I rip out spotlight on my mac and replace it with FZF
Just because something is convenient or necessary for you, it doesn't mean it is convenient or necessary for everyone
Can it now consistently find things in /Applications when I type the full name?
That's revolutionary.
No.
I made my own “pseudo spotlight” and mapped it to ⌘-Space specifically for this. It just goes against old fashioned locate/updatedb, but with a very quick check against /Applications first + running the search query through bc and if it’s valid syntax, showing the math result.
Windows is a little worse since there is so much more enshittification to disable, but, yeah, _sigh_.
Looking at you Logic Pro.
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...
Mandatory for what? I run stock Win11 for the most part, haven’t have had any real issues with it. I think I disabled/modified a few mouse hotspots and key combos, and that’s been about it. Sure during major updates there’s the “buy our shit” rigmarole, but at this point I just click through and then forget about it for another month or two. Annoying yes, but compared to actual annoyances in my life…I just can’t be bothered to care or get mad, to be honest.
I got an old disk with a win10 installation on it. It lasted only three days. It was because of all the pinging from notifications and all the CTA buttons (like Sign in to Onedrive in the settings). It felt like a minefield where a click can blow your whole setup.
I wipe the whole thing and installed Fedora.
I could tolerate windows if I needed a particular set of software on it, but no way that I could use it as a daily driver.
We have arrived at the Windows Vista era for Mac OS.
Vista had an undeserved bad rep IMO, it was an important 1.0 milestone for many new technologies and improvements especially in the security model. It effectively was a beta of Windows 7, with 7 being Microsoft's "Snow Leopard".
Windows 11 still ships with the installer from Vista.
I no longer have a Mac as I’ve moved over to Linux, but my iOS device leaves me very frustrated that I can no longer disable this AI stuff with a simple toggle.
It seems insane given that Apple’s competitors (Microsoft, Firefox, probably others) moved toward a global AI switch to make the choice easy for their customers.
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.
This is simply not true. Things like "writing tools" were moved out of the global siri checkbox and enabled by default, and now require you to use screen time content restrictions or modify settings in individual apps to turn off these features.
This is stuff on the level of O&O ShutUp10. Which is a good tool, but also, a Windows tool for very (back in the day) Windows-specific nonsense.
What's going on at Apple product strategy?
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?
It’s hard to strip it down these days as the OS image and its core, immutable filesystem cannot be edited. Admittedly this helps keep idiots from destroying their filesystem and also blocks many malware attacks on the system, but, for example. I don’t believe you can delete the chess program.
The sealing of the filesystem can be disabled trivially, though, via a command line tool that Apple ships with MacOS that you run from recovery mode.
And then you can remount `/` as read-write, and create a new blessed snapshot with your changes made to it.
This doesn't actually delete the signed snapshot though, so the space consumed by `/System/Applications/Chess` still is consumed. I'm not sure if MacOS will allow deleting the final sealed snapshot for `/`. It might, I don't know that anyone is clamoring for it though.
and its core, immutable filesystem cannot be edited
That's a half-truth at best; I can just open the disk image in a hex editor if nothing else understands the format.
Hackintoshers have figured out how to add/modify drivers etc. It's certainly not without obstacles, but that's still very far from "impossible". If I remember correctly, you need to re-snapshot the FS and tell the bootloader to boot from it.
(And necessarily, ignoring the countless cries of "it can't be done" was how I was able to accomplish my goal... I knew that it was possible since I could edit any bit of the FS; figuring out which files I could remove and patch was the hard and undocumented part.)
This is one of those things where you have to ask yourself "how do you get it so wrong?". I get the idea of protecting from malware/self-harm, but to not allow removal of such a pointless app is just befuddling. At least Microsoft trying to say that Explorer was core to the OS, but a chess app? I never did buy into Explorer being core until the day I accidentally pasted an URL into File Explorer's path and it rendered the webpage. I don't understand why someone thought that was necessary to allow to happen, but there it was, core to the OS.
I think it’s because all those apps use core technologies so their bundle size is tiny. You hide them and never think about them (like the old windows media player). Most of windows optional features are very much in your face all the time.
please explain how a chess game is core technology
Not that the are core technologies, more like they use whatever default libraries (Frameworks in Apple parlance) that are already there. Just like no one bothered to remove paint or wordpad in the old days (even with only 20gb of hdd)
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"
I remember 15+ years ago having to remove gigabytes of printer drivers from OSX. This was at a time where “drivers” were a whole, horribly frustrating thing and Apple wanted stuff to “just work.”
Lots of opinions for sure, but I’m curious how Apple actually tries to decide the cost-benefit of these kinds of things. Obviously they know they need added disk usage and some people will be upset. Do they have a model to estimate or do they just A/B test and see how it goes?
And language packs for 30 languages one would never use!
I don't understand why you would want to remove well-balanced and relatively small local-inference models that ship with every mac.
Sure, not frontier levels but fine for basic tasks and they are off-the-cloud.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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
That's why: https://imgur.com/a/1vaUMi5
Let me juggle juggle with the small space I have the way I want.
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
It's nice that the tool is open source tool. You can actually see what it's doing and not end up downloading something sketchy
What worries me is that Apple might to be heading in a bit of a bloatware direction with this stuff. Having to give up tens of GB of storage for an AI model that I may not even use feels pretty far from the old Apple approach of keeping the OS lean
The enshittification of Apple is going on. Debloating Windows, degoogling Android. MacOS/iOS was still decent a few months ago. And now they've put banners on iPhones, real advertisements trying to force you to subscribe to Apple This, Apple That. And you can't close the banner. Now they remove the option for you to remove the models. And Apple storage space is darn expensive. Now we have to use a 3rd-party tool to debloat Apple's OS too? To hell with that. Is this really the year to go full-time Linux? Steve must be squirming down there with the enshittification of Apple too. Let's shove AI (SI is different stuff, Bozo) down your throats. Jesus Christ. I suppose that's what the board members want. More revenue. Maybe it's time to start parting ways with Apple if they keep it like that. Corporate greed has taken over and user experience has gone down the drain.
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
I need 12 GB back
What does it actually do?
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.
How do we believe this tool? Is it secure?
It’s open source, go find out and report back.
Is there a way to do this manually?
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-250012366
Ihave three screenshots on my iPhone taken two weeks apart. I have one point Apple Intelligence, while it’s turned off mind you, takes up four gigs of space, then it disappeared, and now it’s back to four gigs again. Can someone please explain this to me?
Ah yes, more enshitification. The other day Visual Studio 2026 brought in a mandatory update, lots of CoPilot stuff I didnt ask for, but they broke code search so finding who uses a structure is now harder to find. No way to revert to older version of VS2026.
Not a lot of good reasons to upgrade to 27. They removed Rosetta and you have to reinstall that if you want it. So is MacOS turning into something that more regular people are going to have to maintain in the future or end up with something like Windows 11?
I switched to MacOS 3 years ago because of Microsoft and the writing on the wall seems to say I got another year left before I'm forced into Linux. Because if I have to maintain my own OS then I might as well install Linux and do it once.
>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.
Nearly everything is improved and the new Siri is great.
[delayed]
Unless you're not running an M-series chip, then it's not really improving anything
If you're not running an Apple Silicon chip, you can't run macOS 27 at all.
That's 6+ year old hardware then, so even in Apple's world, that's pretty old.
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
It's not a temporary tool for people who need it.
The alternative is maintaining backwards compatibility forever and then everyone will complain about some weird behaviour that still happens to retain that compatibility.
Keep in mind this is the second time they have switched arches and the second round of complaints of Rosetta removal.
Exactly, I remember getting similar replies - though probably on /. then - when the PPC emulator was removed, there are always some people eager to ridicule the idea and portray it as not being feasible. But it is. It is perfectly doable for a company like Apple with a net worth around $4.87 trillion and would probably take less disk space then the AI models their customers now try to remove because they don't need them. As ridiculous as this may sound to the naysayers, I desire very much for an operating system to keep backwards compatibility forever, it can be done and would be very useful for many people.
I didn't want the PPC emulator removed and I don't want the x86 emulator to be removed either. If that makes me a weirdo, so be it.
I think they have a lot more reason to keep it around this time. PowerPC was a dead-end and x86 is most definitely sticking around.
> Every release is built from its tag by GitHub Actions and carries a build provenance attestation.
Huh cool. They're doing curl | bash properly.
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!)
This should have been a prompt.
Stop the curl | bash insanity.
https://nocurlbash.com/#en
“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.
Lol, thinking the exact same thing. No, we don’t read next to 0.0001% of the code we run.
Code from trusted repositories is an entirely different thing compared to running 'wget some_github_repo_shell_script | sh' . That said, the likes of Tailscale are setting a bad example.
The script, and the code the script downloads, both come from the same repo and were written by the same developer.
If you've already decided you trust the author, what's the actual threat here?
I would not trust the author just like that.
But then again, I'm a bit paranoid. At a minimum I would download the script and read it, and if it was too long or not written clearly enough then I would just drop it and find something better.
I think the point is that when a repo contains:
It seems rather pointless for me to thoroughly inspect the install script before I run the program.You download a dmg and run it blindly? You download an exe and run it blindly. I wish it were in an rpm or deb coming from signed repos, but it's not so here we are
App bundles (what's inside most DMGs) and Windows executables are signed, have been for a long time, and are required to be, by the O/S, in order to execute "normally". Apple uses centralized PKI (the developer's key must be signed by Apple) while Microsoft uses distributed PKI (the developer's key must be signed by a code-signing CA who in turn is approved by Microsoft).
Don’t be obtuse, the intended audience is developers with enterprise credentials sprinkled throughout their environment.
Its a different threat model. You should not curl bash.
Developers with enterprise credentials sprinkled throughout their environment running anything from the Internet deserve what they get.
But I assumed the intended audience are home users with entry level macbooks/minis with 128 GB RAM where this patch actually helps them.
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.
You curled and executed bash code allegedly from _HBO_?
They all dump env and ship it off so check for any keys you might have had in there if anything was able to send at all.
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
It is actually worse than those examples. Pip and npm may be insecure, and that is a fault of those tools, but most user expect secure package managers and should demand it
Telling users it’s fine to raw dog arbitrary commands directly into their shell is dangerous and lowers the bar for all security. In fact by even making this comparison you are communicating that you are complacent with pip and npm’s issues and why shouldn’t you just execute arbitrary commands without even a second glance? Security doesn’t matter!
And for the record, even with pip and npm being the way that they are, they are still better than a curl pipe because they are versioned. In the case I get a compromised deployment I understand immediately if I got hit by the affected package, and the entire repo can then be audited. Not the case when I’m just curling whatever the internet wants to send into my process space
Fed the source to LLM for analysis?
Why is this even an app? It looks like it just generates a mobileconfig profile on the fly. Instead, seems like they could be offering a download of a pre-generated mobileconfig, which seems like it would be much safer than installing some app via curl|bash .... but then I guess there wouldn't be a chance to have an "app", get github stars, and do whatever else.
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.
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 no way to guarantee that the model won't change the script after processing it...
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 bet this is the guy on the call who has to correct someone who calls them SSL certs.
"Did you know there's no pumpkin in pumpkin spice?"
"Next you're going to tell me what's not in baby powder, aren't you?"
there's a homebrew alternative
Which installs via a random 3rd party tap, which honestly isn't much better than yolo curl|bash.
> 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.
I think that's missing the forest for trees. The problem with these curl-to-bash approaches is not that you are literally unable to intercept and inspect them with enough effort and planning.
The problem is that:
1. The effort and care needed to test is unnecessarily high. You've got to guard against way more tricks from an interactive source that can see you and choose what it's going to deliver and how.
2. With no "standard" artifact that can be exactly compared, that work cannot be shared.
In contrast, release_1.2.3.zip isn't going to mutate under you and everybody can agree on what its size/hash/bytes ought to be, and if it deviates from that it sets off alarm-bells.
> curl | bash scripts all define a function and then call it on the last line. This is a non issue in the real world.
Why would a convention often followed by good/careful actors bind what malicious/careless people create?
Well, if you're running software from someone you think can deliver malware to you (and not a middleman) then it's a lost cause anyways no? I don't see what the zip file adds. It's not like you're gonna be inspecting the code or binaries.
> curl | bash scripts all define a function and then call it on the last line. This is a non issue in the real world.
Please take a look at this before making any assertions... https://github.com/omlahore/RemoveMacAI/blob/main/install.sh
Hey thats not the worst curlbash script i've seen
`| tee inspect.sh | bash`
Isn't that a bit like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted?
That's what they wanted to do
>> reproduce what ran
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.
Something horrible must have happened, if macOS users are curling shell scripts from the internet to make their desktops more like Linux.
Their world view that "Apple can do no wrong" is slowly shattering, it seems
Uncomfortable, but true.
GNOME has reached maturity and hasn't changed significantly in years, while Apple is busy destroying macOS.
Really? GNOME is not what I would recommend to people.
I should applaud their efforts, and I get that much of it is voluntary, but their bugs are numerous, notable and the way they interact with the rest of the universe (both people with accessibility needs, and the wider developer ecosystem on linux) can most accurately be described as arrogant and hostile.
KDE is the bastion of maturity here, and I would agree that it is mature.
I’m not sure how the love for GNOME continues when KDE (while not my personal choice) has clearly been running circles around it since GNOME3 and the gap has only widened since that change too.
Both desktops are pretty mature. I've run both of their Wayland stacks, and Mutter/KWin both perform great these days. It really comes down to personal preference for most use-cases.
curl|bash is now standard way to install packages on both macOS and Linux. It’s maddening, but it is now.
Meanwhile on Windows we mostly use the store or winget, funny times.
Yeah. I think of Windows as basically “homebrew comes preinstalled”.
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
But the form of incantation is now pervasive.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).
People with 256GB laptops care when the 27 AI stuff burns up 10-20% of their storage.
So don't install Chrome.
Most people want Chrome for the inevitable site that doesn’t work in Safari.
The problem is Apple intelligence is decent, but not worth 20% of your storage decent.
Chrome downloads a large LLM without warning or permission.
Frankly, the only company attempting to create websites that only work in Chrome is Google.
Do people actually use Siri AI on the Mac? Whenever I need something done that needs AI on a mac I just use Claude Code.
I can imagine Siri AI being useful on iOS because of its deep integration to the OS. But for MacOS there’s better tools
Saying that Siri "works" is peak Apple fanboism.
Also "those who can't accommodate the storage" is funny.
What's that? You didn't pay Apple's 1200% markup on storage, just so you can have enough room for your actual work after the OS fills your disk with a bunch of bloat? What are you, poor?
The new one just works. Do try it.
>do try it
Thank you, I might. I never have, the launch was such a mess, I've never looked back and fastidiously turn it all off.
What's changed, for you to say it now works? And what do you successfully and regularly do with it?
It damn well better, for using 14gb+ of storage.
this is awesome!!
Does apple not realize there is an SSD crisis happening? Used to love apple (Apple IIc was my first computer). But now? Terrible.
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.
Oh, things are about to get worse with the new macOS "privacy/security" measures. They are going to curb agentic workflows even more. I don't know how Apple just finds new ways to annoy developers, but we're in a minority after all. Of 200 million Mac users, probably just up to 1 million are developers, and the rest are normies who can't tell when they should authorize or cancel the pop-up.
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
They love the ones that buy Apple hardware to develop apps for iDevices, pay the dev subscription and store fees for apps, or simply because they wanted a shiny UNIX and don't consider BSD/Linux OEMs worth their money.
Does anything like this exist for iOS, if you wanna nuke some AI crap you have no desire for and get some space back? My notebook is fine but my phone is painfully tight on storage.