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I Said No and Apple Said Yes

1 October 2026 at 20:54

I discovered that macOS 15.3 had enabled a feature that was phoning home every 15 minutes with personal data. And that I said “no” and turned it off.

[…]

And today I discovered that Apple had [in macOS 27] removed the “no” switch.

[…]

Digging through macOS 27 settings I turned off Siri (again). Of course, multiple unkillable Siri processes remain, stealing memory and writing data. For what purpose? Who knows. Note that they removed “Apple Intelligence” from this control.

[…]

All of this garbage was enabled after upgrading to macOS 27 despite me having “Apple Intelligence & Siri” turned off already. That was a rather explicit “no”, no?

Previously:

Update (2026-10-02): Coeur (via HN Reader):

Author claims the system setting “Privacy & Security > Apple Intelligence Report > Report Duration” with its 3 options [Off | 15 minutes | 7 days] sends that data to Apple with that frequency. This is wrong - this is a transparency report so that you as a user can see everything that is getting sent to Apple as a part of Apple Intelligence. Nothing additionally is getting sent to apple if you switch this away from “Off”.

To me, the main point of the post was about the missing off switch for Apple Intelligence itself. Bushell was forced into enabling a feature (and storage use) he had specifically turned off, and there is no option to block his data from being sent to Private Cloud Compute. But, yes, the first sentence I quoted from Bushell is wrong. The report feature isn’t periodically sending data to Apple; it’s reporting what was already sent. Turning it off does not add any additional privacy, except from someone snooping the report file directly on your Mac. Apple’s wording explaining the report was confusing but has improved somewhat in recent versions.

Persistent Ads in iOS Settings

Michael Tsai

By: Michael Tsai

22 September 2026 at 21:36

Alex Blake (Hacker News):

The ‘ads’ in question appear in the Settings app in iOS. They can be found near the top of the iPhone’s display and promote several products to the user, including paid-for iCloud+ storage, free trials for services like Apple Music and Apple TV, and the AppleCare+ extended warranty.

Infuriatingly for iOS users, the only way to disable these promos is to either let them expire — which in many cases could take weeks or even months, leaving a persistent notification badge on the Settings app in the meantime — or pay for the service being offered. There is not always a “dismiss” button to shoo them away for good, and when there is, some people have reported that it doesn’t seem to work.

Previously: