Yet another Hacker News

I said no and Apple said yes

131 points thatslast 2 hours ago 75 comments

rozenmd 57 minutes ago | parent

You ever notice how Apple never really lets the user say "no" to their nudges?

It's always "maybe later" and never "no seriously, I don't want this, go away"

cheschire 55 minutes ago | parent

I’ve noticed that most companies do that, not just Apple.

factorialboy 41 minutes ago | parent

Apple claims to be the privacy king. They deserve scrutiny.

frizlab 8 minutes ago | parent

Most companies did that before Apple, yes. I hate that trend.

LoganDark 47 minutes ago | parent

And Sync Immediately's only affirmative option is "For Today", so I get to set a daily reminder to remind the setting that I do in fact want it to be ON.

aranelsurion 41 minutes ago | parent

I have this one notification asking me if I want to enable the Personal focus when I’m at home. I don’t want my iPhone to care if I’m at home or not, so the past two years whenever it pops up I click Later.

It will probably never stop asking.

jacquesm 38 minutes ago | parent

It will. Once you accidentally mis-click once and then suddeny there is no way to back out of it.

frereubu 32 minutes ago | parent

I think this should be called the ratchet theory of consent because it only tightens.

jacquesm 31 minutes ago | parent

I beat you to it by a couple of years :)

https://jacquesmattheij.com/dark-patterns-the-ratchet/

frereubu 27 minutes ago | parent

Haha! Great minds think alike. (Although they do also say that fools seldom differ...)

dizhn 17 minutes ago | parent

Google Play Store has a notification to enable notifications. You didn't read that wrong. It shows a badge and everything. I said no for years except that last time. Now I can't find how to turn it off again.

microtonal 3 minutes ago | parent

Can’t you just disable notifications for the Google Play Store app? Maybe it’s because I’m on GrapheneOS, but I can just enable/disable notifications like any other app.

thunfischtoast 35 minutes ago | parent

This hostile behavior has unfortunately grown over the years. Notice how often you cannot really unsubscribe from newsletters, because clicking the small link in the email will only unsubscribe you from 1 of 25 "topics" or whatever and they will gladly re-define the "topics" every 6 months and re-enable them all.

sitzkrieg 31 minutes ago | parent

i see this virtually everywhere, and worked at several places where PMs proactively changed text banners to not equate to "no"

severe industry brainrot

sire-vc 20 minutes ago | parent

Feature: Apple does not phone home. Enable this feature?

Would you like to enable the feature where you opt out of disabling telemetry?

Phemist 30 minutes ago | parent

I don't have a solution, but on this topic I let Fable write a browser extension I called "Nee, krijg de tering". It's "No, fuck off" in English, but the Dutch feels more visceral for me. It's really rough, but it tries to find these "Maybe later", "No, thank you" etc. buttons and replace the No button.. I guess it's kind of self-explanatory. Does not really do anything, but it is cathartic (and also messes with a lot of UIs to the point where unfortunately the blocklist of domains this should not be used on is growing a lot :'( ).

I feel this pattern is really abusive. Like I am offering to slap you in the face, giving you two answer options: Yes and "Maybe later/no, thank you". As though you have any obligation to be forced to answer this question again at some late time, or to be very polite while you refuse to be slapped in the face. The correct answer is obviously "No, fuck off".

Freak_NL 8 minutes ago | parent

Sensible. Add in a 'Nee, flikker op met je kutcookies' button for cookie consent banners, and you're golden.

This 'maybe later' dark pattern seems to have gained so much traction that UX folk just use it because everyone uses it. There is probably some handwavy reason for it that amounts to not wanting to give the user the feeling they are doing something definitive, but it just ends up being another grain of sand on the micro-annoyance pile of today's tech.

Vinnl 24 minutes ago | parent

I get the annoyance at "ask me later", but "maybe later" is helpful - there's no way to trigger dialogs by yourself, so this is a promise that even if you say "no" in the dialog, you can still go into settings to change your mind. Gives me less anxiety about the choice.

MaxikCZ 22 minutes ago | parent

How about a choice: both "no, maybe later" and "no, never"

Vinnl 11 minutes ago | parent

And "no, never" would irreversibly remove the option from settings?

ga_to 7 minutes ago | parent

It would never prompt again.

latexr 17 minutes ago | parent

A much better way would be “Yes” and “No” with a small message of “you can change this later in the Settings”.

Or have three buttons: “Yes”, “No”, “Remind me Later”. Apple does stuff like that in other parts of the OS, like when asking for app permissions, so they clearly know how to do it.

Vinnl 10 minutes ago | parent

"Remind me later" means "bug me again with a dialog in the future", which is not what I want. I don't need to be reminded, but if I change my mind in the future, I want to be able to proactively go and change it.

Yes, more text can be another way to provide the message, but if you've ever done any user testing, you'll know that people at best scan through your UI. I know I wouldn't read that, or at least would prefer not to have to read that.

I guess I don't see why "No" combined with "You can change this later in settings" is so much less offensive than "Not now".

jpnc 51 minutes ago | parent

> The “AI” industry has many flaws, the word “consent” being seemingly missing from training data and company handbooks is one of them

Yes! The most consentless (don't underline this in red firefox!) technology that I can think of certainly.

edit: also install and use Linux

LoganDark 46 minutes ago | parent

I see non-consensual more often, tbf.

kouteiheika 48 minutes ago | parent

> But that’s a trivial cost compared to the consent problem. [..] AI bros keep telling me “just turn it off” and when I do they remove the choice.

This is barking at the wrong tree. If you value things like your privacy or the ability to strictly control what runs on your computer then perhaps it would be a good idea to not run a proprietary operating system that's primarily designed not to provide you with the best user experience possible but to slowly extract more and more value out of you?

LoganDark 45 minutes ago | parent

You must be talking about someone other than Apple. Apple has been falling into value extraction lately (which I hope Ternus will change), but their operating systems very much have never been designed for that from the outset. Rather the opposite. Apple is the only company that comprehensively documents platform security and privacy. I can't think of anyone else who doesn't just say "trust me bro". Maybe GrapheneOS. Nobody actually proves they are who they say they are better than Apple does.

Apple is also one of the only companies to focus on user experience above all else (nearly, anyway). Again, I can't think of a single other example (maybe Framework comes close), but while Apple has incredible technology, they have always been fairly measured with it to attain just the user experience they want. IMO, that's what earned Mac a reputation for having poor performance, and iPhone a reputation for having low memory, because Apple gave them the specs they needed to run well and have a terrific UX, not necessarily the specs to push the frontier of what you can run at home.

Apple has been learning that frontier is important, though, and they've been leaning more into it lately. Part of why Apple Silicon has been such an incredible shock to the industry.

kouteiheika 31 minutes ago | parent

The author is complaining that his OS doesn't let him say "no". This would never happen with an OS which actually respects you. Of course, it's not Apple's fault, it never is -- it's those "AI bros"! It's incredibly ironic that the author writes "I’ve chosen not to kowtow to billionaires", yet he kowtowing to a company with a market cap of 5 trillion USD.

LoganDark 18 minutes ago | parent

You wrote as if the entire operating system was designed from the start to extract value from you. That's what I'm disputing. I'm not trying to say removing a disablement option that literally already existed has the user's best interest in mind. Just that it's not a sign of some core fundamental disrespect that the company has. We've already seen that Apple's been getting swept up by generative AI bullshit, like with the iPhone 16 marketing, and it is entirely fair to hold them accountable for all the shit they're doing, but it's entirely possible that this is just a ripple, and they're going to get themselves under control again.

Kim_Bruning 18 minutes ago | parent

Technically correct then, he's kowtowing to trillionaires.

Leonard_of_Q 23 minutes ago | parent

"good dog, here's a cookie"

You're repeating fruit factory propaganda as if it is gospel, the marketing department can be proud of their handiwork. In reality they're one of the most profit-maximisation centred companies out there in computing land, they don't really care all that much about what their users want and do their best to make it as hard as possible to escape from their "ecosystem". They fell into "value extraction" a long time ago and I don't see them stopping in any way as long as they have loyal apologists like you seem to be. Why would they? The money keeps rolling in, the congregation keeps on buying fruit phones and related paraphernalia, they'd be mad to stop from a business perspective.

oneeyedpigeon 7 minutes ago | parent

We all have a line, it's just in a different place. Mine is strongly at the "forcibly stealing huge amounts of disk space for features you don't want" point. As a happy Mac and Android user, I don't recognise the 'make it as hard as possible to escape from their "ecosystem"' description; maybe you can give an example?

mschuster91 22 minutes ago | parent

> IMO, that's what earned Mac a reputation for having poor performance

Desktops maybe, but on mobile, Apple has always outclassed most Windows laptops that ordinary people might buy - alone because the full-aluminium case allows for far more heat input until saturation kicks in.

LoganDark 16 minutes ago | parent

Sure - my MacBook Pro from 2015 could run BeamNG.drive playably when my previous Windows laptops absolutely could not. Turns out that it wasn't necessarily that competitive with the best gaming laptops at the time, but it was far better for me as a user in general, even if in retrospect, it was more of a middle class machine, but it absolutely got the job done and I don't think it deserved the reputation at all. (Then again, it's entirely likely people dissing Mac for having low specs were not talking about their top of the line pro machines.)

chekibreki 45 minutes ago | parent

I see the dangers of AI and agree that many companies don’t value our privacy and do what’s best for them and not us, but…

…this is an emotional dogmatic post. „All of this garbage“ clearly shows that the author is stuck in the past. The banners on the website confirm this. It’s the figurative fanatic complaining about those black steam devils and their tracks that nobody needs and that destroy nature. Yeah, steam trains were noisy and created smoke, but the age of horses was over. No emotional outburst would have stopped that, and won’t stop AI now.

The unconditional and emotional rejection of AI undermines the actual valid point he is trying to make.

jacquesm 41 minutes ago | parent

He's not talking about AI in general. He's talking about a device he owns.

LoganDark 23 minutes ago | parent

Agree. Anyone should be allowed to disable generative AI features on their device, especially a general computing device such as Mac. It's not some hysterical outburst about the industry to be upset when you can't do that, especially when the option used to exist but was removed.

chekibreki 11 minutes ago | parent

If you honestly can't see the blatant and absolute anti-AI rhetoric in his post (I provided a citation) and the banners, then there really is no reason to continue this discussion.

frereubu 38 minutes ago | parent

If something can't be stopped, does that mean it's good? Reading accounts of the industrial revolution, huge swathes of nature in the north of England were destroyed. This article is an argument that it should be different, and is mostly focused on consent, not whether AI should exist or not (although the author's position on that is pretty clear too).

As a side note, I would argue you're being just as "emotional" (which I don't necessarily see as a bad thing despite your aspersions) by calling it "fanatic".

pjc50 10 minutes ago | parent

The "unstoppable" narrative may or may not be correct but it's certainly maximizing the backlash.

zecg 9 minutes ago | parent

> The unconditional and emotional rejection of AI undermines the actual valid point

No it doesn't, one can hate LLMs with a passion and still not want features they don't use take 20GB of the storage they paid a premium for.

eur0pa 45 minutes ago | parent

I feel the same way. I'm not completely against the technology, but please let me say "no" and remove the models and kill the processes.

ingen0s 36 minutes ago | parent

Is it normal that I am enraged by this new process…is there a MacBook version of Graphene or something we can use if things keep boiling this way?

LoganDark 31 minutes ago | parent

Asahi Linux. It'll take some years to reach the latest devices, but the effort is is helping the whole of the Linux ecosystem on Apple silicon.

frereubu 32 minutes ago | parent

It feels like consent is being undermined in so many places. The anti-Meta Glasses ad with a photo of Jeffrey Epstein and the strap line "Glasses for people who don't do consent" hits the nail on the head for me. It's a profoundly inhuman stance in the name of profits.

throwaway2037 29 minutes ago | parent

The answer is simple: Regulation to grant users the right to refuse during installation/setup of a system. This must also include updates. This feel like a repeat of the EU browser choice rule!

downsplat 23 minutes ago | parent

If you want to own your computer, linux is where it's at. Windows is rusty iron chains and MacOS's are gold-plated silver pretending to be gold, but they're still chains.

tpoacher 14 minutes ago | parent

For now.

My gut is we'll have to start learning BSD soon.

Matl 11 minutes ago | parent

GPL is a more free license if one cares about having control over their computing. The BSD community cares a lot less about that in my (limited) experience and more about purely technical aspects. Which is fine, I just wouldn't expect them to hold if Linux is no longer an option somehow.

darkwater 11 minutes ago | parent

A Linux computer is so many things and also nothing at the same time that's is basically impossible that one or N AI company can impose you something like Apple, Microsoft or Google can.

With that said, also or instead using *BSD won't do any harm.

liendolucas 14 minutes ago | parent

FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD are your friends too!

Matl 10 minutes ago | parent

Let me know if any of them work well on a laptop that's never than 5 years old.

Gareth321 4 minutes ago | parent

I would love to move my gaming PC to Linux but until the kernel devs permit kernel-level anti-cheats, or an equivalent, I refuse to give up games that I love. It's nearly impossible to play multiplayer games now without KLAC. The cheating is out of control.

Unfortunately this is an ideological hill that many Linux devs are willing to die on, so we're at an impasse. Valve claimed to be working on a solution, and if there is any company which can negotiate an accord, it's them.

miniwark 22 minutes ago | parent

Maybe Little Snitch can be helpful in this sort of case ? Consent or not, it must be possible to kill the phone home line.

khalic 20 minutes ago | parent

So... Apple should develop a separate version of their system, that doesn't include AI anywhere? Because Siri AI is not the only part of the system that uses the onboard models. The moral panic is just ridiculous at this point

oneeyedpigeon 11 minutes ago | parent

I don't think anyone's asking for a separate version, just an option to turn the AI features off. Even totally aside from the moral points, some of us simply don't have the disk space.

khalic 4 minutes ago | parent

it is off, Apple Intelligence and Siri AI IS NOT the name of the models. The worst they're guilty of here is confusing denominations, something hardly new to Apple

janfoeh 9 minutes ago | parent

Do you believe that adding a "no" button _and then honoring it when the user clicked on it_ requires developing a separate version of their system?

Regardless: they already did, because Apple intelligence is not available in the EU.

khalic 5 minutes ago | parent

You're mixing up Siri AI and Apple Intelligence with the models... Siri AI and Apple Intelligence are PRODUCTS, the tech behind it, the models, are called Apple Foundation Models and they're used in many places in the system. It's not a matter of consent, it's people not understanding the tech they're using and doing spurious analogies.

HackerThemAll 19 minutes ago | parent

I never really understood the craze for the overpriced Apple products. After many years of using PCs with Linux and Windows, I got forced to use a MacBook Pro as the company laptop and I found it hard to use. The OS is so limiting, Finder so crappy, oh my. There are some advantages, like the hardware is good, but on the other hand there are countless tiny issues where "Apple knows better" such as tying mouse scroll direction to the trackpad direction which is awkward for me. And now this what you're describing. So no, thanks, I'll stick to ThinkPad.

dist-epoch 3 minutes ago | parent

You don't buy Apple because it's good. You buy it because it's what the cool people use.

Imagine applying for a SF startup job and letting them know you use a Windows computer.

At best they will politely tell you to fuck off. But they might blog/X about the idiot Windows user who imagined they could be cool enough to work for them, all coated in a plausible "a craftsman takes care of using good tools, sharp knifes, ..."

vitro 17 minutes ago | parent

Not trying to start flamewars, but more and more I wonder how much are people willing to put up with such practices. On linux for 15+ years and everytime I try to use mac or win, it is an ordeal. And ads. F*cking ads in a system someone has purchased. And spying. Really user hostile environment. No, thank you.

baxtr 8 minutes ago | parent

if you are happy on Linux, why do you even "try to use a mac or win"?

vitro 4 minutes ago | parent

When those unfortunate ones need my help.

whstl 5 minutes ago | parent

macOS has been on a downward trend since Apple started pushing "Services", basically iCloud. Now it's as bad as Windows when I last used Windows.

It's not just privacy violations. Those are the tip of the iceberg. I used to open the Activity Monitor and see a couple pages of processes. Now it's in the hundreds.

It's stuff that was badly done even before AI. The industry has been drunk on SaaS for way too long, and with SaaS comes the junk/slop and the privacy violations.

I've been doing my part and cancelling all my subscriptions apart from power, water, internet and garbage.

tomp 4 minutes ago | parent

Because Mac laptops are lightyears ahead of any other hardware.

Build quality (aluminum), charging (magsafe), screen resolution, battery life, noise (or lack thereof), trackpad…

It’s like other vendors aren’t even trying.

Also the OS mostly “just works”, just last week my Linux laptop disabled NVIDIA GPU (and almost bricked itself?? Not sure, had to fix apt) during automated updates

ernsheong 17 minutes ago | parent

What's more interesting is his "No AI" policy

https://dbushell.com/ai/

huskypotato 16 minutes ago | parent

Guess it's time to switch back to Linux... Shame, I'll miss the macbook build quality.

haute_cuisine 16 minutes ago | parent

This is a very interesting shift with Apple where customers are starting to perceive it as hostile company.

pjc50 12 minutes ago | parent

> The “AI” industry has many flaws, the word “consent” being seemingly missing from training data and company handbooks is one of them. AI bros do not take “no” for an answer.

In several years, the GDPR enforcers (national information commissioners) may eventually wake up to this and start talking about fines. But I suspect everyone is too cowed by the AI inevitability narrative.

haunter 7 minutes ago | parent

“Workaround to avoid downloading AI models and save storage”

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49787535

https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOSBeta/comments/1vlnf13/workarou...

digitalbase 7 minutes ago | parent

I'm done with Apple. Got rid of my iPhone and back on android (GrapheneOS) and very impresses after playing with Omarchy for a few weeks.

I think we will keep reading more and more of these Apple stories and it feels like shit is getting worse as time goes by

hecifato 1 minute ago | parent

> The AI industrial complex does not do consent. You will use it.

I posted a thread on thr MacRumors forum making a similar point. I tried to couch it in the language of Apple being inconsistent with Apple Intelligence. You can’t turn it off anymore globally but Apple provides the user the ability to block, not turn off, some parts of it. Even then you can’t block everything, like the Apple Intelligence parts of the Photos app. Even if you turn off Siri that stuff sticks around. But iOS 27 does not require Apple Intelligence to function or anything like that because my 4th gen iPad Air can’t run Apple Intelligence but can run iPadOS 27 just fine.