This is a fully functioning feature that people don’t like for what ever reason.
Case in point: the AI models can’t be offloaded to iCloud.
(Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is how I understand it)
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.
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.
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.
> Improving on Apple Intelligence is something of value
> as is consumerizing local-first AI
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.
So, it's not for "what ever reason", it's quite a reason to reject this.
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.
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…
For many users, it is a strict downgrade that was forced on them against their consent.
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.
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.
That's revolutionary.
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 11 still ships with the installer from Vista.
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.