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Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple

fix-macosx.com

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Re: Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple

#111

Post by mwfunk »

pXMzR2A wrote: post #69
mwfunk wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I could be wrong here, but I thought that HN had a policy where the titles used are taken verbatim from the page being linked to, unless they're so completely terrible that an alternative title is needed. If the HN title doesn't come from the site, then my apologies to the authors for harping about this.

>>> hyperbolic titles like the one used here hurt their credibility unnecessarily. >> That text does not appear on the website > I could be wrong here RTFA.

I'm sorry, but I don't want to live in a world where people shouldn't feel welcome to admit when they're wrong. You are part of the problem, I hope that makes you feel like a winner.

Re: Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple

#112

Post by Tehnix »

First off, how on earth did people expect it not to contact the outside world, when given Spotlight Suggestions or Bing Searches (both are pretty clearly marked in sections, and it's also clear that neither are local)?

Second off, a common user wouldn't care for the "privacy loss" that this might be for some of you. That is why they made it opt-out instead of opt-in. If it was opt-in, nearly no one would use it, because if it's useful, why wasn't it enabled by default?

Re: Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple

#113

Post by Bud »

eropple wrote: post #92
eridius wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The functionality changed dramatically and extremely visibly. If you are intent in completely ignoring the obvious changes, both to the aesthetics of the functionality, and to the actual behavior, that's your prerogative. But you can't turn around and claim Apple is behaving badly when you intentionally blinded yourself to the numerous ways that you could tell something is different. And besides all that, apparently…

The entire OS changed how it looked. Shifting Spotlight to be a window instead of a dropdown doesn't imply a change in functionality. Do you stop and frigging gawk at every change in an OS? And I don't know what they're not asking me to opt into sending. That's the fucking problem. You can play with it all you want and fiddle with it however you like to determine you're okay with it, that's fine. I am blanket not oka…

You know what kinda did "imply a change in functionality", though? This text that you see, writ large, when you open Spotlight:

"In addition to searching your Mac, Spotlight now shows suggestions from the Internet, iTunes, App Store, movie showtimes, locations nearby, and more. To make suggestions more relevant to you, Spotlight includes your approximate location with search requests to Apple."

Seems pretty clear to me. It also might be a subtle clue that you are getting various kinds of search results from the Internet.

There's also very easy-to-understand hand-holding built right into the UI to help you disable it, if you want to.

It's pretty obvious, for the non-obtuse at least, that if you extend the functionality of a feature such that it searches the Internet, that means it's going to actually search the internet, which means sending your search terms to external services.

Re: Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple

#114

Post by zaroth »

mwfunk wrote: post #111
pXMzR2A wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> hyperbolic titles like the one used here hurt their credibility unnecessarily. >> That text does not appear on the website > I could be wrong here RTFA.

I'm sorry, but I don't want to live in a world where people shouldn't feel welcome to admit when they're wrong. You are part of the problem, I hope that makes you feel like a winner.

Agreed, but I could do without the last two sentences.

Re: Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple

#115

Post by eropple »

eridius wrote: post #91
eropple wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before this article informed me of it, I saw no such message. Or rather, I saw it, but didn't read it because it disappeared as soon as you hit your first keystroke in Spotlight. I'm not even always looking at the screen when I trigger Spotlight and I don't go reading the Spotlight popup for fun because I know what it's supposed to do, and what it's supposed to do is a local search without reporting my search terms t…

You admit you didn't even see the message, so you're engaging in pure speculation as to how you think it behaved, and then criticizing Apple for it. > Changing what it's supposed to do What it's supposed to do is provide a good natural language search of any and all information it has available to it. This is what millions of customers use it for, and this is what Yosemite enhanced. Now it has more information availa…

Afterwards, I did see it. Because it does show up if you hit cmd-space and then...you know...don't type. Which is insane, because of course I type as soon as I hit cmd-space, that's why I hit cmd-space.

I don't use Siri, either. I don't own an iPhone. You're more than welcome to have whatever internet-enabled hurf and/or durf you want, what I'm saying is that enabling it by default in what is a low-friction, high-usage tool that works on unconscious reflex is some real douchebaggery.

Re: Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple

#116

Post by eropple »

Bud wrote: post #113
eropple wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire OS changed how it looked. Shifting Spotlight to be a window instead of a dropdown doesn't imply a change in functionality. Do you stop and frigging gawk at every change in an OS? And I don't know what they're not asking me to opt into sending. That's the fucking problem. You can play with it all you want and fiddle with it however you like to determine you're okay with it, that's fine. I am blanket not oka…

You know what kinda did "imply a change in functionality", though? This text that you see, writ large, when you open Spotlight: "In addition to searching your Mac, Spotlight now shows suggestions from the Internet, iTunes, App Store, movie showtimes, locations nearby, and more. To make suggestions more relevant to you, Spotlight includes your approximate location with search requests to Apple." Seems pretty clear to…

But that's the thing: you don't see that text when you hit cmd-space and immediately start typing, as somebody trained to use Spotlight is naturally going to do. Therein lies the problem. It's not that they added the feature--sure, go nuts. It's that they enabled an internet-facing feature without the courtesy of something modal to ensure that a user who has been trained--by them--to just go will understand the ramifications of what they chose to do.

It's at best shitty UX and at worst dirty.

Re: Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple

#117

Post by eropple »

eridius wrote: post #95
eropple wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire OS changed how it looked. Shifting Spotlight to be a window instead of a dropdown doesn't imply a change in functionality. Do you stop and frigging gawk at every change in an OS? And I don't know what they're not asking me to opt into sending. That's the fucking problem. You can play with it all you want and fiddle with it however you like to determine you're okay with it, that's fine. I am blanket not oka…

Have you actually even looked at Spotlight? You seem to be claiming all they did was move it around on the screen. It pretty obviously changed a lot more than that. That should be especially obvious the first time you actually get a Spotlight Suggestions result. > And I don't know [...] * That's the fucking problem* Yes, that is the fucking problem. You're arguing very loudly about something you don't know anything a…

Dude. I'm well aware of what it's doing. I've since disabled it. That I had to disable it, rather than enable it, is my beef. An operating system upgrade should not start barfing things at their remote servers without making damn sure I know about it and okay it before they do it. Opt-in is cool, opt-out is not, and opt-out that relies on you not using the feature as it's designed to be used (cmd-space and type) is extra uncool. All they'd need to do is create a modal dialog with a yes or no response and there'd be absolutely no problem, none whatsoever, but instead they slid it into a low-friction workflow in which the primary action is unconscious after you've been using it for any length of time.

It was wrong when Ubuntu did it with the Amazon lens crap. It's wrong when Apple does it. They're not special.

Re: Disable sharing of Spotlight searches with Apple

#118

Post by dmix »

jonknee wrote: post #70
hk__2 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here it’s even worse because you don’t see the content of the script you’re executing.

What do you mean? The content is the majority of the web page... You can copy it from there, or if you're paranoid you can run: curl https://fix-macosx.com/fix-macosx.py Before the suggested: curl -o https://fix-macosx.com/fix-macosx.py && /usr/bin/python fix-macosx.py That said, at this stage just set the correct preferences. I had already done that before seeing this script, it's pretty simple.

...This should just be the instructions:

  1) $ curl -o https://fix-macosx.com/fix-macosx.py
  1a) Review fix-macosx.py
  2) $ /usr/bin/python fix-macosx.py
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