My Mac contacted 63 different Apple owned domains in an hour, while not is use • Hacker News Board

Re: My Mac contacted 63 different Apple owned domains in an hour, while not is use

#41

Post by vbezhenar » Thu, Jun 12, 2025, 12:25 PM UTC

realreality wrote: post #35

I use a slow cellular connection and noticed some apple service (I could never figure out which one, even after installing an outgoing firewall) was aggressively uploading some large blob every time the mac woke from sleep, which made the whole connection useless for up to half an hour. At some point, apple must've fixed this "bug", but the experience -- and apple's increasingly obtrusive software -- convinced me to…

My Macbook used to grind CPU for 10-20 minutes after every power on. That happened with literally fresh install and it does it every time. I don't know why does it do that. May be some indexing? This lack of transparency was one of the reasons for me switching to Linux too. I don't want my OS to do anything at all in background, that I didn't explicitly configured to. I want to be in full control of my software. Linux is far from perfect, but much better.

Re: My Mac contacted 63 different Apple owned domains in an hour, while not is use

#42

Post by Ardren » Thu, Jun 12, 2025, 12:26 PM UTC

For fun, compare and contrast the comments here to this post on Windows 10 from 5 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44208050

Re: My Mac contacted 63 different Apple owned domains in an hour, while not is use

#43

Post by astura » Thu, Jun 12, 2025, 12:30 PM UTC

st3fan wrote: post #24

What is the problem with this?

Depends on the company.

When Microsoft does it - most evil thing ever. Literally Satan.

When Apple does it - it's good, or at least benign. It's what the user expects.

Re: My Mac contacted 63 different Apple owned domains in an hour, while not is use

#44

Post by jitl » Thu, Jun 12, 2025, 12:30 PM UTC

cynicalsecurity wrote: post #15

fortran77 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why use Apple at all if it’s so user-hostile? (I’m a Windows user.)

Why use Apple or Windows at all if they are so user-hostile? (I’m a Linux user.)

(Bluetooth) audio never works consistently for me on Linux, especially after wake from sleep I have like a 10% chance to get crackling/stuttering

Re: My Mac contacted 63 different Apple owned domains in an hour, while not is use

#45

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 12, 2025, 12:33 PM UTC

npteljes wrote: post #10

Honestly, the list looks legit. Computers nowadays are semi-remotely-managed appliances. Internet is presumed, offline is not first, and offline is absolutely not exclusive. >I have been trying to minimize to the extent possible the reach of big tech into my life. I don't think this goal is possible, or worthwhile, on a big tech offering like a Mac + macOS. It can certainly be tried, but the user needs to be prepared…

[deleted]

Re: My Mac contacted 63 different Apple owned domains in an hour, while not is use

#46

Post by st3fan » Thu, Jun 12, 2025, 12:35 PM UTC

gchamonlive wrote: post #36

st3fan wrote: post #24

What is the problem with this?

It's the problem with the benevolent dictator. It's no problem as long as the dictator is benevolent. Also benevolence is a matter of reference. Something that might be ok for most, might not be for you. There is also the question of ownership. Do you really own something you bought if you don't control its behaviour? Is it even moral to sell stuff to customers if they won't fully own it, or if the nature of ownershi…

thanks that is just a random rant

do you think it is a problem that the "benevolent dictator" operating system contacts an endpoint to keep its anti-malware list up to date?

Re: My Mac contacted 63 different Apple owned domains in an hour, while not is use

#47

Post by JulianWasTaken » Thu, Jun 12, 2025, 12:37 PM UTC

lapcat wrote: post #34

Little Snitch can detect and block connections at the process level. https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html

As can the (FOSS) LuLu: https://github.com/objective-see/LuLu

Re: My Mac contacted 63 different Apple owned domains in an hour, while not is use

#48

Post by SimianSci » Thu, Jun 12, 2025, 12:37 PM UTC

Avamander wrote: post #37

It's even better that quite a few of those connections are unencrypted (and are actively used by some vendors to profile devices).

From my understanding this isnt correct. While a DNS resolution may or may not be encrypted, which is highly dependent on the local client's environment. Data being sent to apple is not being sent via DNS, as these DNS connections are only the beginning of negotiating a conneciton to Apple's servers. The connections themselves where data is transfered, are negotiated using TLS and thus encrypted.

The only point where this is not the case would be system probes, such as captive-portal check, OCSP, or NTP, but none of these would be capable of portraying anything more than simple metadata, like your ip address.

Re: My Mac contacted 63 different Apple owned domains in an hour, while not is use

#49

Post by jbrooks84 » Thu, Jun 12, 2025, 12:40 PM UTC

Is this the first time you are monitoring traffic of any modern consumer devices connected to the Internet?

Re: My Mac contacted 63 different Apple owned domains in an hour, while not is use

#50

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 12, 2025, 12:41 PM UTC

st3fan wrote: post #46

gchamonlive wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the problem with the benevolent dictator. It's no problem as long as the dictator is benevolent. Also benevolence is a matter of reference. Something that might be ok for most, might not be for you. There is also the question of ownership. Do you really own something you bought if you don't control its behaviour? Is it even moral to sell stuff to customers if they won't fully own it, or if the nature of ownershi…

thanks that is just a random rant do you think it is a problem that the "benevolent dictator" operating system contacts an endpoint to keep its anti-malware list up to date?

[deleted]