Comment by netwanderer3 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by netwanderer3 | Hacker News Reader

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I really wanted to believe Apple but they need to try harder.

This is not on iPhone but on a MBP so it's still quite relevant to Apple. I had disabled the "apsd" process, which serves as Apple's push notifications service, completely blocked it off using Little Snitch, and yet the process still found its own way to reactivate itself and keeping a persistent connection back to Apple servers in the background. I personally don't use FaceTime or Notifications on MBP, why couldn't Apple just let me disable this, and instead the process even circumvented around my firewall protection to make sure it could communicate back to their data center? This practice is a little shady and does not promote trust or transparency. If I have blocked a process permanently then I expect it to remain always blocked.

Their EmbeddedOS on the Touch Bar also keeps a couple always-on connections that utilize its own bridged network interface which users are completely blocked off and do not have access to. They were supposedly for TouchID, but I was viewing bandwidth usage the other day and these connections used up to almost 10MB of data. Why would something like TouchID need to send 10MB of data back to Apple? Again, this makes no sense and does not promote trust.

By "disabled", you mean using `launchctl unload -w`? I would be surprised if apsd launched after doing that; macOS is pretty consistent about having all processes managed by launchd and not spawning things at random. Though since that works by modifying the plist file in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons, rather than setting a preference somewhere separate, a software update could end up resetting it. No idea about Little Snitch.

Edit: Actually, launchctl apparently does use a separate preference these days; it used to modify the plist. Not sure when that changed or when you tried this.

I searched but couldn’t find information on the touchbar’s bridged adapter. Can you point me to something?

are you referring to: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Ne...

Apple Push Notification service (APNs) is the centerpiece of the remote notifications feature. It is a robust, secure, and highly efficient service for app developers to propagate information to iOS (and, indirectly, watchOS), tvOS, and macOS devices.

You may not be using FaceTime or Notifications, but someone you know will be using them.

Maybe that's not what they want though. Maybe they just want to use their computer without a constant connection to all of their other devices and servers

fair enough. but there are countless other phones and operating systems to choose from. there's even corded dumb phones one could use.

OP: This is not on iPhone but on a MBP

They weren't referring to their phone, but being able to, quite reasonably, have control over what their MacBook is making outbound connections to.

> there's even corded dumb phones one could use.

That's a somewhat facetious and unnecessary remark. And you know, not everyone has a POTS landline these days.

> ...but being able to ... have control over what their MacBook is making outbound connections to.

non-issue? simply block out the ports? https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT203609

i dispute the assumption that people don't have control over their computers. there are literally millions of things anyone of us can do about every aspect of their computer.

> That's a somewhat facetious and unnecessary remark.

You're right and I apologise.

> non-issue? simply block out the ports?

From the top-level comment:

> the process even circumvented around my firewall protection to make sure it could communicate back to their data center

It seems like either this doesn't work or the firewall was configured incorrectly. Obviously we have know way of knowing for sure what happened in this case, but have you verified yourself that blocking the ports actually works for this?

Ugh, the use of they/their is very confusing in your last sentence. You refer to OP and to Apple using the same “their”.

It's possible this was snark, e.g. suggesting that a Mac really belongs to Apple and you're just paying them money to let them put it in your home where it can snoop on you. But in the spirit of good faith, let me assume not and just annotate your parent's they/ their use:

Maybe that's not what [netwanderer3] want though. Maybe [netwanderer3] just want to use [netwanderer3] computer without a constant connection to all of [netwanderer3] other devices and servers

English has some plural and possessive agreement rules that make this sound like faux caveman speak, let's fix those:

Maybe that's not what [netwanderer3] wants though. Maybe [netwanderer3] just wants to use [netwanderer3]'s computer without a constant connection to all of [netwanderer3]'s other devices and servers

Sorry, I was referring to the commmenter, not to Apple

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