The direction of major operating systems neutering themselves in favour of deep service integration does not fill one with hope
The popup on my MacBook says specifically:
> When you use Dictation, your device will indicate in Keyboard Settings if your audio and transcripts are processed on your device and not sent to Apple servers. Otherwise, the things you dictate are sent to and processed on the server, but will not be stored unless you opt in to Improve Siri and Dictation.
I have a reasonably recent (<2yo) MBP, which feels like it ought to be "modern enough", and in Keyboard Settings, it says "Dictation sends information like your voice input, contacts, and location to Apple to process your requests." It doesn't say anything about processing happening on my device. Yes, off-line dictation does work for me (with Wi-Fi turned off), but I'm curious under what conditions Keyboard Settings would say something about transcripts not being sent to Apple.
What does this even mean?
Well, that’s impossible though. Of course it is stored as temporarily as that may be.
So the statement already has a logical failure. Possession for processing is still storage.
So the debate is then “how long do we store something until we have to call it “storage””.
And further, they may delete your voice, but the log of the thing you asked for I think is unlikely to go away.
I like Apple as at least they try and place the privacy field. But I think this wording is a bit weasely.
And even if it were, the meaning is obvious that it won't be stored after processing.
There's no logical failure, it's not "weasely". It's a completely straightforward legal statement. The intent is abundantly clear.
You were making best case assumptions, which is a laughable concept when it comes to a fortune 500 company.
The options are different for me in the settings app, and using dictation is for me right now, impossible without agreeing to a modal displaying an agreement to send audio data to Apple.
I also highly doubt that they will somehow later down the line magically change their minds given the millions (maybe over a billion at this point) of dollars invested in things like private cloud compute (1) and challenging the U.K. government (2) in court over E2E cloud backups.
(1) https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/
(2) https://www.reuters.com/technology/court-hearing-reported-be...
--- Do you want to enable Dictation? When you dictate text, information like your voice input and contact names are sent to Apple to help your Mac recognise what you’re saying.
[Enable] Dictation Privacy (a policy) [Cancel] ---
I think it is entirely fair to put Apple in this category, because they have effectively disabled offline dictation for me except if I agree to sent my voice data to Apple. I have used this offline dictation feature for years by the way
Are you sure this isn't the local model download prompt? The first time you use it, it does need to download some content to make that work.
[Enable] Dictation Privacy (a policy) [Cancel] ---
What interface do you use for using local whisper?
Word of warning: businesses, possibly including your employer, may consider you to be a robot, or a terrorist, or tell you to install Windows, or tell you to use your phone, or tell you that you have no right to privacy.
I recently had to go through a background check for a prospective employer. The background check website wouldn't even load. The support agent told me that it's a Firefox problem and told me that I needed to open the website on Chrome or Edge or on my phone, and that the website is working "perfectly". Alas, it worked fine with Firefox on Linux, as long as the user-agent reported that it's actually Chrome and Windows.
Yeah the website is indeed working "perfectly": perfectly enough to block employment of people who care about privacy.
You gotta accept Microsoft's licenses and EULAs and crap like that. Plus it's still spyware. No thanks
https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/virt...
>Due to ongoing technical issues, as of October 23, 2024, downloads are temporarily unavailable.
They are morons.
Maybe someday ReactOS will be usable fully as a Windows VM OS.
And in many ways, I'd be fine with that if they'd be up-front and honest about it.
Alas, Microsoft certainly is not. Cloudflare is not either. Many of these services just sit there and pretend like they're loading without showing any sort of error indication. Much like a tarpit but it's malicious on the business side and with little to no recourse on the real human side.
Cloudflare is not malicious, but is between a rock and a hard place. By caring about privacy you are, indeed, looking more suspicious. In a perfectly anonymous world, reputation-based captchas couldn't work. It's OK if you think they shouldn't exist, but Cloudflare customers and most people like them.
Everyone else is not on some secret plan to destroy the Linux Desktop, they just don't test their websites on linux/firefox (because "nobody uses that"), which makes them unusable, which causes people to drift off linux/firefox.
I have no intention of returning to Windows.
- Things that should be system settings are instead apps (amphetamine, rectangle).
- There's no way to move focus around directionally between windows with a keyboard.
- "Open file" windows give you nowhere to paste a path (tip: cmd + shift + g summons a path prompt).
- Full screen windows now must be managed like they've just become an entire workspace, and the underlying app may or may not support the un-full-screen button.
- The error messages don't give you enough info to actually act on them (apparently "Docker" will damage my computer, and I should uninstall it, but it won't give me a path to the offending file, so I don't know how to install it, also this warning returns if I close it so it's just been hanging around for months.)
My strategy for maintaining sanity is to do as much as possible through zellij (a terminal multiplexer), that way I can use the same muscle memory on Linux as well. As for the rest, I just try to ignore it.
Apple is infuriating in rather different ways.
I feel that it just works.
And am glad.
I installed a copy of Windows 11 the other day for a new machine and it was INFURIATING.
In order to install without internet or an offline account, you MUST know a voodoo command and how to enter it. Used to be their dark pattern was at least on the screen, they’re out of their damn minds now.
Everyone has their breaking point with Microsoft, I hit mine and it’s been nothing but good for me.
As is, I'll be sticking with heavily tweaked Windows to work with my several HDDs full of old software, and avoid the Linux headaches of repos disappearing, deciding between Snap/Appimage/DEB and general incompatibility with office documents, industrial tooling and Adobe software.
I'll only use Linux where I'm paid to at work. Thanks to Linux Torvalds' terrible software distribution model, I've had to do black magic to work around Anon's deprecation of Debian/Raspbian Stretch on which our industrial network gateways run.