Apple: ‘Turn Off and Restrict Access to Apple Intelligence Features on Mac’

If you are uninterested in Apple Intelligence features, Apple has documentation on how to turn them off for Golden Gate, Tahoe, and Sequoia — kind of. While there are more granular controls for individual features in Golden Gate, Apple’s way of limiting access in older versions is only through Screen Time. But there is a trade-off: there is now no way to turn off Apple Intelligence entirely like there was in older versions. In Golden Gate, Apple Intelligence is just another system component. Whether you agree with Apple on that is your call, but one thing is a fact: it does not come cheap.

Under MacOS Sonoma, pre-Apple Intelligence, system files consumed 18.4 GB in Ars Technica’s testing. Golden Gate is a whopping 42.9 GB. Not all of this disparity is Apple Intelligence models — on my Mac, the various model directories add up to about 18 GB, give or take — but on a lower-spec MacBook Neo, iMac, or Mac Mini, that means around one-sixth of the drive is consumed by the system. That is considerable.

I do not think Apple should not have local models. But as it is surely the single largest system component now, consuming about the same space as an entire Sonoma installation, I think it is stingy of Apple to ship 256 GB base storage even on its lowest-priced computers. The A.I. memory shortages across the entire industry and Apple’s notorious protection of its margins may explain why the MacBook Air ships today with the same base storage as when Sonoma was released. If this is now a core part of the system, then base storage ought to be increased to compensate.