And if the surprise is unpleasant you can disable it by turning off memories and holidays in the settings of the photo app. Not so easy to escape Copilot on Windows.

That's not nearly comparable tho. I don't care it's watching my photo as long as it doesn't annoy me when I want to watch them. Copilot is everywhere, you got to actively avoid it like the plague it is.

Even the linked blog post indicates that that is not the case. Windows has Copilot buttons on practically every built in application, a taskbar icon, and a dedicated physical keyboard key that people commonly accidentally hit (contractually required for OEMs to provide). They also actively promote Copilot in the OS (particularly Home Edition with nothing disabled e.g. "Tips," Notification Spam, Recommendations, etc).

Nobody can predict what Apple will do tomorrow, but as of today, they aren't really pushing Siri/Apple intelligence really hard particularly after initial setup. None of most of the above for example.

I'm not GP, so I can't comment on where their line is, but for me the difference between Copilot and Apple Intelligence is that I can turn off the latter and never see anything about it again. Copilot, on the other hand, is everywhere and it's almost all universally buggy garbage, even when it's disabled.

I actually trust the Apple Intelligence, when off, doesn't exfiltrate my data.

> So the issue isn't actually that it's baked into the OS, it's that you should have control over when it's used.

Baked into the OS implies that it's integral to its operation in a way that the two are fundamentally inseparable. Having a global off switch implies that's not true.

There are other irritating baked in aspects of the newest macos and other recent versions that are arguably less avoidable, like Tahoe's entire UI design, or the Settings app.

The real issue is copilot is implemented in their apps inconsistently. Very clear there’s little cross app planning. Apples solution is global and apps and hook into it or not. And if you turn it off apps done break.

Apple intelligence even when activated is just not as annoying and obtrusive.