Apple’s Photos ecosystem is privacy oriented and as a result some (now) baseline features require the use of local models.

The Foundation models keep a surprisingly decent set of data available for fast filtering by a local LLM.

I’ve found a slower, second pass, is needed by Qwen to clean it up. (I am running on the new Mac Mini m5 pro 64gb.)

I’ve run my own tests using a date range, a short description of a red cedar planter box build I did last year, and a set of known correct photos.

There is some cool stuff you can do without sending your family’s pics up to any of the frontier model providers.

I've found some strange guardrails with the Foundation models. Like blocking describing of any photo with a single woman in it. It does this relatively consistently but with a different subset every time. Like out of 10 photos in the set, it's skips 6 then the next run, it skips 3. Have you seen guardrail issues like this?

I switched to Gemma 4 instead.

I don't want any of these features and yet they've been forced upon me and are now getting in the way of me actually using my computer how I want. Games and heavy applications slow down and stutter because of "AI" background processes, even with App Tamer, my machine runs too hot to even touch when just idling. Compared to when I got my M2 in '23 and thought, "This is the fastest and snappiest machine I've ever used", my experience with an M5 and the latest macOS version is nothing short of an anti-consumer hellscape.