It's worth noting that on ios you can never block anything - just have to put up with it.

You can still block access by host by using an HTTP proxy like Fiddler or Charles.

Settings > WIFI > Proxy

I use adblockios and haven't upgraded because they unblocked the blocking. I keep hearing about charles, I wonder if it is special or if it doesn't really block everything.

... and that apple wants to merge its operating systems

No they don’t. They keep adding new ones.

They want to provide a consistent user experience across their ecosystem. Not the same thing.

Unfortunately the consistency is moving in the direction of iOS rather than macOS.

The hosts file works for now. Use 127.0.0.1 and ::1 on two separate lines. Used tcpdump to verify.

if they keep doing like this I will block their entire ASN .

Or stop buying stuff that is broken-by-design in the first place.

Apple is old enough that you need only block 17./8: they have a class A(!).

They already are fronting much of their stuff via Akamai, so good luck doing that...

Do you think you are going to win the war against "your own" hardware?

Until they front it via cloudflare or aws. I got hit by AWS blocking when setting up a network in Russia for the 2018 World Cup - my unifi controller was on an ec2 instance that was blocked due to telegram shenanigans. Worked around the problem but shows that blocking an AS can lead towards an unusable computer.

You could block still block it externally by running a dns sinkhole (a la PiHole) on the same network, provided that you can still configure the DNS resolver.

That assumes the hostname will stay the same and not get overloaded by other essential services.

Yep. That seems to be within the realm of possibility though, no?

Maybe downgrade the macos would work. As I'm in old version of os, Little Snitch works quite well.

Isn't that just with Big Sur? Also, I'm using the hosts file method.

I don’t think it’s actually just in Big Sur. At the bottom of this post describing how to stop them from hiding traffic, they mention someone did a test on Catalina and ran into an issue with the Messages app:

https://tinyapps.org/blog/202010210700_whose_computer_is_it....

Apple deprecated kernel extensions like Little Snitch in Catalina, so if I had to guess it probably applies there as well.

The OP is about Big Sur.

The clock is where Notification Center lives, so you can’t get rid of it. (Of course that makes sense.)