Well, this is HN, not the general population. Half of the people here probably helped build something like this at some point...

(And the other half are Apple vassals)

Apple has really good marketing. And for over a decade, they've been deploying it at the privacy angle.

Now people see behavior that would make them furious if any other big tech company did it -- and say, "it's okay -- Apple is a defender of privacy." Even people who claim marketing has zero effect on them (that's how you know it's good marketing).

Worse than resigned, people are happy about it. There's discussions about this over on Reddit too, where the users are even more overwhelmingly in favor of it. "If it didn't do this, 'Siri, call Jenny' wouldn't work! And it wouldn't be able to automatically tag Jenny in photos!" etc. People think this is fun and not creepy?

This lazy give-me-convenience-or-give-me-death thinking is so weird. I want my devices to be completely dumb. I don't want them to know anything about me. I don't want them to think for me or make decisions for me. I store data so I can retrieve it, not for the computer to "learn" from it. Leave me the hell alone.

> I want my devices to be completely dumb. I don't want them to know anything about me. I don't want them to think for me or make decisions for me. I store data so I can retrieve it, not for the computer to "learn" from it.

A respectable opinion! But are you self aware enough to realize that this opinion is NOT the norm, particularly amongst younger folks? Say millennials and younger? These products simply might not be for you, and it's frustrating they can't provide a "leave me alone" toggle somewhere in settings.

It’s local to your device and provides a useful service?