Comment by soulofmischief
3 days ago
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.
Interesting, this has not been my experience at all. I have an M5 machine and I'm not even aware of what AI features have been added, and it's streets ahead of my old M1 Pro in speed.
peep the comment I just made to the adjacent commenter, that has been my experience. I basically have to run my fans at full speed all day while working now in order to type on my computer (when I'm not using my magic keyboard). It is like a huge problem, not even just a small one but like something that is affecting me negatively every single day, increasingly making me want to break this machine in half and disappear into the woods.
The M1 used to be adequate in speed. Then Apple kept adding always-on cloud daemons that run even if you don’t use iCloud.
My Macs run cool and silently. I've never observed a background "AI" process consuming resources.
It's not just AI processes. But things like mediaanalysisd, duetexpertd, etc. even the freaking menu bar agent, all regularly pound my computer both when idling and when in use.
I recently installed App Tamer which is helping a bit, but it doesn't allow me to tame everything. I just checked now and duetexpertd was trying to use nearly two full cores. I have all iCloud integrations turned off, I do not use iCloud at all, and I do not have an iPhone, so I am flabbergasted that this iCloud desktop-phone syncing process runs at such high core usage in the background with extreme regularity. Proof: https://imgur.com/VkBh9bi
Unfortunately, this does nothing for services such as WindowServer which now often takes up 50-100% of a core just on its own.
I have reinstalled and upgraded to the latest version. This MacBook is only a few months old.
While typing this message and literally just having open Codex with one running task that is not doing anything substantial, and Firefox, with no high CPU usage from any tab, my laptop got so hot that I had to use another installed program, Stats, to manually bump up the fan since macOS also has absolutely garbage native system fan controls.
I have fibromyalgia and seem to be sensitive to hot keys; my Thinkpad regularly getting to hot to touch with even light usage is EXACTLY why I went and bought a MacBook one morning in '23. One morning I touched my keyboard and realized I was tired of singeing the nerves on my fingertips and having them hurt for hours. So now in '26, finding myself in the same exact position but with a much more expensive computer, I feel like I am living in a corporate hellscape nightmare.
One thing I have noticed is all of my cores can sit idle except a single one and that will still heat up the machine a lot. If the hardware is designed as such, the software MUST be designed to work around this and not blast a core for 10 minutes straight every time one of a dozen or two misbehaving system processes wants to complete a background task. If the software is not designed for this, the hardware is incomplete and faulty. This would be true if it was shipped as firmware; software doesn't get a free pass here.
But now Pages and Numbers recommend document titles for me, so.... worth it?
> I recently installed App Tamer
Plus one for this tool. I've been using it for about eight months or so. Useful for keeping Backblaze and other daemons from taking over when they're supposed to be invisible.
> Unfortunately, this does nothing for services such as WindowServer which now often takes up 50-100% of a core just on its own.
WindowServer can be a real dog (Finder, too, if opening lots of windows with videos that can be previewed in QuickLook). Closing all of the open windows is inconvenient, but it solves the issue until they get built up again and stay open for an extended period of time. I hope they address this in the future; we'll see how a new CEO prioritizes software quality. I'm the most hopeful that I've been in five or more years given the change in leadership. Doesn't mean it'll happen.
> I have fibromyalgia and seem to be sensitive to hot keys; my Thinkpad regularly getting to hot to touch with even light usage is EXACTLY why I went and bought a MacBook one morning in '23.
That shouldn't happen on a machine built in 2023. Take it to an Apple Store (or third-party) and see if a repair tech agrees. I repaired laptops that overheated when I had that role. There was a debacle about thermal paste a decade and a half ago (maybe longer). If it's under AppleCare, you might be able to get it fixed at no extra charge. If not, I'm sorry that it'll cost money, but Apple offers a flat-rate repair for laptops. Maybe they'll say it's fine and it'll be frustrating, but it's worth exploring.
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Daemons like duetexpertd should be running at a low QoS if they're doing background work and shouldn't be capable of interrupting an app. So you've found a bug. You can report it with Feedback Assistant if you want.
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this is not my experience at all. I wonder if one of your tweaks is causing the software to get into a bad state. Likely worth reporting to Apple even if it feels like it's going into a void.
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Always use an external keyboard, much better for ergonomics also.
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Huh, I hadn't seen App Tamer before, that's quite a neat bit of kit. St. Clair does serious work...
I'm glad I found it. Jettison looks like a nice tool as well. It's working great so far, just does what I need it to do. Fits in nicely with Stats, which I use for fan control and monitoring power consumption. I also found https://github.com/Digital-Shane/OpenTamer but figured App Tamer was still the more mature option.
I’m on an M1 workout these issues. How are you isolating them to be AI related?
medianalysisd for example, which frequently pummels 1-2 cores of my machine for long stretches of time, runs local on-device models to analyze the media on your machine.
You know, that brings something to mind that I haven't seen mentioned (so far). If you wiped the machine, it has to rebuild all that "knowledge". Apple announced that they'd rebuild the Spotlight index with an update to 26 so that people upgrading to 27 could use the new AI features immediately. Maybe the timing rules this out, but keep in mind that the device could be running processes that will eventually expire / run only on new content. Could that be a factor?
I know a new phone or Mac bangs hard on indexing even pre-foundation models. I haven't set up a new device with 27, so I don't know how much that might have increased.
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