Yes, that's the problem
Policy GenAILocalFoundationalModelSettings disables and removes the local model without any flag hacks since 2024. In Canary since January behind Settings > System > On-device AI
The article doesn't mention Chrome version, release channel, whether on fresh vs existing install an if settings were altered.
Actually, it does claim this is the stable release channel. And it's reasonable to assume that if the author is documenting on a fresh profile / user account on the Mac, they probably downloaded the current (that day) release, though we're inferring when don't don't truly know for sure.
> 10. Code-signed, shipped through the normal release channel. This is not test build behaviour. It is Chrome stable.
I think it's poor form to run cover for one of the biggest corporations in the world like this. Don't let them off the hook. As the author correctly points out, metered connections are being abused. Hell, last month I somehow hit ATT's bandwidth limits on my mobile and got throttled for five days. It made my phone so unusable that I turned on hotspot on my work phone and connected to that over wifi when I went to lunch.
So what's your solution? A click-through acceptance of every single library, component, dependency, etc. every app uses?
P.S. - out here in the real world of the people who just use software, they don't want this. Which is its own problem, because they should care more than they do, but we play the hand we're delt.
I think this will be increasingly true in this extended period of more expensive memory and storage media. The Macbook Neo, for example, has 250GB onboard storage and 8gb memory. Many users will not want to spend 2% of their storage and allocate half their memory just to run a web browser.
> "just to run a web browser"
I don't even mean to be hyperbolic here, but 'running a web browser' is almost the only purpose of a MacBook Neo for at least 90% of its target audience.
Consider what normal people do on a laptop:
- Email - web browser
- Social media - web browser
- pay bills, research, book trips - web browser
- watch video content - web browser
For many users, you could hide the Dock and just autolaunch Chrome at Startup and it wouldn't have any negative impact on them.
And I'd bet that any browser with more than 5 tabs open, especially without an adblocker, is using whatever portion of its paltry 8GB of RAM that the OS hasn't hogged. So the argument to be made for allowing some feature bloat (and paying the space cost) in a browser is that this is probably the app most people will spend 75-100% of their time in anyway.
I think it's the same extreme, it just shows up in different places, but fair enough. Both views are problematic.
Making major components optional
"I don't want no steenkin DB installed!". Unclick box...app doesn't work right, and now it's the vendors fault, and the vendor has to spend the time to explain to the (possibly non- or even anti-technical) user why. And the user will be on social media complaining about you.
Now, if you want some more extreme thinking, you in theory might never need to develop with a DB; you can just explicitly code all data handling in the app. There you go...no complaints about superfluous installs. Does any developer want to do that? Probably not; DBs are pretty nice abstractions for data handling.
And that's how the AI model here will be justified: this is how apps are built now, accept it or don't use the app. True or not, that'll be the party line.
including some basic information about what they are at install time is easy to do
Easy to do; hard to support. Now you're dealing with "I don't even know what a database is, much less do I want it or not" and you're doing tech support again. And the user will be on social media complaining about you.
Of course, the assumption that most users pay any attention at all to the instructions, disclosures and T&Cs of their software is almost comically quaint. Click, click, click, install.
I think this will be increasingly true in this extended period of more expensive memory and storage media.
This is by no means the first (or, yet AFAIK, worst) shortage of computer components. In the previous ones, I recall noone who said "I won't upgrade to the latest, more bloated version of MYReallyImportantApp because I don't have enough disk/memory/cpu". They delete a less important app, or accept performance isn't so good, or bite the bullet and find the scratch to upgrade. YMMV. And complain about it on social media.
Many users will not want to spend 2% of their storage and allocate half their memory just to run a web browser.
Oh yes they will. For many/most users, a web browser is pretty much all they use outside of maybe games. And most users have exactly zero idea how much each app consumes...they just assume when they double click it's go-time.
Personally, I doubt anything more than "This app uses AI. You good? Y/N." will work.
