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Apple has been forced to make macOS even more locked down, to the dismay of some developers. It has announced plans to introduce more user-facing control over the process of giving apps Full Disk Access.

Some developers are upset, believing this will put more barriers in place to those creating apps outside the App Store. Endpoint security vendors voiced some concern but understand the cause: “poorly written/insecure/greedy AI agents/assistants insisting on Full Disk Access, and then once granted/obtained, abusing that, to access ,” as Objective-See co-founder Patrick Wardle wrote on X.

Explaining its plans, Apple says it will still make it possible for customers to choose to enable Full Disk Access; it’s just going to make the decision much more intentional, with additional steps to ensure that users know what they are signing up for.

Why is Apple doing this?

It may or may not be in reaction to Meta’s Muse AI agent, which was accused of reading a journalist’s private messages without permission — a claim Meta denies. 

But even if it is not a reaction to that, the move attempts to put additional obstacles in place to prevent users from casually giving AI agents the power to ransack their private data when they give them Full Disk Access without fully understanding the consequences of doing so.

What Apple said

Here’s what Apple said in a note on its developer website:

“We give developers powerful APIs to build incredible capabilities into their apps for Apple products, backed by a set of controls designed to protect users’ private data. Full Disk Access largely sidesteps these controls in order to allow backup apps to function properly on the Mac. Some developers are using Full Disk Access in ways that could put users at risk, exposing everything on their systems—including files, mail, messages, and even browsing history—without users’ full knowledge and understanding. For communication apps, this can also compromise the privacy of the people users are communicating with.

“Going forward, we will introduce additional controls to ensure that users who genuinely wish to grant an app this extraordinary level of access can only do so with very explicit user action. Addressing this is critical. As AI agents become increasingly capable and autonomous, the risks associated with this level of access will grow substantially. We are committed to ensuring users clearly understand these risks before granting such access, so they can make informed decisions about their own data and privacy.”

The note makes it quite clear that Apple is doing this in reaction to the real and present danger that unconstrained AI places on security systems everywhere. 

Accident, or design?

After all, for every denied instance in which Meta’s Muse may, or may not, have surveyed private messages, there are now many incidents in which some “rogue” AI has “escaped” to do some kind of harm.

Except it’s quite easy to think these incidents are not really escapes, isn’t it? 

If you do, then this is AI doing precisely what it’s designed to do. 

Rather than railing at Apple, developers and critics should focus on why this change has been put in place. It should be recognized as another of the huge “benefits” most humans are already experiencing at this stage of AI disruption.

It’s a benefit to accompany hyper-inflated memory prices on consumer electronics costs. It’s a benefit that flows with the energy and water price increases we are seeing as AI data centers consume more of both, even as inventors of this tech warn that what they have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in poses an “existential threat” to humanity.

Sure, AI can and does release positive consequences, and I celebrate that, but that doesn’t give it a pass on its damage and risk, particularly existential risk.

Obsolete software

“Redefining” that risk is perhaps why Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah visited Pope Leo XIV to convince people around the head of the Catholic church that AI can be considered conscious. 

One way to see that argument is that AI is not really an existential threat to humanity if you redefine it as some kind of evolution toward a new super race. It becomes a painful but necessary step toward the next phase of humanity, even if that does sound rather messianic (some say fascistic, as Gil Duran explains).

Thankfully, the Pope didn’t buy it. “Algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity,” he wrote in a recent declaration concerning the impact of AI on creative arts.

If I’m honest, and I do try to be, developers and critics attacking Apple for its decision to lock down this aspect of the Mac experience are focused on the wrong target. You need to reconsider who to blame.

For the many

It’s time, urgently time, for people in tech to get back on the road to what makes it great, which is now and always has been what results from the marriage of technology and liberal arts. AI is not conscious. AI has no moral soul. 

With that in mind, it’s appropriate to ensure that humans have informed agency before they provide AI with access to their data. Religions claim that divinity gave us free will. Do you think AI and the billionaires who own it want us to keep that gift? 

Now please subscribe to my daily, human-curated Apple-related news headline feed at The Core, or follow me on BlueSky, LinkedIn, or Mastodon.

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Apple says it is changing its macOS privacy settings to stop third-party app developers from misusing them to access message histories.

Friday's announcement comes two weeks after tech columnist Jason Aten said that Meta’s new general-purpose AI agent Muse sent him an unsolicited notification referencing a thread between him and a co-worker over Apple Messages. Aten said he never granted Muse permissions to read his messages and had assumed they were off-limits. Social media last week blew up with masses of people who agreed and said the incident showed that AI assistants given access to calendars, emails, messages, shopping accounts, and other resources are akin to a skill saw or other power tool. While potentially useful, they can do real damage if not used carefully.

He said/she said

Meta CTO David Singleton joined the fray with a rebuttal that appeared solid. For Muse to access Apple Messages, a user must manually give it two privileges. One is full-disk access, a macOS system-level permission. The other is to enable a Messages connector setting in Muse.

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