Yeah, Spotlight privacy options. He didn't touch Safari's; I did, and I got the same as cmelbye.
To be honest, I feel like Landon found something that confirmed what he already suspected, and ran with it, rather than taking a moment to look at what he had (which is wrong). That makes me wonder about his goals, since I've been watching his work play out over the last few days. Why is the sky falling, again?
Maybe he did touch Safari's, but foolishly only looked in the "Privacy" section of Safari's preferences, rather than in the "Search" section where any normal person would know the privacy-related settings are actually found.
OK, that's highly sarcastic, but I just went looking for these options and was gobsmacked to discover that no relevant options were present under Privacy.
Sending my search term to Apple which then simply does a back end aggregated search and returns the results does not invade my privacy. Unless of course you have some evidence that Apple is collecting those search terms.
I completely disagree. Sending my search terms to Apple is an invasion of privacy. I feel like "don't share your info with other people" is such a basic aspect of privacy that I don't even know how to argue the point. I'm at a loss, as if you had said that trees are made out of meat, or that cars are delivered by storks.
Are you talking the Chrome omnibar suggestions, or google.com search bar? I'm not sure the difference matters. Anyway, a thoughtful person can probably tell that means their partial queries are being sent to Google ("knowledge that it's happening", as I said above), and adjust it if that bothers them.
With this Safari thing, it sounds like your queries are silently sent to Apple, in addition to Google or whoever your preferred search engine is. So, not only are they being sent somewhere without explicit consent, they are sent somewhere other than the place you explicitly consented to, in a way you won't see unless you dig into config dialogs/manuals and/or packet sniffers. Am I factually wrong on how this behavior works?
Am I being too flexible in ethical gymnastics to avoid condemning Google, while condemning Apple? It was hard to articulate the difference, so frankly maybe it's just that I like Google more. But I think it's fair to say that for me personally, Google Instant is more transparent and fair than how this Apple behavior sounds.
Also, to be honest, I haven't used Yosemite. I don't know if that invalidates my opinion. Maybe I should at least not form an opinion in this flame-fest of half-baked arguments from both sides.
The preferences aren't scattered through several dialogs. It's simply open Safari, goto Preferences, click on Search tab and uncheck the requisite Smart Search feature.
... then, head on over to Spotlight, and disable its similar feature, apparently distinct but named the exact same thing.[0] And hope there are no other instances of this type of thing. That's what on earth I'm talking about.
People have pointed out that this option is kind of hard to find, even if you're looking for it (under Search, not Privacy.)[1] Also, if I chose the "Google" option, I might reasonably believe my searches were only being sent to Google, not Apple.[0] If this was a Microsoft computer, I'm pretty sure we'd all be angry if they had a default-on option phoning home Google queries!
Is [0] downvoted because he is factually wrong about the two options, or because everyone is determined to prosecute him to fullest extent of the HN downmod, for originally being sensationalist/mistaken and/or for having certain views on privacy?
