[lapcat]

> Someone much more tech savvy than me should try to use Charles Proxy on an iOS device and see how often your phone is communicating with Apple servers. It’s pretty wild.

You can also see this just by running an iOS simulator with Xcode on a Mac that has Little Snitch installed. The amount of phoning home by iOS (and macOS, for that matter) is shocking.

[vita7777777]

What is even more shocking is running an Android simulator in the same context. Literally dozens of Little Snitch prompts before the OS even boots to the lock screen. Not defending Apple here, but when I was developing a mobile app in both Xcode and Android Studio I noticed a marked difference in the amounts of phoning home.

[walterbell]

Little Snitch could use a 1-click on/off ruleset for blocking all Apple network connections (17.x.x.x) except for the published whitelist of Apple notification servers. That would block most of the real-time phoning home. The block could be disabled manually for security updates. If notifications aren't needed, block all of 17.

[vita7777777]

I saw this idea implemented in the book "Extreme privacy: macOS devices". The author also provides importable profiles that you can switch between, e.g. to enable/disable security updates. I haven't tried them yet, but I am now more motivated to do so.