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So Apple's latest update has some questionable details apparently. It's claimed the messages sent home don't contain anything meaningful, though I haven't heard of anyone specifically verifying this.
The article provides one way of disabling the service, though I
advise against using it. Modern OSes aren't meant to be hacked that
way, a better way of disabling it is mentioned in the comments, namely:
sudo launchctl unload -w
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dashboard.advisory.fetch.plist .
Not only is this approach cleaner since it uses Apple's own tools, it
brings up those tools which — while mostly undocumented — are very
helpful for finding out how your system works to spot other potential
concerns.
I noticed however that I couldn't find the Dashboard Advisory
running on my system. This is probably because I've done another little
hack to disable the Dashboard entirely. I can't seem to find the
original article on doing this though
this one explains in brief how and why you'd want to do it. The
command for the curious is:
defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean
YES && killall Dock .
These are just a couple of the little hacks I've made to my system. I thought any mac users out there might also be interested in them. And yes, both launchctl and defaults have manpages you can look through.
