OpenRouter and other LLM platforms are being subsidized by VC investment to less than it costs them to run inference, the MacBook Pro is not

Bingo. I, for one, am loving this phase of enjoying the LLMs at the expense of VC money. Just like how I enjoyed cheap rides and deliveries on Uber. And with the fragmentation in the field, I don't see a monopoly coming up.

When the AI bubble inevitably pops, the author will find a new way to skew results in favor of cloud LLMs. Like including the price of a desk and a chair in the local token cost.