On Apple website it says 512GB memory option is available in October. I guess bumping to that one would cost additional 4-6k US$. So an Ultra with 2TB storage would be north of 15k US$.

That’s like 12 years worth of OpenAI Pro subscriptions

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ericmay a few seconds ago | parent | next [-]

Just commenting here because you're discussing hardware: I thought the test results from the SSD published in this article [1] were pretty interesting. Maybe that's old news though.

[1] https://www.macworld.com/article/3238319/mac-studio-m5-max-r...

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112233 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Hard to guess, it can go either way. If you will need to be in a syndicate to use non-sterilized models, that mac makes sense. But if there is mandatory registration of personal cyberarms, you risk going to mines once they check you purchases. You could try to play normie and pretend you simply wanted to show off, by keeping your actual work on external disk, but that leaves traces on system. Counting on someone in the Gap renting you gray iron works as long as you can swap credits. Still, this gear is tiny. Put it in your e-car, with uplink, and leave it at uncle's farm. Discreet.

	▲	Razengan 23 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I gotta have some of what you had :)

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geodel an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Agreed.

Specially since one can pay half right now to OpenAI and sign a 12 year iron clad contract for uninterrupted service delivery of OpenAI Pro.

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patrickmcnamara 14 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

HN always has these completely contrived counterarguments. What is actually going to realistically happen that will prevent use of an LLM provider? Did you think that the OP literally meant the 12 years or maybe it was just to show how expensive using a Mac Mini as an alternative is?

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Kurtz79 42 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think we all expect the heavy subsidized subscriptions to end or significantly increase in price at some point, but it could be years from now and I'd rather spend a similar figure on an hypotetical Mac Studio M8 Ultra, or whatever more advanced competitor that will have likley appeared by that time.

A more apples-to-apples comparison would be with API cost in OpenRouter at the same tok/s rate for the same models that you can run locally, maybe.

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vardump an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I hope that was sarcasm.

	▲	cyclopeanutopia 35 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		"iron clad" :)

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simonw an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah, anyone who thinks local AI is going to save them money is likely to be disappointed, at least if they want to run models that are even remotely capable.

Plenty of other reasons to get excited about local AI, but I don't think cost is one of them.

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criddell 41 minutes ago | parent [-]

Maybe you are using a local model to go after some Millennium Prize problem and you don't want OpenAI to take your work and use it to win the prize for themselves? $15k might be a bargain.

And, yes, I know a current local model wasn't going to solve the Navier-Stokes problem, but I'm just using it as an example where privacy might be valuable.

	▲	simonw 14 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Agreed, plenty of other reasons to get excited about local AI.