In normal times in which hardware used to depreciate (lately that's not the case and HW even appreciates, but let's not get distracted), if you calculate only with depreciation costs, plus the fact that when you have such a setup, it'd take many 200$ subs to cover your lack of limits in the other, I think it'd not be a clear victory for any side.

If you just ask "who spent more in the first year" (100% depreciation) then even with 5-6 max accounts, buying HW will be a couple of times more expensive. But when does it make sense to ask that question?

Maybe the SotA models will need better hardware so your investment will not be useful after a year or you'd need very expensive upgrades? But then (as in Fable case) subscribers need to spend more too.

It’s not so clear after 5 years that you’ll come out ahead. You’ll have spent $20k. The apple computer owner will probably be running local models that are better than today’s frontier on the same hardware.

Idk where you live, but where I am running the M5 Ultra Mac Studio at max rated power 24/7 for a month costs C$42.

The considerations against Apple hardware are 1) hardware advancements 2) early access to the best models. But it’s really not that clear.

(The other guy who thought hosted models on openrouter are cheap has spent $100k in 5 years.)

That's not apples to apples on almost any dimension.