99% of people will use whatever AI is free. The sophisticated, heavy users that are willing and able to pay a lot of money the ones that will be interested in controlling their inference bills.
Today, the sweet spot where an M5 Ultra makes sense is tiny. But we might expect that to grow a lot.
Even if you could get a frontier model, you would not be able to run it on any Mac. So speculating on what M7 or M9 will achieve in 5 years (if we even still exist) seems pointless.
I don’t think Apple is going to lie down and cede AI to the cloud.
How about writing mail to President and senators on AI doomsday scenario if frontier labs do not pace themselves?
That mini model on mac mini would scared to hell to do such thing. It need that rugged frontier model to speak truth to power.
I would love to find an excuse to buy a 10,000 dollar machine! But I cant find one yet. My current cloud bill is in excess of 400 USD per month. Just can't achieve frontier model capabilities locally.