M4
What Can You Run on 8GB Apple Silicon? Local AI on a Budget Mac
Llama 3.2 3B runs at 30 tok/s. Phi-4 Mini fits with room to spare. 7B models technically load but swap to disk. Honest benchmarks and real limits for 8GB M1/M2/M3/M4 Macs.
Ollama on Mac: Setup and Optimization Guide (2026)
Install Ollama on Apple Silicon, verify Metal GPU is active, and tune it for your Mac's RAM. Config for M1 through M4 Ultra with model picks per memory tier.
Ollama on Mac Not Working? Fix Metal, Memory Pressure, and Slow Performance
ollama ps says CPU? Generation crawling at 2 tok/s? macOS killed your model mid-sentence? Every Mac-specific Ollama problem diagnosed and fixed with exact commands.
M4 Max and M3 Ultra for Local LLMs: Apple Silicon in 2026
No M4 Ultra exists. After Apple's 2026 memory cuts, the Mac Studio pairs the M4 Max (64GB) with the M3 Ultra (96GB, 819 GB/s). Which to buy for local AI.
Best Local LLMs for Mac in 2026 — M1 through M5 Tested
Best model for every Mac tier, 8GB to the 96GB Studio ceiling. Qwen 3.6, Llama 4 Scout, DeepSeek V4, MLX vs Ollama. Why bandwidth, not RAM, sets your speed.
Run LLMs on Mac M-Series: Faster, Without the Gotchas (2026)
Foundational how-to for Apple Silicon local AI: unified memory, MLX vs Ollama vs llama.cpp Metal, verification, and the headless Mac Mini AI server.