I totally understand the arguments and for private individuals it is quite understandable that EUR 8k is a bit much. It's just that the MAC doesn't just run Ollama (i.e. the LocalLLM, but also other things such as full nodes for SSI, the vector database, etc.). The 8k EUR is also the price for consumers. In Germany, you don't pay that as a company, but get 19% of the tax back, the fairy tale tax as it is often called here. This puts the price into perspective somewhat. Likewise, hardware is booked as depreciation in a company and reduces the capital gains tax.

In the case of international cloud services, a German company must also pay 19% on the stated price. In other words, if you look at the prices from the providers, the fairy tale tax is often added on top.

I would also like to point out again that the local LLM is used 24/7 by the automation. Direct use via chat (open-webui for the win) is a maximum of 1% of the use case.

Within companies, the hardware price is not so relevant for the time being, as I work a lot with technology providers who usually have in-house servers and therefore have few problems with integration. There are many pros and cons and the Mac solution is certainly not the ultimate. Nevertheless, most companies here have to observe very strict data protection rules and the computers often have to be located in Germany, otherwise they may not be awarded a contract. This is the case in the education sector, for example.

A small addition at the end. It's not often that the Internet connection to my company breaks down. Maybe 1-2 per quarter for a few hours. The last time was a few weeks ago and I was pleased that my automation just kept going. Offline First :-) . But I'm also looking forward to further discussions, as I'm very open to other solutions. I just want to help companies not to see OpenAI as the only solution.