But if you’re statisfied with just that throughput and model capability that a M1 can provide, than I don’t think you are a well monetizable client anyway? I agree with the no moat as I use a wide variety of models but to only use my M5 128 would definitely not statisfy my needs, so on top of that I pay.
I'm satisfied with it for the most part, which isn't to say that local models can't be slow or don't do dumb shit that show their comparative lack of intelligence sometimes. But when I need speed or intelligence, I just press ctrl+p in my harness and spend a buck on OpenRouter.
It's my belief that we will (or probably have) hit a point where the majority of us receive diminishing returns from the sota models for the work we do. I don't need Astra or Mythos just to write some crud apps or refactor react to svelte, for example.