Introducing the series
Do you have an M-chip Mac but are still paying for ChatGPT or Anthropic every month?
This series will teach you to run AI completely locally on your machine: no internet, no API keys, no monthly fees, and data never leaves the machine.
Apple Silicon is one of the best local inference platforms today thanks to Unified Memory Architecture. A MacBook with 16GB or 32GB of RAM can run many 7B to 30B models more smoothly than many people think.
What will you learn?
- Install and operate Ollama to run LLM locally
- Integrates Apple's MLX to accelerate inference
- Call models from Python, JavaScript, or any language via REST API
- Build chatbot, vision app, embedding pipeline running locally
- Optimize memory, concurrency and custom AI assistant
Prerequisites
- Mac with Apple Silicon chip (M1 or later)
- RAM 16GB or more, 32GB recommended if running large model
- macOS Ventura 13.3+ or later
- Know basic Terminal
- Basic Python to follow the exercises
Why should you study this series?
In 2026, the ability to run AI locally is a very practical skill for developers:
- Privacy: code, data and chat do not leave the device
- Cost: almost $0 instead of monthly API rental
- Speed: local latency is often lower than cloud for repetitive tasks
- Offline: can still work when there is no network
- Customization: easy to create your own workflow, your own modelfile, your own stack