If you have say 16GB of GPU RAM and around 64GB of RAM and a reasonable CPU then you can make decent use of LLMs. I'm not a Apple jockey but I think you normally have something like that available and so you will have a good time, provided you curb your expectations.
I'm not an expert but it seems that the jump from 16 to 32GB of GPU RAM is large in terms of what you can run and the sheer cost of the GPU!
If you have 32GB of local GPU RAM and gobs of RAM you can rub some pretty large models locally or lots of small ones for differing tasks.
I'm not too sure about your privacy/risk model but owning a modern phone is a really bad starter for 10! You have to decide what that means for you and that's your thing and your's alone.
https://paleotronic.com/2025/08/03/connect-ai-to-microm8-app...
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/apple-fumbled-siris-...
> Distrust between the two groups got so bad that earlier this year one of Giannandrea’s deputies asked engineers to extensively document the development of a joint project so that if it failed, Federighi’s group couldn’t scapegoat the AI team.
> It didn’t help the relations between the groups when Federighi began amassing his own team of hundreds of machine-learning engineers that goes by the name Intelligent Systems and is run by one of Federighi’s top deputies, Sebastien Marineau-Mes.
This is a pretty good article, and worth reading if you aren't aware that Apple has seemingly mostly abandoned the vision of on-device AI (I wasn't aware of this)
That is a sign of very bad management. Overlapping responsibilities kill motivation as winning the infighting becomes more important than creating a good product. Low morale, and a blaming culture is the result of such "internal competition". Instead, leadership should do their work and align goals, set clear priorities and make sure that everybody rows in the same direction.
> In other words, should he shrink the Mac, which would be an epic feat of engineering, or enlarge the iPod? Jobs preferred the former option, since he would then have a mobile operating system he could customize for the many gizmos then on Apple’s drawing board. Rather than pick an approach right away, however, Jobs pitted the teams against each other in a bake-off.