Topic

Local AI

Reporting and analysis related to Local AI.

Articles: 3
Desk: 1

Protocol schematic poster for a 128GB Apple Silicon local AI stack led by Qwen3.6

Best Open-Weight AI Models for a 128GB Apple Silicon Mac in 2026: Qwen3.6 Leads the Pack

Qwen3.6-35B-A3B leads 2026 open-weight AI picks for 128GB Apple Silicon Macs, balancing coding, reasoning, long context and local speed for developers.

May 17 · 6 min

Editorial poster showing a 48GB Apple Silicon local AI model stack for open-weight coding and RAG models

watchAI Security Local AI

Best Open-Weight AI Models for a 48GB Apple Silicon Mac in 2026

A 48GB Apple Silicon Mac is a strong local AI machine for quantized 24B-32B open-weight models, led by Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B for coding and Gemma 4 for reasoning and RAG.

May 17 · 7 min

Data graphic: published file or download sizes of open-weight model builds against a 24GB Apple Silicon Mac, led by the practical pick Qwen3.8-27B in 4-bit MLX at 16.1GB, with Meta Muse Glimmer 30B NVFP4 at 17GB, Gemma 4 26B A4B at 14.2GB, Gemma 4 12B Unified at 6.98GB, Gemma 4 E4B at 4.22GB, and Laguna XS 2.1 at 20.3GB flagged because Poolside specifies a 36GB Mac. It also notes a 16K–32K working context for 27B–30B models, NVFP4 then 4-bit MLX then Q4_K_M as the best quantizations, and that Devstral Small 2 was retired on 31 March 2026.

watchAI Security Local AI

Best Open-Weight AI Models for a 24GB Apple Silicon Mac in 2026

Qwen3.8-27B at 4-bit MLX and Meta Muse Glimmer 30B are the picks for a 24GB Apple Silicon Mac. Devstral Small 2 was retired in March 2026.

May 17 · 17 min