Local AI on the Mac has long been practical - especially on Apple-Silicon computers (M series). With Ollama you get a lean runtime environment for many open source language models (e.g. Llama 3.1/3.2, Mistral, Gemma, Qwen). The current Ollama version now also comes with a user-friendly app that allows you to set up a local language model on your Mac at the click of a mouse. In this article you will find a pragmatic guide from installation to the first prompt - with practical tips on where things traditionally go wrong.
LLaMA
Article on the topic of LLaMA language models from Meta. It covers the basics, possible applications, benchmarks and practical experience with local installations.