The kind of specs that would enable local LLM usage were available on laptops since 2020. The floor for acceptable performance for LLMs stopped literally just before 24+gb of VRAM would have become pretty common in consumer applications. The reason this technology isn’t more ubiquitously available is because ‘they’ thought it would be more profitable to hoover up literally every byte of RAM and GPU in the world rather than let the technology continue to naturally evolve to a place where any consumer could have run useful models on their home computers. In other words, your anger is misplaced.

Open models will still be available via API from third-party hosts. The bigger ones like Kimi K3 or GLM 5.3 don't fit on conventional desktop computers to begin with, most non-institutional users of those would already be doing that (eg via OpenRouter).

Anyone who lacks the skill to to it themselves…