Local AI Inference's Hidden Cost: Why Apple Silicon Can't Beat Cloud Services

While Apple Silicon delivers impressive raw compute power for running AI models locally, the total cost of ownership—dominated by hardware depreciation over time—makes cloud services like OpenRouter significantly more economical. This analysis challenges the assumption that edge computing reduces costs, showing that cloud providers offer both superior speed (3-7x faster) and better unit economics per token, fundamentally reshaping infrastructure decisions for AI workloads.