Running Qwen Image 2.1 on an M2 MacBook: 16 minutes per image and a surprising deterministic structure
boutell · reddit · 2026-09-21
A developer got Qwen Image 2.1 running on a 32GB M2 MacBook Pro via the mps backend (bfloat16), where the recommended 1024x1024 / 40-step generation takes about 16 minutes.
Key observation: the model is deterministic — with a fixed seed, a series of related "glamping cats" prompts (photorealistic, illustrated, cartoon styles) all share a deep structure, with the same object recurring across outputs in different forms.
Two gotchas documented: the official install script is missing torchvision, and dropping numinferencesteps to 10 breaks some photorealistic outputs with fractured lines (illustrated styles still work fine).
The post includes a complete working setup script, run commands, and a test.py example — copy-paste reproducible on any Mac.
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