Gemma 4 MLX quality lags behind GGUF

The rapid porting of Gemma 4 to MLX has hit a snag, highlighting the maturity gap between community-driven GGUF optimizations and Apple's native framework for fresh architectures.

• –Quality degradation in MLX versions includes "thinking mode" leakage and malformed tables, making the models unreliable for structured output.
• –The discrepancy likely stems from uniform quantization in early MLX ports versus GGUF’s more sophisticated K-quants which prioritize sensitive layers.
• –Speed vs. Accuracy: While MLX maintains a slight performance lead on M4 chips, the quality trade-off currently renders it a secondary choice for production agentic workflows.
• –This serves as a cautionary tale for "native" optimization—early GGUF implementations often benefit from broader community stress-testing and refinement.
• –Developers should stick to GGUF (via Ollama or LM Studio) for reliable Gemma 4 deployment until the MLX kernels are properly tuned.