Thank you for the writeup, it seems like they have done a great job with The Framework. Does it come in that beige-looking color shown on the yellow background?
I think I might want a beige laptop, something with the fine lines of The Framework and the raw aesthetic appeal of Lappy 486.
I just bought my very first MacBook Air ever. But seeing a laptop like this, with everything being customisable (in contrast to my Apple laptop: nothing can be customised or replaced by me) I feel a tinge of regret...
Any kind of socket would require additional height. Probably at least 5mm. And you would certainly want to avoid that on mobile devices. For memory thats less of a problem, because you can plug it from the side, but CPUs have way more pins, so that won't work.
They also offer instructions to update that for when you need to upgrade that.
It's not bring your own but still upgradable, which is what I care about, especially with a smaller company obviously trying to keep everything ethics of repairability.
Even in desktops it feels like socket+chipset is becoming more and more tied to specific CPU so that you need to swap the motherboard and the cpu together.
This looks really cool, but the author... is... replacing their laptop every year? Like, I'm writing this on an 8 year old MBP that has survived as my round-the-house driver because it still does everything well. My daily driver is getting on a bit now (3yr) and my desktop only just got replaced after 5 years.
> The environmental consequences of that system weren't lost on me, even given my very good track-record of re-homing my old computers with people who needed them.
> The environmental consequences of that system weren't lost on me, even given my very good track-record of re-homing my old computers with people who needed them.
If it causes other people not to by new laptops, it kinda is addressing it. (As long as we assume the people getting the old laptop would have bought a new laptop, which might or might not be the case.)
And apparently it made sense for him to pay 150$/year to get his laptop fixed in 24h if needed, and buy two powerbooks at once... I guess what he really should have bought is a Toughbook instead of a ThinkPad?
Buying a new thinkpad every year is especially confusing to me given that Lenovo’s switch from mobile to ultrabook processors in the x40 series meant that for around 5 years, buying a newer thinkpad than the x30 series meant getting a speed downgrade.
Ignoring the (potentially substantial) environmental costs, if you do it "correctly" the total cost of ownership is about the same.
If you buy a $2000 Mac and use it for as long as reasonably, it's going to depreciate by several hundred dollars (let's say, roughly $300) a year. At a certain point it's worth nearly zero, and you must buy a new laptop. After 6-7 years your total outlay is $2000.
Alternatively, every year or two you can sell the old one for a few hundred dollars less than the new model, and buy the new model. You always have a new laptop. And your total outlay is still only about $2000. Plus you are covered by free AppleCare every time you buy the new one.
Plenty of people do this with mobile phones and automobiles and other things as well.
Please note that I am not advocating it. I was still using my 2015 laptop until very recently. But economically it is not necessarily insane.
(Assuming you are selling the old laptops, that is. It's not clear to me that the author is doing that. He says he's donating/rehoming them. Not sure if that includes selling)
Though, with Macs, it's trivial - their migration tool is peerless. (As one would certainly expect and demand: since they control the whole software/hardware stack)
2013 MacBook Air daily driver here. MagSafe? Usb A? Sd card reader? User replaceable battery? Runs Linux? All checks. It’s light on RAM (which for just chrome and light app use honestly it’s fine).
yeah 1440x900 does kinda stink, but the screen is so small it doesn't really bother me too much. plasma does a good job shrinking itself down enough and virtual desktops help. 99% its a full screen chromium window so who cares.
I would guess that MacBook Airs, especially the current ones, are sufficient for the needs of 80%, maybe even 90%, of the entire laptop market, who I presume just need to be able to use a browser and spreadsheets.
And they last for years and years, and I doubt the cost:performance:longevity ratios can be beat.
Ah, hehe, I got confused opening the tweet. I wonder why I had in my head that this was a woman writing the story, must be the monica-byrne in the url :)
Back when I was making crap wages, I would get the cheapest laptops I could afford that would more or less give me decent performance (on the order of ~$500-600). It's not too hard to find a new laptop that performs well at a reasonable price, but you always run the risk of them reclaiming those costs by cheaping out on all the mechanics of it, and it's not like I was able to afford paying ~$2000 for a high-quality machine. Usually within 2 years, the laptop would just start falling apart, I would get sad, and then I would repeat the pattern.
After the fourth or so time of doing this, and after getting higher-paying jobs, I ended up biting the bullet for a more expensive computer, and it lasted me five years, and I only replaced it because I wanted more RAM.
Point is, if you're lower-income, it's fairly easy to get stuck in the "one laptop a year" trend, because, while probably a better deal in the long term, it's really hard for lower-income to justify a multi-thousand dollar expense. I'm a proper tech bro now so buying a good computer isn't the worst thing in the world for me, but that wasn't always the case.
Looking at your trend, you've got $500 laptop / 2 year, or $2000 laptop / 5 year, which reduces to $250 laptop / year vs $400 laptop / year. Getting low cost laptops isn't necessarily a worse financial outcome, although it depends on how fast the processor updates are moving; when a 2020 intel cpu is about the same as a 2015 intel cpu, it would probably have been better to pay a little more in 2015 for a faster one; when a 2015 intel cpu smokes a 2010 intel cpu, incremental updates every year or two mean a low cost 2015 cpu is probably better than a high cost 2010 cpu. Plus, you get a battery refresh (even if it's small).
I think there's more junk at the low end to avoid, but it's not as if the high end doesn't have a lot of junk to avoid. Either way, you have to do careful shopping.
It's like just my opinion, but a lot of higher end laptop spending seems to be on increasing the screen's DPI, which is then run with scaling, at the cost of more CPU, more RAM, more GPU, and more software BS. Buying a cheaper laptop with fewer pixels that just runs 1:1 saves all that extra computation and BS, and maybe looks a bit less nice. Sometimes glossy screens are reserved for the high cost laptops, which is like wait, I want a matte screen, so I have to save money to get one, great!
Yeah, I've actually done this math too, though I don't think it's quite this simple. When a laptop started falling apart, I usually tried to just put up with it until I couldn't.
For example, I used to have an Asus computer whose plastic surrounding the screen decided to start coming detached from the monitor flap. This made the laptop substantially more fragile and annoying to use, and after a certain point I tried to remedy this with gorilla glue and it led to this ugly mess on the bottom left corner. The laptop still "worked" in the sense that still did computation, but it was crappier. Then the 7 key broke off the keyboard, I was unable to put it back on, so I just decided I didn't need the 7 key, since I didn't type 7 that often, and when I did I could still hit the little switch. Again, the laptop still "worked" in the sense that it still did computation, but it was crappier. A bunch of other stuff ended up happening (e.g. the LED for the backlight started to go out and become this flickery mess, the connector to the battery didn't always seem to make contact, etc).
Stuff like that starts to add up, and "experience" is substantially more difficult to quantify. I bought an expensive Macbook, and I never had any issues outside of the inevitable "moores law" depreciation.
> I bought an expensive Macbook, and I never had any issues outside of the inevitable "moores law" depreciation.
I hope that keeps going. I used a macbook for work for almost 8 years, and they did OK, but I had one that decided not to take external power and the hard drive wasn't removable, thankfully I noticed it wasn't charging while it was near full so I could pull a backup to a spare work hand. And then there was the year where iTunes would have a 25% chance of spewing high volume digital noise at me instead of playing music. I guess that was a software problem because it went away with the next major OS X release, but no useful forum contents. I think there was something else bothersome too, but not sure anymore.
I have an apple macbook air from mid 2012, that i paid 1200$ for. If it survies 6 more months, then I've spent 120$/year on laptops over the last 10 years.
I have a 2015 air that was $1k. I expect to get down to $120 per year in a couple years, but I would have to add $10/year for replacing the battery every few years.
I bought a low end laptop back in 2005, and I used it for about 2-3 years until it started to fall apart. It just didn't hold up (hinges started to disintegrate). It's performance was terrible, too, and it couldn't be upgraded.
I got a business class laptop in 2007 for probably 3 times as much. That laptop lasted me until last month. I maxed out the RAM and replaced the HD with an SSD about 7 years ago, but it was ultimately the now-anemic CPU and graphics that got me to buy a replacement. I'd have replaced it last fall but laptop stocks were too low.
I found it's better to buy a second hand top model, or even last year's best on sale, than brand new low quality stuff.
It's a little less visible for laptops than for, say, kitchen appliances, but even there my thinkpad x220 was bought and upgraded for €400 in 2015, and it did its job well untill half way this year.
I usually buy top quality laptops second hand from shops that give at least 6 months warranty. Best strategy. You get a $2000 laptop for $500. And honestly, Intel did not do too much in the last decade, so these are of great value.
Yeah, I got my fancy macbook pro now because I used to work for Apple and had a pretty substantial discount on it as a result. When I need to replace this one, I'll probably get something decent in the used market and just install Linux on there.
I was going to say the same - you are often better off buying a quality not-too-old used than buying a crappy new low-end machine. Better for the world too. However I tend to keep my gears for a very long time (hello my well-loved 2007 MacBook Pro) so I can justify buying new (w/warranty).
Instead of buying a brand-new potato, consider buying a used or refurb'd laptop. Your performance stance doing this is much better now compared to.... any time else in PC history because PC hardware performance gains have flattened out. Plus, corporations get rid of perfectly good PCs like, every year because they want the latest model for their staff and especially their executives/management. Know where to shop and you'll find a glut of cheap and even free computers. I've been poor myself; used machines is how I got by. That and building my own.
Either way, you'll pay about as much for a used ThinkPad in good condition with good specs as you would for a new HP Stream or other cheaptop.
> Plus, corporations get rid of perfectly good PCs like, every year because they want the latest model for their staff and especially their executives/management.
Tangential, but a bit of a lifehack I figured out awhile ago is that corporations dump off old servers on eBay for basically nothing, and most servers allow you to install a regular desktop graphics card in there. Servers usually have a lot of CPUs and a lot of RAM, so 9 years ago when a broke me needed enough power to do cool stuff on the computer, I would go buy a used server on eBay, and it was good enough for video processing and editing and gaming and distributed computing experiments...as long as I remembered to turn it off when I wasn't using it. Whenever I would accidentally leave it on for a few days, I would end up increasing my power bill by ~$40, a lot of money when you don't have much.
Still, it's a trick I still use occasionally, even now that I make decent money. I semi-recently bought a 48 core, 128gb RAM server for around $400, which I use for any big computing experiments. Could I just spin up an AWS box with these specs? Probably, but I think there is value in being able to have the hardware locally.
I once scavenged an HP workstation from behind a dumpster. It was just sitting there in the rain. I brought it in, dried it off, and checked the innards for rust or damage. All looked nearly brand new, so I let it dry out for a couple of days, and powered it on -- it worked. Put a hard disk in and it was ready to go. It's a fairly powerful machine, with four cores and 12 GiB of RAM, a real powerhouse for 2012 when it was new. Probably chewed through many a spreadsheet back in the day. Now I'm making it into a build server.
That's awesome. I think my wife would punch me if I got into the habit of dumpster diving, but there have been multiple times where I've seen what looks like awesome equipment (monitors, computers, surge protectors, etc.) being thrown away near universities and office buildings, and I always have to resist my hoarding nature to take them.
Four cores and 12gb of RAM would make a pretty solid build server, with enough room left for a Minecraft and video streaming server to boot! Sounds like a pretty awesome find.
As the other comments have noted, Cory addresses this further down in the linked post. He further expanded on this in the post he wrote when he quit smoking[0]:
> That was my homework: go away and think of an immediate reason not to smoke. When I came back, I had my answer ready: “I spend two laptops per year on smokes. That money goes directly to the dirtiest companies on Earth, the literal inventors of the science-denial playbook that is responsible for our inaction on climate change. Those companies’ sole mission is to murder me and all my friends. I’m going to quit smoking and I’m going to buy a laptop this year and every year hereafter, and I’ll still be up one laptop per year.”
The labor and physical footprint needed to produce modern electronics is completely insane. You're comparing little league basketball to major league baseball, and it's not like a player like Framework is going to change this at all.
There is a severe ecological impact to the wider environment that comes from electronics, let's not kid ourselves. That doesn't mean buying electronics makes you like, a terrible person, but if you're sitting around prostheyzing on blogs like Doctorow about how these companies are killing you, it's a bit funny to essentially go from a thing that kills people you know in the first world to one that only kills people in the third world you never cared for. Modern comforts like cutting edge electronics have extreme externalities. Like, okay, let me just throw the "murders people I care about" problem over the fence, where it will surely not be an issue for all those people halfway across the planet from me (that I coincidentally do not care or think about.)
In general I'm not trying to be too hard. It's not like anyone else deals with this level of cognitive dissonance much better, and I say that as someone who mostly quit cold turkey over a year ago...
>it's a bit funny to essentially go from a thing that kills people you know in the first world to one that only kills people in the third world you never cared for
I feel like you're not really representing his argument on why he quit fairly. He does talk about the effects of tobacco on the developing world for one and also his overall reason seems to be more relating to the wider idea of tobacco companies being pioneers in the misinformation industry.
Well, maybe he's happier this way? There's a classic joke about a lifelong smoker talking to a stop-smoking councillor:
"With all the money you've spent on cigarettes in your lifetime, you could have bought a Ferrari."
"Do you smoke?"
"No."
"Then where's your Ferrari?"
It's a good question. Most of us have the financial capability to be extremely extravagant with a few select areas of our life, but instead we average everything down to boring mediocrity.
My mom smoked for about 45 years and stopped the day she found out she was having a grand daughter. She didn't want to smell like smoke around her. Hasn't touched a cig in years. The whole family is better for it.
I don't care enough but I want someone to fact-check him on the environmental impact of a MacBook worth of cigarettes versus the MacBook itself. It'd be funny if the MacBook is ultimately worse for Nature.
Kudos to him for quitting. I quit, oh, about a dozen years ago. When I decided to quit, every time I smoked, I told my self they taste like shit; every drag off the cigarette, I told myself that. Eventually (about 2 or 3 months as I recall) it worked and I could no longer stand the taste and haven't touched one since.
He traded smoking for buying a new laptop every year. Now that it's been years, I guess he could quit and not buy a new laptop. But also people do more wasteful things. I do understand though, I drive laptops into the ground over many years but still 4-5 years per laptop
What you're supposed to do, apparently, is buy a brand-new laptop, use it for a few months, then flip it on eBay before it gets too old so you can recover most of what you spent on it and buy the next new laptop.
I worked with a guy who practiced this with all his personal hardware.
It's very, very normal for wealthy people to replace their daily-use tools every year, or even more often.
I replace my phone and laptop and iPad every year. I know people who replace their car and wardrobe and luggage every year, too.
In laptops and mobile devices in general, annual updates make a lot of sense as power efficiency is still regularly increasing. The M1 Air, is, for example, a fucking marvel. It's been out for way less than a year. I have an M1 Air, and will upgrade it again in less than a year when the Mx (where x > 1) Macbook Pro comes out.
The author, Cory, links to a previous explanation of when he quit smoking he converted the cost into getting a new laptop annually. As he mentioned in the article he typically finds a new home for the used device. Laptop appears to be his primary device and critical to his work so updates annually makes sense, though a new device is partially due to the construction framework elimates(i.e. riveted or glued components).
They can just sell the laptop and someone else will use it. For example, I almost never buy new laptops, as perfect Linux support generally lags behind.
I wish that I needed a laptop so that I could buy one. I sincerely hope this company succeeds so that they are around when I do need a laptop.
> Yesterday, I put my 2019 Thinkpad on my pile of "laptops to refurbish and donate." I've bought a new Thinkpad almost every year since 2006. I think that's over.
Only one of them has broken so far, and it was only an issue with the display. I repurposed it into a homelab/Podman host and it's been able to work just fine!
As a quick aside, if you're ever one of the 15 people who will likely do this, buy a Thinkpad dock. They're cheap, and it basically triples your I/O!
Just to continue the question, what do you do with the other laptops? You should have at least 4 or 5 more which are unaccounted for. I imagine only one is used currently.
I gave an old workstation to my mom and a spare T440p to my brother, now the x201 and T460s occupy my tinker station and bedroom respectively. Oh, and there's also a T420 that my other brother uses as a media server, but that's not really mine anymore :p
Not them, but I keep a long trail of old laptops and generally do in fact keep them all in active use on a regular basis. For me part of the appeal was that I like distro-hopping, so multiple machines made it easy to keep rotating OSs without much trouble. The core bits (browser profile, password manager) are synced, and my projects live in version control that's easy to pull to any machine that happens to not have it yet, so I just... grab the closest machine when I want to do something and go. (And I tend to have them laying around multiple rooms so there's always one at hand)
It's addressed in the article and elsewhere in these comments, several times. They donate them after a year in order to upgrade. Seems a perfectly reasonable and responsible use case if you want a new laptop every year.
Having read the article, I don't think he really does. He buys a new one, refurbishes it and gives it away. Why that's a reasonable idea isn't explained (or at least it's not to my satisfaction).
Buying himself a new laptop every year was his motivation for quitting smoking, as he realized 17 years ago he spent about two laptops worth on cigarettes every year. It’s in the article, near the end.
"Self described early adopter consumer sees early adopter friendly project and supports it"
One might see some cognitive dissonance between the state of mind of being pro recycling and supporting reduce and reuse and being an eager consumer. However early adopters dance this line and lead the way for the masses to come after.
Yep, this is where I'm at too. 13" is just not enough space for me to get anything done productively. On my 13" MBP with my standard font size, my code editor can't show a full line of code without me having to scroll (VSCode with mostly default settings, font size 12).
Please get checked for glaucoma if you haven't already. Goes for anyone reading this comment who feels their vision is slowly getting worse. I started getting it in my 30s, it can strike early.
I am saving currently for it and I can't describe the vague worry I feel that this will become the next big thing. Where I'll be refreshing their page every morning for new drops to attempt to get them before they sell out
I don't personally want an exciting laptop. I want a laptop that works with all my other stuff (phone, tv, printer, various software) the moment I open it.
Highlighted on the Linus Tech Tips video on the Framework laptop, there are thoughtful touches like drivers installing in unattended mode upon OS install, so the team clearly puts importance on that seamless functional experience too.
He lost a little bit of credibility saying the Macbooks have terrible build quality… compared to a thinkpad they are on par or better, compared to everything else they are head and shoulders above.
It feels like for years we were constantly told by these corporations "it's impossible to have slim, tiny laptops and make them customizable", and I guess at some level I believed that, and just accepted that laptops with upgradable components were a thing of the past.
After seeing the framework, I'm more than a little annoyed that I fell for this. They proved you can have a slim, clean laptop that's somewhat modular, and more impressively, with something like 1% of Apple's budget to do it. Had I known about it, I probably wouldn't have paid an arm and a leg for a maxed-out Macbook Pro a year ago. MacOS is nice, probably my favorite consumer operating system currently available, but Apple's walled garden approach is beyond annoying.
Linus (the "tech tips" one) said something that sticks in my mind: "The only reason other companies can't do this - and Framework proved it - is because they don't care."
Well, the other reason is that customers don't care either. I certainly don't. The last desktop build I made 5 years ago hasn't had a single component changed in that entire time.
I've only had laptops for over a decade. And I had system board failures.
Honestly, I'd rage if I had to throw it out together with the perfectly good CPU, GPU/VRAM and maybe half the RAM and pay for a used replacement board with all of those integrated.
Or what, buy a rework station and risk damaging them or having them work improperly due to shit soldering skills?
I guess I could learn to fix the board itself. But that's pretty hard, there are no schematics, no components for most laptops, failures are not evident and one component can lead to a cascade of failures across the board. A used board was $100. Now they're ~$500 because there's a CPU and GPU there.
My next computer will be a desktop in a handcrafted case (I'm also trying to fit a Li-Ion battery/UPS between the PSU and components).
Why handcrafted instead of the framework laptop?
Are you just itching to do that project, or is there some other issue you had with getting the laptop from them?
It's more future proof. And performance is unmatched. Handcrafted because I want the smallest, lightest microATX case. Should I share the design? I have it ready in SolidWorks.
I will still need a laptop away from home and/or as a portable display, that'll be one of my old 17 inchers or the cheapest one I can get (Haswell gen lol).
> (I'm also trying to fit a Li-Ion battery/UPS between the PSU and components)
This should totally be a thing. I wish it was a thing. It doesn't even have to provide hours of runtime, just needs to be enough to handle the occasional stupid California brownout.
Yeah, it is the most efficient way to power everything (no conversion losses). 30 minutes is enough tbh.
The battery will fit in an empty PSU case, I just need some custom cables and connectors for the passthrough, my biggest problem is charging and switchover. Looks like I will need a custom board for that. I thought it'd be easier heh
You might want to reconsider. I've found a separate UPS to be invaluable because, as you'll find, just getting power to the box is not sufficient. Other devices need power as well, especially network switches and displays.
People care about Right To Repair; that's why the FTC has been pressured into action recently on the matter (not that I entertain any hope that that bunch of bought-and-paid-for bureaucrats will actually achieve anything.) Framework has blown a vast hole through the false arguments offered in opposition. One must simply care. That's all it takes. Every manufacturer that has opposed RTR has the means and talent to do at least as well has Framework has done, and probably better. They just don't care.
Thankfully the vestigial remains of our free market are sufficient to run the experiment.
Do customers care though? Perhaps customer advocates do. And that's probably the best place for it, since it's such a niche and wonky idea.
And that's why "free markets" will never solve this. (And that's whether the "free" in free markets means freedom from regulations, or freedom for people to participate in the market).
IMHO this is why the European system of strong regulatory bodies tends to work better than the US system of "wait for a customer to experience damages, then recoup through the courts, and then the companies learn their lesson."
And yet here we are; despite the 446e6 strong market place the EU supposedly represents their regulatory power has not delivered what we see here. No, instead we have an American company motivated by only the belief that their product will succeed in the market kicking open the door.
Well the question is do you want every laptop to have the customizability of Framework's laptops, or should there instead be a minimum bar set for warranty/repairability? I think the second is probably what's needed, and the EU has been better both at imposing standards and ensuring warranties and repairability.
The answer is I want a competitive market filled with options that range from a completely sealed, disposable monoliths to machines like this Framework product where components are easily replaced and/or upgraded by me or any qualified or unqualified person I choose. And I want that _without_ the easily circumvented bureaucratic hellscape of lobbyists and captured regulators incestuously welding down the status quo in perpetuity.
Exactly. And in particular, I want companies showing the absolute limit of what's possible if you don't worry about modularity, and other companies like Framework showing how much of that they can provide while also using modular components. That's two different directions of innovation that both need pushing, as useful competitive forces that people care about.
Ideally I would agree with you, but reality demonstrates that markets tend to converge on one standard rather than let two coexist. CISC vs RISC, Firewire vs USB, Floppy vs Zip, IrDA vs Bluetooth, etc. Now it's modular vs integrated.
That happens with technologies where there's a strong benefit to standardization. Standardizing on USB and Bluetooth means your devices can interoperate.
There's already no "standard" laptop design, just a set of desirable properties people want. And there's already no push to converge; there are many laptop vendors. There's plenty of room for a new vendor with different priorities (like modularity); there's more room for such a vendor than there is for one more undifferentiated vendor.
Have you considered that the current landscape is a product of a competitive market? Historically laptops were never as repairable as desktops. Most parts of those bulky 1990s Powerbooks, Latitudes, and Compaqs were hard to access due to proprietary screws. Every laptop manufacturer had non-standard components and non-standard ports and those components and ports would evolve every 6 months. If you wanted replacement parts and you weren't a corporate repair shop, you were shit out luck before Ebay existed. The adhesive-sealed laptop that you resent is a product of the standardization that corporations and suppliers eventually sought after going through the Wild West phase of the mass market PC.
A competitive market isn't a marry-go-round where every idea gets its turn under the sun for all eternity. It's an arena where some rise and many perish. In the '90s and '00s, many ideas fell through, many companies collapsed, and many technologies become outmoded. What has come out of that is the sealed computer of today.
"Have you considered that the current landscape is a product of a competitive market?"
I have. I note that large numbers of people build PCs from components and that this market is large enough to be a primary concern for a constellation of manufacturers and has been for decades. You can buy an IC with 1200 contacts and install it yourself on the kitchen table. There is no other segment of the microelectronics world were this level of commoditization exists and yet it has stood the test of time. Transferring this behavior to mobile machines seems like an inevitable and long overdue step to me.
"Historically laptops were never as repairable as desktops."
History is a poor yardstick here. A number of forces have emerged that change the landscape. Among these are amazing design tools that enable a startup to go from zero to a complete, shipping modular design in 18 months (establishing a defacto standard, btw), tooling that delivers rapid fabrication in small volume, standardized, high performance serial busses that enable simple yet powerful architectures, robust solid state storage devices and the integration of some difficult components into CPUs. It used to require the resources of major manufacturers and their proprietary knowledge and capabilities to pull off marketable mobile designs. That era has passed and the commodity era is here.
"The adhesive-sealed laptop that you resent"
I do not resent monolithic products. I own several. I will buy more. I resent the lack of a choice. I expect that modular mobile machines will take their place among the equipment I acquire, and that these will become the major focus of my concern, whereas the monoliths will be relegated to ancillary tasks.
"What has come out of that is the sealed computer."
And they won't go away. The question is how much room is there for modular systems. I believe there is a lot. I imagine a Newegg filled with commodity mix and match mobile components from a vast number of vendors.
The minimum bar is a theoretical idea. The reality is yet more audits and auditors and internal regulatory staff to produce more documentation that "proves" compliance. It's a huge weight, not lightly welcomed.
Except that regulatory burdens are the kinds of barriers to entry that prevent a company like Framework from existing in the first place.
That just leaves you with entrenched companies doing the bare minimum for compliance, and lobbying for loopholes to protect their own market positions.
If we increase the warranty requirements for companies, the repairability will necessarily increase as well.
However, people do keep in mind this still may not result in better third-party repairability - it may be things like easier reclaiming of components off of boards by the manufacturer to put into refurbished swap-out units.
Here in the U.S. any kind of basic regulation == communism, but I when I imagine "right to repair", I imagine a free market where Apple is allowed to sell glued-in batteries and Framework is allowed to sell repairable products, but all companies must publish the private internal repair documentation they already have and sell the replacement parts they already have, if available. Apple may legitimately not be able to sell replacement batteries, if even Apple themselves can't replace them, but at least there's transparency for the consumer. Eventually I imagine Apple could no longer get away with this practice, not because they are legally forbidden, but because people would become aware of it.
All those companies want to hold out for the idea that they can monopolize some corner of the industry - none of them want to be turned into purveyors of commodity products in the face of heavy competition. But the future likely lies down that path.
The only a tiny minority of people probably care about the upgradability of their laptop. Many many more probably care about the repairability of their laptop, though.
I think you're right. Many people "care" about repairability in the market sense of getting pissed off that a keyboard replacement costs >$500 for some reason. The right kind of marketing could bring them onboard.
But imagine if your next desktop build required you to also throw away your SSD, monitor, keyboard, mouse, and speakers. You can also re-use a case in future builds, and re-use a high quality PSU in future builds.
I also don't really care to replace individual components in my systems, but being able to upgrade laptop hardware without throwing away the chasis and storage seems pretty nice to me.
My next desktop build will require entirely new parts, and the prior build will be demoted to other uses, or given to someone else who has a better use for it. As a whole unit, it still has utility. If I scavenge an essential piece, all the rest go to waste.
If it were a big energy hog (it's not), then it may make sense to put it out to pasture and scavenge the parts for others.
The exception is my keyboard, is like my toothbrush, if toothbrushes could last for two decades. That I will keep and move to the new computer, as keyboard technology is not advancing.
For laptops, I see even less utility for upgrades than for a desktop, but perhaps that's just me.
Easy upgrades mean easy repair. The opposite is also true.
You can move your keyboard to a new computer because you are able to detach it without melting half the device with a heat gun. With laptops it's not that easy. When the MacBook keyboards broke all the time a few years ago, a keyboard replacement meant also replacing the speakers, battery and touchpad. Not for any technical reason, but because Apple doesn't like screws. The MS Surface Pro and Surface Laptop couldn't be repaired by anyone, not even MS themselves - if a single $20-30 part fails you have to spend $1000 again. Doesn't sound like a great deal if you ask me.
You might not need or want upgrades and maybe you're lucky and nothing ever breaks. But having the choice only comes with upsides.
Whereas any dating of when my last desktop build was would be deceptive because they're replaced piece by piece. The closest occasion I can give is when I went from one to two desktops, but even then half the guts of the one I had before went into the new case, and were replaced in the old case with new purchases.
I mean, I've met people that only wear underwear once or twice before throwing it away, too, but I wouldn't say that's normal. People would generally rather replace a drive, processor, ram, or screen than spend 10x as much on an entirely new system. They don't because the manufacturers make that option difficult or impossible.
People didn't love VCR/TV combos, and people don't love this. Manufacturers love this.
It's not just about upgrading components, but also about having more choice during initial specification. It's a real PITA trying to find laptops that have almost everything you want, and inevitably you need to make multiple compromises.
And it's also about replacing broken components without having to ditch the whole laptop.
I'm really excited about how Framework could potentially shake up the whole industry!
I'm not pushing back too hard on this idea, because in general you are likely right about almost anything, that most people don't care that much. However, I'm not sure that Apple really proved that most people don't want too many choices. The choice to buy an Apple computer could be for any number of reasons. Like for example, I really like macOS and the integration between my iPhone and my MacBook for things like iMessage. Anytime I've bought an Apple computer it's felt like I have to compromise on the hardware options, but I still do it because I like other aspects of the overall ecosystem.
Look back to Steve Jobs’s return. Long before they had ecosystem lock in, before even the iPod was released, he simplified the range drastically to make it easier for people to make the buying decision.
Also, anyone who says “it’s felt like I have to compromise on the hardware options” is an outlier by definition.
I feel like this is a bit disingenuous. The general populous/average consumer prefers simplified options. They aren't tech savvy as many here are. When you throw a bunch of specs at them their eyes glaze over. And then ask you if they can get on their Facebook.
It makes sense from a business sense to have fewer models with small changes between them. You could have tech workers that assemble every custom order. That costs a lot more than a simplified inventory of a few different models that are already pre-assembled, with no hardware customization.
I don't have market analytics, only single cases, but nobody who has ever asked me for help about a computer has wanted to know what the difference is between this 'Intel' part vs 'Celeron' part vs 'AMD', carried on to graphics, disk technology, etc. They typically not only don't indicate a desired minimum amount of memory, but cannot reliably talk about system ram vs storage.
What they want is to know they are getting a good deal and that they aren't buying a lemon, something that cannot meet their needs.
What Apple did is decide they should really distinguish on classes of identifiable hardware differences, eg. a better larger screen for a "pro" class, have good/better/best distinctions within that, and customization for those who are picky.
I assume the intersection between people who have particular hardware requirements and those who do not understand their hardware requirements is extremely small these days. Apple doesn't sell computers which really fall short these days, so I'm able to focus the conversation on usage, user-impacting hardware features, and long-term budgeting (e.g. planning even as far as the replacement for the machine they are buying)
> Apple proved that most people don’t want too many choices
They proved that taking away choices is still better than the shitshow their competitors are running.
Apple proved that a few simple product names are less confusing than literally 6 different "brands" of laptops from a single company. That doesn't mean people don't want choices though, they just don't want to feel like they're getting trolled by badly designed websites throwing all the possible laptop configurations in their face. Even if you know what the specs mean it still feels like a major waste of time to try and compare the 20 devices on the screen.
I want to configure every detail of my laptop, not 2 details on one of 200 laptops.
Apple also proved that making devices difficult to upgrade, maintain and repair is harmful for everything and everyone other than Apple.
That doesn't make it impossible to get such configuration options. If I can choose how much RAM I want, they could just as well offer the "no RAM" option so I can keep the two modules of my old laptop. Instead they lie to our faces claiming RAM has to be soldered on for some reason, making that impossible. Same with SSDs etc.
I would understand it if a manufacturer offered some ultra high-end model with custom storage like in the PS5. But if the Framework laptop can have swappable RAM and SSDs with almost the same thickness as a (insufficiently cooled) Macbook it's obvious why that stuff is soldered in.
I like the Framework laptops as well, but I think there's a problem I'm not sure is gonna work out in the end.
If I understood it correctly, you can buy replacement parts only from Framework. They will have supply issues, and customers will be unhappy.
I guess if the laptops don't ever break, or if the customers' need for replacement parts is more theoretical than real, it could work out. Or they somehow manage to get over the small, niche manufacturer hump and become a Lenovo with massive scale. I doubt that's gonna happen.
AFAIK they generally use the same industry standard interfaces for RAM/SSD/etc as all other non-shit laptops.
The problem would come in if a Framework-specific part breaks, but at least those generally seem to be pretty simple (apart from the motherboard, at least).
> If I understood it correctly, you can buy replacement parts only from Framework. They will have supply issues, and customers will be unhappy.
RAM, wireless, and storage aren't chained to Framework, and are effectively the only parts you can reasonably buy for any existing laptop in the current day.
I would not be surprised if battery and screen replacements start popping up, but that's just a guess not something I'd bet on.
That Framework will be the only suppliers of parts that other laptops don't even attempt to make replaceable is not a worrying situation, it's a hopeful one.
I haven't checked everything but the RAM looks like it is standard: "For memory, the Framework Laptop has two SO-DIMM sockets supporting DDR4 DRAM at up to DDR4-3200 speeds"
That's only the half of it - everyone cares when they have to repair their device. You start to feel the unfairness of it when companies charge you exorbitant prices for common components because they've designed it in a non-standardised way for that particular device. Or when you face the reality of (for e.g.) having to pay to replace the whole board because of a malfunctioning soldered RAM or soldered SSD, and realise how shortsighted it was to buy a device that is designed not to be repaired.
>The last desktop build I made 5 years ago hasn't had a single component changed in that entire tim
I upgraded my monitor and changed 2 keyboards(I am hard on them) with a laptop if you fuck your keyboard you probably have to use an external one or hope that replacing your laptop keyboard is cheap enough and you can find a spare.
A friend of mine has a fairphone and broke its screen while he was staying with me. The fairphone is quite similar insofar as it is designed to be long lived and user serviceable. He ordered a screen, next day delivery, and changed it himself for about £60.
A desktop you built using standardized components you sourced from a competitive market with a plethora of alternatives specifically designed for easy assembly. Should any component fail you can obtain a replacement and perform the repair yourself. Doubtless these affordances are a part of why you chose to assemble you're machine yourself.
You do indeed care. The inability to extrapolate this to laptop machines seems obtuse.
No, I still don't care at all about the customizability. I did it mostly because I had to use Windows but didn't want to deal with an OEM's crap ware. The customizability was actually an impediment to get what I wanted: a box.
I don't doubt that a huge market of interchangeable parts made this easier. But it's important to separate the ends from the means here, when it comes to customer concerns. The customers that want customizability and upgradability are a vanishingly small slice of customers. (Just as are the ones who want to run Linux, and that small slice does include me.)
"I did it mostly because I had to use Windows but didn't want to deal with an OEM's crap ware."
Can you not imagine the vast market of people that might want a laptop not loaded with OEM crap ware? Because that is exactly what could emerge if Framework manages to establish a market of commodity mobile components.
The simpler route would be to have an OEM that didn't install crap ware, rather than having to order a basket of parts and assemble them.
I went the basket route because it required less research for me, because I just wanted to get to my end result as quickly as possible.
Grander goals about establishing ecosystems that serve other eventual end goals is not the way that most money is spent. (Though I do spend my money that way in other areas, such as with climate action, the PC market does not matter that much to me.)
You have just cited two more excellent reasons for modular laptops and commodity components; component selection and the environment. That brings the total to three, including the "OEM crap ware"
You're a potential customer of this product, your cognitive dissonance on the matter notwithstanding.
> The last desktop build I made 5 years ago hasn't had a single component changed in that entire time.
My last desktop build is still going strong nine years later. Swapped out a broken motherboard, upgraded to OCed DDR3, and stuck in a PCIe card for NVMe: good as new.
I care. I often swap out parts. My family and friends care, because I help them swap out parts when needed, especially during critical failures when they need it working ASAP and can't risk some corporation formatting the hard drive for no reason.
And my coworkers care because they're fellow techies and do this stuff, too.
Reminder that Apple isn't the problem. Their customers are. I know movie quotes are seriously lowbrow for this audience, but somewhat relevant here, and correct:
"That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy."
Not to Godwin the thread, but this absurd apologia for anti-freedom products from the standpoint of convenience and apathy reminds me of the old quip about Hitler making the trains run on time.
I hope a decade from now you love the soul-crushing Snow Crash-esque dystopia your choices will have created, because you will have absolutely no moral authority to complain about it.
The problem is that for most people there are no clear incentives to making the "good" choices in those matters, while there are many incentives to make the "bad" choice, like gaining an edge in the local competitive market by virtue of a more efficient tool. Prototypical tragedy of the commons.
Your desktop doesn't have a battery in it, like laptops do. Batteries are the one component in a laptop that is guaranteed to degrade over the course of a few years and eventually make the product unusable. The battery is glued in on the MacBook Pro, so it will eventually become useless. It's as simple as that, and very unfortunate. It's nice to have the option to upgrade the other parts too, though, and why not expect this, if it's clearly possible, as the Framework laptop shows?
My laptop has a single thunderbolt port. I use it for my 5k monitor. If that port goes, I need to get a new laptop. (That new laptop will be the Framework laptop, if they offer a 15" hi-DPI option.)
If my laptop was a Framework laptop, I'd just need to buy a pretty inexpensive new port and swap it out. It's a pretty big deal, in my opinion.
Linus has now invested in Framework, which constrains how he is allowed to review laptops on his channel because of the possibility of a conflict of interest. He says it's worth it to support what he believes is a great company with an awesome product vision.
Linus has shown his flagrant disregard for impartiality or any form of integrity over and over again. Look through the LTT back catalogue and you’ll see that Intel is big sponsor of theirs. The fact that he gives “honest” reviews of Intel products doesn’t magically make it okay.
You’d never see Dr. Ian Cutress of AnandTech or Steve from GamersNexus pulling this shit.
Of course he makes much more money than both of them combined. Make no mistake that he is an entertainer and a businessman.
There is a conflict of interest there, but as a counterpoint, pretty much every time he does a build video it seems like he picks AMD (at least, post Ryzen).
GamersNexus is all the time reviewing stuff positively and then taking on the same enterprise as sponsor. They can do that because their viewers know that they will still be very critical with the next product.
LTT also really always had the proper balance. Sponsored reviews are marked, sponsored segments are marked, and they are not holding back on negative reviews for long term channel sponsors. They totally ripped into Intel again and again for the failure to compete with AMD, and at the same time have Intel sponsor new hardware upgrades for team members in a sponsored mini-series. Totally fair.
> at the same time have Intel sponsor new hardware upgrades for team members in a sponsored mini-series. Totally fair.
Of course Intel did a big marketing push right as their products were the least competitive, and I'm sure LMG was paid large. Putting that kind of stunt in the same league as GN reviewing a product from a company that previously sponsored them (which is, of course, all that LTT does) is simply ridiculous.
"Balance" is such a weasel word in this context. They're playing both sides, plain and simple.
AnandTech quit doing SSD endurance testing as soon as vendors started selling trash TLC and QLC. Is that a coincidence? Can you really trust them?
There's a point where you need to put some trust in reviewers because the industry is set up to make them dependent on the manufacturers. However, there's a huge difference between traditional reviewers where employees are doing reviews and new age reviewers where influencers are doing the reviews.
People like Linus and Steve have way more incentive to put their own integrity over short term interests like pleasing a manufacturer, so it's very unlikely you'll ever see them shilling for anyone. Getting caught doing that once would ruin their brand (and credibility) because they are their brand.
In other words, there are no scape goats in the influencer space so they have way more incentive to be completely honest and transparent.
I remember when Tom's Hardware was new and I think the current generation of influencers / reviewers are going to obliterate the traditional media companies that have turned into affiliate marketing shills.
I think a lot of people underestimate how financially important it is for groups like LMG and GN to maintain the trust of their core audience.
In the videos Linus does breaking down LMG's revenue, about a third of it comes from a tiny fraction of their audience - merch and direct subscriptions. I'm sure it's a similar chunk if not more for GN through modmats, mousepads, and Patreon.
Even if they sold out their integrity and still got millions of views, it's that "hardcore" audience they can't really get back. In an enthusiast space where a large chunk of the audience are professionals with disposable income, it's a lot to lose.
I haven't seen anything from Linus or Steve to suggest that's the only reason they care so much about their integrity, they both seem to genuinely care, but y'know parasocial relationships etc.
"invested" is a bit of a misnomer here. He bought several of them for his employees. He was courted by Framework to buy into the company, but as far as I know, he noped out of that deal.
He posted a video a week ago indicating otherwise and that he is now a stock owner in the company. It's called "I'm Legally Obligated to Disclose This".
Soldered ram significantly decreases repair incidents (from unseated laptop ram) and increases runtime reliability (from direct electrical contact of said ram). It allows for the machine to ship with an optimized ram configuration (lane count, timing). It also reduces the part cost and device footprint.
Most RAM comes with a "lifetime" warranty. IMO if the soldered RAM is so great, they should give me a lifetime guarantee they'll replace the MB if the soldered RAM fails. Then I'd be ok with it.
And it's impossible to buy an upgrade for just one component. If you want 16GB of RAM you better be ready to buy an i7. If you want a nice 4k display you better be ready to buy a totally maxed out machine.
Just being able to use my own NVMe disk in something like a Framework translates into savings for me because I don't need a huge disk in my laptop and can reuse one that's too small for my server or desktop.
"Imagine being an engineer at a company at Apple, and it being your job to design the mechanism that makes it so that machine cannot start up unless the chassis is fully sealed. Apple spent actual fucking money making sure that product would not work unless it is in the exact chassis they shipped it in."
Where is that quote from? I wasn't able to find it via Google. Anyway, a computer that refuses to turn on after been tampered with does have its uses, particularly if your threat model is government secret services.
Realistically, if your threat model is government secret services, and you're using unmodified consumer grade electronics, then you're in 'danger' no matter what. You can't effectively mitigate a threat at the state level using resources produced under the watchful eye of the same state. All they have to do is ask the producer to swap out the device they gave you with a device that comes compromised out of the box. And that's assuming the tech is perfect. Most likely they just hire someone to defeat the countermeasures. However many resources Apple has, I assure you even the most janky state has more.
Special hardware seems 007 childish to me. What's better, having a high-tech tricked-out phone/laptop, or to just have a random stock Android with an inoffensive sim card in it? It seems obvious to me that if you're being targeted, tailed and tracked and probed, you've already lost.
No, I mean if you're buying a laptop off the shelf and not ripping telemetry components and whatnot (WIFI card/airgap for example). Customizing hardware to foil any out of the box attacks, rather than some sharks-and-lasers config to 'protect it'. Governments do this all the time for even slightly sensitive information.
Commenter above was saying though that the device's anti-tamper tech would save you from state level attacks. I'm just getting at the fact that that's not going to work, since if a proverbial 'they' want to take you out, there's other ways to do so you can't overcome. Just a few examples that came to me about how easy it is to foil anti-tampering measures.
Your "random stock Android" likely has a boatload of exploits open unless it's a Google Pixel.
> It seems obvious to me that if you're being targeted, tailed and tracked and probed, you've already lost.
Depends on which government agency watchlist you are. If you are some sort of Islamist terrorist, the tools that are open to the government are far more capable than if you are some sort of low level drug dealer.
If that's your threat model:
- You are fucked
- You are fucked, and there is nothing you can do about it
- The government won't care about some chassis check
- The government will use methods that nobody else has even considered possible yet
- There is literally nothing you can do, unless you have the backing of another nation.
I find it ridiculous that people build threat models around organisations with almost unlimited resources that will only care about you (enough to tamper with your hardware) if you have done something very, very wrong.
There are legit security reasons you’d want this. Giving the owner of the equipment the ability to manage this would have been the appropriate solution.
There are legit security reasons to employ platforms that accommodate in-house repair. 'Security' can also include requirements for traceability at the component level.
Apple's consistently demonstrates that their most important customers are their shareholders. They are experts at walking the line between maximizing profits and alienating their regular customers. If they felt that a modular computer would have a higher ROI, they would be all over it.
Honestly, I would not be surprised if Apple 'invented' the idea of 'integrated dongles' before their next keynote so they could sell you a $95 usb 2.0 port.
To be fair, if a company wants to produce something that only works on one set of hardware, that should be fine. We simple choose not to use it, right? And many of us /do/ choose to use it? But why do we choose to? Because we find that we're too busy to maintain a Linux-based workstation.
While there are questionable practices by Apple and many other machine producers, what you can't argue against is that in limiting the hardware that MacOS has to work with, they're able to deliver a level of stability and user experience that you don't get with Linux.
Sure, it would be great if we could replace the batteries, if we could upgrade the memory, and easily fix broken parts, but that isn't the company's ethos. The company produces devices that are plug and play, high grade consumer electronics. Nobody forces us to buy these products.
Anyway, that being said, the framework machines look super interesting and if they were UK available, I'd probably get one for a non-critical Linux-based workstation.
As if choosing a $1k+ computer to use for years was equivalent to choosing the flavor of ice cream scoops.
The "voting with your wallet" argument doesn't work when there's several variables in play, and the optimal configurations don't exist on the market. Like e.g. I'd like to buy a computer that's just like Macbook, except with repairable/swappable/upgradeable components. Or a phone that's just like iPhone, except with replaceable battery, a headphone jack, and repairable home button. But I can't have them - even if I'm ready to pay a bit extra, and if I'd welcome a thicker device. These options literally don't exist. Nothing similar to them exists. Particularly on the repairability front, every vendor is choosing to just not offer it.
You say all this, but you would agree; We really can't be telling private companies or individuals what to and what not to do with their technologies, right?
1) How do we enforce that at smaller scales?
2) How would we prevent our regulation from squashing innovative solutions to problems, or enhancing safety in critical applications?
> I'd like to buy a computer that's just like Macbook, except with repairable/swappable/upgradeable components
That's the thing, making something plug and play and mostly "driver-free" would be very hard to almost impossible. Framework laptops look amazing but they will require at least a bit more maintenance and knowledge, and that is fine too.
I agree with your larger point, regarding limited hardware support, etc.
I agree that Apple shouldn't have to support random mods / hardware components / etc and that their selling point is "it just works".
But then again, they don't have to be dicks about it. If they're able to detect that the hardware has somehow been modified, maybe just show some message along the lines of "you've modified the hardware, we're not supporting this anymore, you're on your own" instead of bricking it.
For what it's worth I don't think Apple has actually ever done this, and whatever made him believe they do was probably some other oversight during their disassembly/reassembly of the laptop
This effect exists all across society. Some culture seems to drive laziness / selfishness across the (irl) social network. Every would care but nobody can pull the whole network in the right direction. That's how your company doesn't have the right tool, the right app, the right something.
As a student, I do want my laptop to be slim and tiny, but I was misled by Apple into thinking slim and tiny is only possible if the laptop isn't at all repairable. Might sell my MacBook Pro for this thing. Though macOS is a guilty pleasure I will miss :(
I did a little research on this, and it seems the main (perhaps only?) problem is that all mobo configs come with an 11th gen Intel CPU with Iris Xe graphics.[1] Since the last Intel Macs used 10th gen chips with Iris Plus graphics, and Apple isn't making any more Intel Macs, it's likely that macOS will never support Iris Xe. What a shame. While I do intend to switch to Linux eventually, the ability to run macOS would have made it easier to switch from a MacBook.
I reserved a Steam Deck because I wanted to support Valve's efforts to expand support for Windows games (and by extension, apps) to Linux through their open source Proton project. I think the future of Linux is looking very bright.
Slim and tiny is what I wanted when thinkpads were smaller and lighter than average.
Once we hit five pounds and I had a bag that stopped caring about smaller laptops? Well that was about the time that desktops died and I could have used a workstation class laptop with some more flexibility.
But I opted for simple and put my energy somewhere else instead. Seems a lot of people did.
It's probably an important distinction between laptops and tablets that a laptop is free to expand into three dimensions when in use.
Strictly speaking, the throw of the keyboard when in use is not limited by the dimensions of the laptop when it's not in use. There is air above and sometimes below that the keys can occupy. Having the keys raise up when opening the lid might be mechanically impractical, but having the lid depress all of the keys is a matter of ignoring key presses until the lid is opened past an angle where it stops touching the top row of keys.
Based on the shape of the smudges on my screen I'm pretty sure that already happens to an extent.
Do you actually have any example of a corporation that makes laptops saying that it’s impossible to have slim laptops that are customizable? I would be very surprised if this ever happened, but I’m willing to be proven wrong.
You know, I can't think of a concrete example of that, when pressed, so it is possible this was just something repeated to me by coworkers and friends doing Apple apologia, and I just treated it as a truth. A quick Google doesn't appear to show Apple or any other corporation saying it, so I'll take the L on it.
I think my overall point still stands. I still find it irritating that, until very recently, the only way to get a nice, slim laptop was to accept that everything is hard-wired in. Framework proved that that's not correct.
FWIW, I also remember this claim being made, but yes, it may have just been Apple apologists in comments, or perhaps Apple wrt the iPhone battery, ages ago.
Your experience matches my own. I haven't heard it from a company but there are definitely Apple zealots/shills who would say that in threads about right to repair.
Yeah, sort of this strange Mandela effect thing I guess; I have a distinct memory of reading an official statement with Apple or Samsung claiming that that was the reason, but that statement does not appear to exist, and it seems like the most likely reason is because my brain just incorrectly extrapolated that memory from stuff non-Apple-non-Samsung folks were saying.
iFixit has repairability scores for products. Eg this Surface gets a 1 out of 10 because MS used adhesives among other problems. They traded off repairability for thermal, rigidity, and mechanical concerns.
> Kyle Weins (iFixit CEO) basically claiming that's the reason
I.e. The last person who can be trusted to report on Apple’s motivations.
It’s an absurd explanation. Some obvious other factors are:
1. The idea that a modular chassis is less robust over time. Not that it can’t be made, but that if you make millions of them, vastly more of them will have problems because of all the connectors etc.
We don’t have any data on the framework. Perhaps they’ll prove this to be a misplaced fear, but it’s also possible that framework laptops in aggregate will need more repairs because of the extra complexity.
2. Limited hardware profiles are easier to support with software. If users can create limitless combinations, it becomes much harder to test. This isn’t an issue for the typical Linux user who can do their own homework and fix their own issues, but it’s a deal breaker for someone who just wants to buy a computer and get work done.
Many companies do heavily promote the thinness of their device on launch. How many of them also say that it is thin and customizable? (And customisable doesn't mean choosing between 8 gb of soldered ram vs 16 gb of soldered ram). There's your answer.
The Framework is larger and weighs more than contemporary machines that have larger displays (e.g. ThinkPad X1 Carbon 9th generation), and it has worse performance and shorter battery life because soldered-in RAM isn't some kind of scam, it's actually much better.
In short, it was not a lie that you get smaller, lighter, and better laptops with integration. You do, in fact, get all of those things.
Is that a property of the components being soldered in, or just a property of the fact that Framework cannot get access to the highest quality components on the market?
Genuine question, I know very little about electrical components.
They have to use DDR4-3200 to be able to put the RAM on a stick. Integrated systems can use LPDDR4x-4267. You can't put that on a stick. It's a trade-off. It turns out it takes extra power to drive high-speed signals across long traces with connectors.
I'm fairly sure the power advantage comes from VDDQ being much lower: .6V for LPDDR4x and 1.2V for DDR4.
LPDDR4x is or at least can be 64 bits wide, just like DDR4.
Judging by reviews, the Framework loses 10% of CPU+GPU performance versus reference designs. That could be due to their memory subsystem or thermal design, or both. Ars Technica said the battery life was "mediocre" but I would have gone with "terrible". Compared to the Dell XPS 13 the Framework has only 60% the life.
the mounting hardware needed for replaceable dimms inherently takes more space on and above the board. the solder approach also gives more flexibility for board layout, since you don't have to reserve space for the exact size and shape of a standard module. see a teardown of the new blade 14 to see how this can be beneficial.
there is an inherent tradeoff between size, battery life, and modularity. if you can make a modular laptop with good specs and battery life, a competitor will always be able to offer the same thing in a smaller chassis or with a bigger battery.
With RAM, the problem is more that high capacity LPDDR4 modules simply aren't available on SODIMMs.
However this is only because manufacturers don't make them. If Apple asked Micron or Samsung for them, I'm sure it would happen.
A better argument for non-replaceable RAM can be found in the Apple Silicon chips. Building the memory into the SoC provides very tangible performance and efficiency benefits.
>With RAM, the problem is more that high capacity LPDDR4 modules simply aren't available on SODIMMs.
And I don't think they ever will be. From the little bit that I've read, the higher voltage that SODIMMs have to use has to do with noise in transmission. LPDDR4s have been connection through the direct solder, so are able to use lower voltages.
I'm not an electrical engineer but I have a hard time believing we can't design a socket that provides a connection as stable and free from interference as a solder joint. It could mean making a PGA or LGA socket similar to what we use for CPUs, but it should still be perfectly doable.
The Framework laptop is 1mm thicker and 200 grams heavier than the 9th gen Carbon. We've gone long past the point of diminishing returns when it comes to size/weight vs repairability trade offs.
I don't even care about slim. Light yes. Slim doesn't really do a whole lot for me past a certain point (which for me was a decade ago). Being able to replace parts is way more important.
Unfortunately currently framework says it is impossible to have a slim, tiny , customizable laptop with a trackpoint option (due to the keyboard height). Hopefully we will overcome this one too and I would be all in...
This is the barrier for me too. I'm writing this on a 4-year-old Thinkpad. (The "25th anniversary edition", which has my favorite keyboard.) If somebody figures that out, I'm happy to switch, as my feelings on the Thinkpad line are the same as Doctorow's: formerly great, now sadly declining.
I’ve never understood the trackpoint use case, the (admittedly few) computers I’ve had with it, I just felt it a nuisance in the middle of the keyboard.
To the same goes for the trackpad for me. I am always disabling them to avoid accidental contact. I guess this is why we need more customizable devices.
> We suspect the Framework's high-brightness, high-resolution display is the culprit for its relatively poor battery life—the XPS 13 at the top of the chart is a 1080p non-touch model, as is the Acer Swift below it.
And the XPS has an i7-1065G7 [1] vs the Framework with an i7-1185G7 [2]. So the Framework has a better screen and a better CPU. I'm not sure I agree with running that benchmark without other data alongside it like a score or the average clock rate.
For example, I put a 2nd battery in a ThinkPad once and it had the effect of locking the CPU clock to <1GHz. The battery was predicted to last much longer than normal, but it was useless as a computer.
We suspect the Framework's high-brightness, high-resolution display is the culprit for its relatively poor battery life—the XPS 13 at the top of the chart is a 1080p non-touch model, as is the Acer Swift below it. Directly comparing 3:2 resolutions with 16:9 or 16:10 resolutions is an exercise in frustration—but the Framework's display offers noticeably higher pixel density than its competitors here, and that does not come for free.
The only laptop for which that seems to be true is the MacBook, but no x86 laptop will come close to that. From what I've seen the Framework has a mostly uninteresting battery life, outperforming some likely competitors (like Dell's XPS 13 and MS's Surface Laptop) and outperformed by others (like HP's ProBook x360 and ASUS's Zenbook 13).
Interesting. Tom's Guide says pretty much the exact opposite, with the XPS coming in at roughly 78% the battery life of the Framework.
> In our battery test, which sets the laptop’s screen brightness to 150 nits and tasks it with endlessly browsing the web via Wi-Fi, the Framework lasted 10 hours and 17 minutes. That’s better than the Dell XPS 13 (7:59)
Maybe the XPS 13 configuration was different? Or maybe the tests were different in nature? Ars used PCMark 10, which is a standard benchmark that Dell could have specifically optimized for.
The Ars review does have this to say later on:
> The Framework also manages surprisingly high battery life under Ubuntu—in our semi-scientific video playback test, Framework runs neck and neck with the outstanding Acer Swift 3 at just over five hours, with everything else (including the XPS 13, which in this case is hampered by a 4k touchscreen display) trailing well behind.
As battery tech gets better, you can replace it. And the glued-in battery in the macbook pro won't be 100% capacity after a bunch of charge/discharges.
It's a compromise in the short term maybe, but long term it's so much nicer.
It's not just a status symbol, it's also a fantastic laptop. I honestly don't find it reasonable to recommend normal people anything other than an M1 Mac at this point.
I've replaced a glued in MacBook Pro battery. It isn't a big deal and very similar to the Framework, except the Framework has mechanical connections (screws and tabs). The battery replacement kit came with everything needed. It didn't come with newly additional capacity because the underlying changes in battery chemistry aren't there. The improvements in battery life mostly come from CPUs with lower TDP.
As far as I can tell, this laptop has a 55 Wh battery. A macbook pro of the same size (13in) has a 58 Wh battery and the dell XPS 13 has a 52 Wh battery. What am I missing?
Capacity isn’t the only metric for batteries. The faster you draw down the more power converts to heat. Different battery chemistry changes that a bit, but also aggressive power management to flatten (and lower) the curve matters a great deal.
Apple nailed that during the same generation they introduced the unreplaceable battery. Better density, less packaging, and improved power management virtually doubled the run time on that laptop versus the previous. That was a huge deal at the time.
I love the Framework idea, and believe in repairability. But I’ll be interested to see what Framework does when they have the (enviable) challenge of manufacturing, distributing, and supporting half a billion of them.
I'm impressed that they have managed to take this product to market, and I'm glad that people who value modularity will finally have a viable option.
at the same time, I personally don't see what all the fuss is about. you can upgrade both DIMMs, which is cool, but not exactly unheard of these days (I guess it's getting there in an ultraportable?). you're still stuck with DDR4, which is almost EOL, and the max capacity it entails. it's neat that you can customize your IO options, but how many people are going to do that more than once? being constrained by the chipset, it's not like you're going to be able to "upgrade" your IO in the future.
the most likely parts of a laptop to fail are the SSD and the battery, both of which are fairly easy to replace on almost all laptops. past that, you aren't really gaining that much when you're locked into whatever CPU/chipset was current when you bought the laptop.
>Newer laptops are starting to come with soldered SSDs
Which newer laptops? Other than Macs and crappy $199 Walmart grade
tablet-chromebook thingamajigs, I don't know any mainstream PC laptop that does that (thankfully).
Even super light and super slim laptops still have replaceable storage. Even niche Pocket Computers like the GPD and Valve Steam Deck still have replaceable SSDs.
If Macs are doing it, others are soon to follow. Apple has been a trend setter for years. They were belittled for getting rid of the 3.5mm jack, only for flag ship phones to begin doing so.
Soon when? Apple has been doing it for 5 years now and the rest of the industry hasn't even started.
The truth is, unlike with RAM, it's still cheaper for the other laptop manufacturers to have a single motherboard SKU which they can later plug whatever cheap COTS SSDs they can get from various sources rather than waste effort tayloring a motherboard for a specific SSD controller, specific DRAM cache chips and specific Flash chips, as that gives them way less flexibility in component sourcing during production lifecycle and more expense in board design resulting in more expensive products with no extra margins for them.
Apple can do this economically as they have a very tightly controlled supply chain with high volumes and due to the little variation in SKUs so they can just use the same SSD controller on all their products and just change the amount of Flash chips soldered on the board and call it a day.
we'll have to wait and see whether this actually happens, but if so, that would certainly invalidate my biggest criticism. if they could pull it off on a 14"-15.6" chassis with a discrete gpu, they would probably get my money.
also, pretty sure that is correct english, why the [sic]?
> also, pretty sure that is correct english, why the [sic]?
Perfectly correct English yes - I just meant that I was disagreeing with that, you're not locked to it. (I don't think it's an incorrect use of it, but thinking about it it's not a common one - can just quote and say 'that's not right' after all - so I don't know I bothered, sorry.)
> Perfectly correct English yes - I just meant that I was disagreeing with that, you're not locked to it.
fair enough :)
and I saw that guide too. my skepticism is regarding what happens when the next generation (or an AMD variant) arrives. will the new mainboards be drop-in replacements for the old? if nothing else, this would make it difficult to radically change the cooling solution, which could be a big problem for the dGPU machine I'd like to see.
maybe my initial comment was too harsh. they have delivered a fully user-repairable machine, which is a great thing. but what I want is a fully upgradable machine, in the sense of a DIY desktop build. they have made some vague promises around the latter, but I'll reserve my judgement until I see it actually happen.
I have a MacBook Pro w/ Retina Display from Mid-2012. It cannot be fixed for a reasonable price, despite it being still mostly perfect for my daughter's school computing.
This computer definitely interests me (as someone who moved back to Ubuntu / Regolith this year)
IMO, the selling point isn't that you can carry around the ports you might potentially use and swap them out whenever you need them, it's that you can buy a machine that's tailored to your setup and peripherals.
I bought a laptop at the beginning of 2020 after the GPU on my old one fried. What I wanted was something with a Cat6 and DisplayPort built in for when I'm in my office, and multiple USB-A ports for the peripherals I use (mouse/keyboard/mic/speakers). I had to settle for one with a single extra USB-C port, an additional USB-C hub to get enough USB-A ports and a Cat6, and an adaptor for the built-in HDMI port to hook up to the DisplayPort on my monitor, which set me back a total of like $100 on top of the cost of the laptop itself. The laptop also has a headset jack and large card reader that I have yet to use, so that's just wasted space that could have potentially been something I would have actually used.
According to Clayton Christensen, there's a cycle between integrated and modular, as consumer perferences change. At first performance is inadequate, but once it is good enough, people base their buying decisions on other things like customization.
e.g. By this theory, android would become more popular than iphone.
EDIT yes, which happened, favouring the theory; despite iphone still leading performance, due to integration even to cpu and gpu.
> we were constantly told by these corporations "it's impossible to have slim, tiny laptops and make them customizable"
Because it’s true. The thing is “power users” and “regular users” look at that tradeoff differently. The bad part of economies of scale is that they reward conformity (you can pick your model T in any color, as long as that color is black).
The framework would a hard time competing in the general laptop market, but luckily for them, they don’t have to. There’s a niche for specialized products and they are taking advantage.
I’ve looking at their laptops since they announced, I’m just hoping they can release a Ryzen one, and then I’ll be on the fence between theirs and whatever Apple has to show for a ARM pro laptop (14”-15”).
>I’ve looking at their laptops since they announced, I’m just hoping they can release a Ryzen one, and then I’ll be on the fence between theirs and whatever Apple has to show for a ARM pro laptop (14”-15”).
I'm in the same boat. While I in principle would love to invest in a powerful AMD laptop with tons of upgradeability with decent Linux support, Apple's next offerings which may give upgraded displays, my favorite trackpads, impressive power and ~20 hours of battery life is very hard to ignore.
The only reason these two groups look at it differently is because people in the "regular users" group don't know how bad things are, and how good things could be. What makes you think the Framework would have a hard time competing in the general laptop market? The baseline, preassembled model starts at $1000 and comes with Windows 10 Home. It has a quad-core i5, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB storage, a nice 2256x1504 display, and it's thin and light (1.3kg, 11.7" x 9" x 0.6"). Compare that to your other thin and light options at this pricepoint:
XPS 13: $1020
* i5
* 8 GB RAM
* 256 GB storage
* 1920 x 1200 display
* 1.2 kg, 11.6" x 7.8" x 0.6"
MacBook Pro: $1300
* M1
* 8 GB RAM
* 256 GB storage
* 2560 x 1600 display
* 1.4kg, 12" x 8.7" x 0.6"
This isn't even accounting for repairability as a feature. Consumers don't care about that as it stands, because they don't know they should. But once they realize, it will become a selling point, too.
Besides planned obsolescence and other malicious intentions, there are also economies of scale to consider: if making a non modular/repairable laptop cost to a producer just one less buck, that's a lot of money when multiplied by the huge number they sell.
That said, I love the concept and plan to buy one next year, when they hopefully will have means to sell in the EU without outrageous shipping+import duties.
I wonder if the slowdown in Moore's law had something to do with it? I mean back in the day the performance gap between a new processor and a 5-10 year old one was so substantial it was hardly worth your while
> After seeing the framework, I'm more than a little annoyed that I fell for this.
Me too. An I'm annoyed I fell for the lie that board level repair is impossible. What the manufacturers really should be saying is "it's impossible for us" because it's obviously possible for 3rd parties to do it and make a business out of it.
I'm willing to pay +$100 for something that's assembled with screws instead of glues.
It seems more likely that tech has advanced enough for this, rather than there being some greedy phenomenon where it just so happened that nobody thought to do better before framework.
Why should we believe anything any for-profit company says, without verifying (whenever possible)? Drug companies lie all the time, about having to price their drugs absurdly high. Facebook lies all the time about not being able to fact check, without even attempting to try seriously. And on and on.
The insane thing is not that companies lie. It is that the general public has either given up or duped into thinking these companies cannot possible lie. We have created an economic system where profit trumps everything else.
To be fair to "these corporations," the modules available for the Framework are basically built-in USB-C dongles. If you really hate the look of dongles, then thats great. If you only use one thing, like HDMI, then you don't have to cart around a bunch of modules as if they are dongles.
The three internal upgrad-ables are nice if you think that things will drastically change in RAM, SSD, or Wifi before the CPU, mainboard or faster connections to faster RAM and SSD make the effect of said upgrad-ables to be gilding a turd. Otherwise periodically buy the midrange storage and allow the secondary market to absorb your environmental guilt.
HP is a notable exception to this trend, they still make multiple ranges of slim, customizable laptops (at least non-touchscreen models). I oversee IT for an org of ~150 people and have swapped out RAM and M.2 SSDs on multiple recent HP ProBooks, EliteBooks, and a ZBook in the last few weeks with just a Phillips screwdriver and a spudger.
Nothing epoxied shut or soldered in place, and the metal cases on recent generations of these HP models are sturdier than the older plastic. Our lead tech has replaced HP laptop batteries, keyboards and displays when needed with no issues. HP is also one of the few brands with backlit keyboards standard on most laptops, even down to the lower-end models I've encountered since 2018.
My Dell laptop just cross three years in June and the extended warrantee also got expired. The battery has been deteriorating with only a few mins of backup left. Called up the customer care and they asked to instead contact nearby service center. Tried with multiple in Delhi NCR and no one seem to have a battery – one of them said that no battery is available right now (God knows why?)
Finally, somehow got one via Amazon supplied from a state 1600 KMs away from here for about $80 in a week time. It could very well be expensive than the one gotten from the service center but, was left with no option.
I've never met someone before that cares about cpu fan noise. Genuinely. It never bothers me so I have never thought about it. Perhaps also because my workflow involves playing music when I work to make me more productive.
Getting a noise less and fast laptop is a good improvement. It's like going from a fossil car to an electric one. So much less noise and vibrations. The noise is acceptable but it's annoying to go back.
My MacBooks have generally been quiet, but not silent. Having lived with the M1 MacBook Air since it came out, I _never_ want to go back to a fan. Silence is a luxury.
It's a shame ARM isn't quite a first-class desktop architecture quite yet. I'd probably use one if my software ran on it. Otherwise, I figure in 10-15 years, when it is "fully featured," the architecture will have already been usurped by RISC-V.
Same here. I went from a thinkpad to an m1 air, and although the noise wasn’t something that bothered me before, I do appreciate its absence now. The battery life also is a big draw. I can go to the office without a charger, and it’s not a problem. I’ve never had a laptop that made it past half a workday.
Ehn.. I used to be like you. Once I used Pixelbook, a superthin fanless device, I was in awe. Pixelbook Go was similar fanless device as well. But, then I realized that they have their limitations. With a fan, one can achieve much better performance when needed. So, now, I prefer a laptop that can passively cool for normal day to day work, and then for heavy workloads take advantage of the fan.
I got the framework laptop, which should be able to push the intel chip to the max 28 TDP. I heard the fan is big, and thus not annoying. I am curious to see how it will turn out (My batch 3 order gets delivered tomorrow).
Yeah I guess I don't have a ton of experience here outside of mac laptops, but the idea of a PC laptop that only kicks in the fans when truly intensive tasks are being run sounds pretty nice.
My experience has mostly been that when any work is being done, the fans spin up. It's jarring when you're trying to focus on the problem at hand.
You need to find your fan rpm/noise threshold. On my laptop the fan becomes noticeable above 2500rpm. Someone commented about adjusting the fan curve (I have no idea how), I just manually capped the CPU performance with a powersave profile instead.
You're right about cooling for intel/amd, with the note that the M1 is a whole different beast - it can deliver good performance with only passive cooling anyway
As much as I love speculating about backdoors and NSA wiretapping, I seriously doubt these MEs are malicious. At this point, managing a modern x86 is tough work, especially if you want to run virtualization, complex threading and maintain high efficiency. It makes total sense that there are mandatory supervisor chips at this point, and without any evidence that these chips are "phoning home," I simply have to assume that it's purpose is virtualized KVM for remote management. Worst case scenario, the CIA wakes up my laptop while I'm asleep, big whoop.
It does not even matter if they are actively malicious. They are closed, non-removable, with proven vulnerabilities (which not only CIA can use). What else do you need?
At 47:10, they mention that they haven't found anything evil. Ofc, this isn't hard proof, but if I trust anyone's answer, then it's theirs. I think the likelihood of it being malicious is nonzero, but small enough that I'd condemn active backdoors into the realm of conspiracy theories.
There's always the possibility of it being exploited by others, but c'mon: Basically ANY other exploit would be way easier to distribute and activate than one in the PSP.
I have a DIY version preordered, due in October - planning on transferring over my NVME SSD and 32GB of RAM from my busted, falling apart XPS15 into the new Framework.
I wonder about the trackpad, too. Apple has always smoked everyone else at trackpads. After using theirs for so many years, every time I touch another it feels crusty and unresponsive.
As a long time thinkpad user I love mine. Only problem I have now is my go-to OS Ubuntu does a really bad job of fractional scaling out of the box and none of the workarounds seem to really solve the problem. Sadly the crappy screens on my thinkpads more or less "hid" this problem from me for years.
I agree. I really like the keyboard on the original Google Pixelbook, the Pixelbook Go, as well as the Framework. Nothing compares to the pre-chiclet Thinkpad keyboard though (IMHO).
I might try that. I've tried Ubuntu 20 and 21 and they still look blurry to me pretty much no matter what I do. maybe I can figure out what PopOS includes in their distro and I can set that up on Ubuntu.
But why the dongles? The go against all the principles of the rest of the design. They’re proprietary, consumable, and they waste space in the chasis. They limit what you can do with the USB-C they pass through too.
Only a guess but they also act as a sacrificial device in place of the motherboard's USB-C connector. I've read here on HN that Macbook USB-C adapters regularly fail.
Louis Rossmann recently reviewed the Framework laptop and basically said the exact same thing, about them taking a lot of the stress off the soldered USB-C portion and transferring it to the chassis instead.
They are actually open-source[1] so you can print your own case in a 3d printer and put the circuit you want inside. About the USB-C limitation, I initially thought it was a limitation too but Im not sure after learning that you can use them as thunderbolt ports. Anyway, I think the notebook seems to be thin enough and the possibilities of dongle are exciting[2] - like magsafe chargers[3] (which seems to have some patent problems).
I think I read somewhere that they were planning to open up the specs of those modular ports. That may alleviate some of the points you bring up. (Can't find the source right now though.)
In what way do they limit the USB-C they pass through?
> In what way do they limit the USB-C they pass through?
GP means that if you use one other than the USB-C pass-through module, it's (trivially) a proper subset of the USB-C functionality that you started out with.
I don't really see the issue: the alternative is that you do that in a dongle more external to the laptop anyway?
If a product manager is listening: you have my interest. I'll be excited when mouse buttons become available. It'll make my shortlist when it has Coreboot, and if Libreboot is on, I'll be obliged to give you my money.
The author spent some time explaining the need to have a reliable laptop and spending $150 for 24-hour service and having two Powerbooks at once. But there was no mention of anything about reliability and repairs (well, replacement parts) for the Framework. I'm curious if he plans to keep a second Framework laptop in case parts are sold out, take too long to ship, etc.
He might have to. As far as I can tell they haven’t even started selling individual parts yet. They all just say “Coming soon” on the website. I’m not sure what they are waiting for.
My guess is that they are using up all their manufacturing capacity to sell new full laptops (and DIY kits). Their current manufacturing setup seems to be that they periodically batch a bunch of what are essentially pre-orders and then get things manufactured after the fact.
Once they're more established and have money in the bank (hopefully that happens), they can think about ramping up manufacturing and actually keeping inventory before it's been spoken for.
Until then, at least the commodity parts (RAM, storage, WiFi card) can be replaced with off-the-shelf parts bought from NewEgg or wherever.
ive seen a lot of requests for an AMD version but i always see people complain about AMD's linux support. Do you plan on running windows? If you are planning on Linux is the support really as bad as people complain.
I say that because intel's linux support seems to me as top notch. ive never really had driver issues that i can think of
Hey, AMD (Zen2 3800X) and Linux (NixOS - 5.14.6) user here; other than a weird bug once on temperature reading I haven't had a single issue between Linux and AMD.
> i always see people complain about AMD's linux support
I've always heard the opposite, that AMD's linux support is amazing and that it's windows drivers are lacking. Especially in the GPU department where it struggles with minecraft.
This is true, AMD's GPU Linux drivers are open source and in superb shape nowadays (with the exception of freshly released stuff as there's always lag)
Since it’s a laptop then I could see that being an issue though. Intels embedded GPU I guess are slow and clunky but work super well in Linux in my experience.
Oh I’m glad I don’t. You know what I dreamt it all up. Thanks for clearing that up.
But honestly just subscribing to the Linux subreddit I see tons of amd gpu issues and never hear a peep out of Intel. But yes nvidia does win the prize for worst.
I've been runnning linux with AMD cpu/gpu for years, they tend to be late with initial stuff but other than that it's been a smooth sailing.
That being said, it will differ from distro to distro, as some are unreadably slow with driver/firmware updates.
The CPU is not socketed/replacable because intel simply does not sell socketed laptop CPUs. If there was a socketed alternative, I'm sure it would be in the framework.
What is the distinction between 'laptop CPU' and 'desktop CPU' if not BGA (or whatever it is) vs. socketed packaging though, really? Power consumption?
Wouldn't it be nice if there just 'CPUs', and you could pick whatever was appropriate for your desktop or laptop. Sure some would maybe only make sense in one package, but there must be some considerable overlap. I use my desktop for work because it has upgradeable RAM and I needed to do that, not because it has a beefier CPU than is available in a laptop.
Yes, power consumption, and, relatedly, heat dissipation. You'd probably get unusable battery life in a laptop with a desktop CPU, and need a lot of fans to cool it.
Yes, it's mostly power consumption and efficiency, with the puny heatsinks found in most laptops, you can't cool significant amounts of power without throttling. Having the CPU on the motherboard also allows for a thinner assembly. I don't think having a socketed CPU just for the sake of it would have been a good choice here.
I still remained baffled by the popularity of the laptop. Literally everyone I know works with them fixed in one location; their desk. Yes, some people do need mobility, but this appears to be a minority of consumers. We could’ve had all this repairability and modularity years ago if most consumers just admitted that really they wanted a desktop all along.
Even when I'm home 90% of the time during COVID, I use my laptop in lots of places: my desk, my bed, my dining table, my kitchen counter, my couch. I can't drag my desktop setup all around my apartment like that.
It makes sense if you use the laptop as a desktop - plugging it to a bigger monitor with an external keyboard and mouse. Otherwise it's hard to have good ergonomic with a laptop and you can't work long hours on it without developing some body pain.
I don’t use my laptop in any of those places because my desktop setup isn’t there. Laptop keyboards are awful to type on, why put yourself through that?
I’d rather get my work done at the desk and then enjoy my hammock or couch without the computer, preferably with a good book.
You must be out of touch. In the last 20 or so years of work (~8 employers), I have never had a desktop as a primary work machine (I've had desktops as a secondary machine). My primary personal machine has also been a laptop in that time frame.
I'm not sure how common it is, but at my old job devs and business analysts would regularly go on site to work with clients. Larger teams would have build boxes for CI and VMs that we could remote into if need be, but other than that laptops were absolutely required.
I'm currently writing this at a coffee shop surrounded by others all working on various things. I really like the option to work from anywhere.
My experience is that everyone claims they want the ability to go to a coffee shop, but very few actually exercise it. Obviously some will, like you, but not most. And unfortunately the perception of need drives behavior more strongly than actual need. Same with “off road” vehicles and trucks, people buy things based on capability they’ll never exercise.
Personally I loved the idea of working from a coffee shop until I actually tried it. Then I found that the glamour of the idea was much more than the experience of trying to do focused work in a noisy environment on a cramped keyboard. So instead I do work in my office, and leave my laptop permanently closed and connected like the worlds most expensive Mac Mini.
Literally everybody in my company (a large enterprise) uses a laptop as their main workstation. They work with them docked at their desks, but then unplug them to take them to a meeting room, a shared working space, etc.
Outside of work, 90% of people I know have a laptop as their main computing device at home. Very few have a desktop PC - those are the PC gamers.
Your anecdotal experience doesn't match with my anecdotal experience.
My anecdotal experience matches yours. I work for a smallish business in an active growth phase, and the onboarding process for every employee starts with "Welcome to the company, here's your laptop."
Right, which doesn’t actually contradict what I said in any way. I did not say that companies are giving out desktops, genuinely not sure why everyone is pretending to the contrary.
Even if you mostly work at your desk, a desktop computer has just no option for mobility if you ever want to work somewhere else temporarily. It seems like many people value the option of mobility, even if they don't use it often.
What? I finally switched from a desktop battlestation PC at work and at home to a high-powered gaming/compute laptop that I dock at work/home in my 3x monitor setup with mechanical keyboards and such at each location - and I'm a 1990's LAN party, lug your giant tower to the basement of your buddy's place nerd.
I was really late to switch and I don't regret it at all. Almost everyone I know made this switch 5+ years ago before me.
I also needed a laptop anyway with the battlestations, because I travel for work. Now it's all in one package and I spent a lot less money on it.
Really? This has maintained true for you even during the pandemic?
I don't know a single person who uses their laptop in one place. Hell, every one of my co-workers has been at home or in the office with their machine at least a couple times over the past month.
Yes. It has maintained true for me throughout the entire pandemic.
Laptop ergonomics are catastrophically bad. Doing any meaningful work on them for any length of time without my keyboard, monitor, and mouse just plain sucks, so I don’t do it.
My personal machines (gaming and non) are both desktops. I’ve never wanted to move them, and they cost me a fraction of what an equivalent laptop would have.
I keep my personal computer at my desk in my apartment almost all of the time, and for the past decade have used a desktop since I pretty much never needed to move it. But over that decade with a desktop, I found myself wanting - craving - the ability to easily take my computer on trips, or into the living room from time to time, etc. Not a lot of movement, but the possibility for it. But the concept of having files/projects split over a desktop AND a laptop seemed to be a hassle. And syncing seemed to be a not-so-ideal situation (possibly hard to set up, or requiring a paid service, or not reliable, etc). The best solution I found was a dockable laptop setup. I've now been using a dockable laptop setup for almost a year and I honestly can't imagine ever going back.
The only other solution I could envision I'd be happy with is one that doesn't exist: where I have a processor and storage "core" that I can use in a variety of dumb terminals. That's my real dream, but a dockable laptop is kind of similar.
I could do without the iPad and use my phone, I just coincidentally have an iPad I inherited. I will not be buying another iPad once it dies, nor will my next personal computer be a laptop.
The funny thing is that the laptop is actually incapable of doing the one thing I would reasonably want it to do: work outside. It overheats within 5 minutes and slows to a halt if I dare let the sun hit it. Both the iPad and iPhone handle this task easily, weirdly enough.
And this is really the issue I have with laptops; they try to be everything to everyone and they end up sucking at any given one task as a result. Compared to my Mac mini my MBP is expensive and underpowered with compromised ergonomics and thermals. Compared to my iPad my laptop has poor battery life, weighs a ton, and overheats in the sun. All that buying a MBP has done is waste $2k extra of $CORPs money, and produce a bit more e-waste given the short upgrade cycle they have me on.
Carrying to meetings to be productive or stare at Zombo (back when meetings were in person). Some of my co-workers have a hybrid schedule and work won't give us two machines. Getting things done while attending conferences (if those happen again).
I am growing increasingly unhappy with Thinkpads in general, but as far as I know there is no real alternative for TrackPoint users. There are some that have a TrackPoint but they lack three physical mouse button that are in reach of ones thumbs.
A few things. The newer TrackPoint caps are not good. I actually had to order some 3D printed one from some Japanese guy. Also my Thinkpad T14 is throttling to the extent that I had to install tools [1] (?) that fix this problem. Battery seems to be bad as well. Intel by the way, I wanted to have Thunderbolt for an eGPU.
Work gave me a dell XPS last year. I had it for a Week and gave it back because when I turned it on. The fans spin full throttle. And the laptop still throttled itself. So I use my X1E for work. The nipple is as good but it’s flat for the thin profile.
I upgraded all 3 laptops with more or better ram, wifi, and ssds. And currently ordering a Traditional Chinese keyboard for the L5P for the wifey. But I took AMD for the legions.
I regret not opting for the Ryzen variant, but I really wanted to replace my old desktop computer for the occasional gaming session (although they are rare these days) and hence the need for Thunderbolt.
> I actually had to order some 3D printed one from some Japanese guy
Thank you for mentioning this alternative! Just found him on Etsy. I have always preferred the old-style concave nibs for TrackPoints over the new convex ones. This will be a serious improvement for my Thinkpad.
Some of the latest models in the "classic" lines with one or more RAM slots: P14s Gen 2 AMD/Intel (a.k.a. T14 Gen 2 AMD/Intel); T15 Gen 2 / P15s Gen 2; P15 Gen 2; T15p Gen 2; P1 Gen 4; X1 Extreme Gen 4. Plus some of the slightly more "budget" ones like L14 Gen 2 AMD/Intel and E14 Gen 3 AMD.
Tip: search "<model name> psref" to quickly get to a PDF with specifications.
I've bought it without any OS installed. But of course the general practice may be good reason to avoid Lenovo (if you can live without a TrackPoint, that is).
What would be the requirement for someone to build a trackpoint for the Framework laptop? Would they need to design a whole new keyboard plus a touchpad with the three buttons?
I don't really know, but since there are no manufacturers that built good TrackPoints I think its either hard or there really is no demand (sadly more likely).
I don't need a touchpad though. Actually, one of the best laptops I've owned was one without a touchpad [1].
> I don't really know, but since there are no manufacturers that built good TrackPoints I think its either hard or there really is no demand (sadly more likely).
Those are good points. I'm thinking there could be patents involved too.
> I don't need a touchpad though. Actually, one of the best laptops I've owned was one without a touchpad [1].
That's true! I don't really use the touchpad on my X230, even though it's there.
that's not really a reason why you would need/want that though. Like my gripe isn't that he's wasting money, it's that there is no point to doing so because there's no tangible improvement between one generation and the next. So I guess it is an answer to a "why" but not the "why" I mean, if that makes sense
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 446 ms ] threadI think I might want a beige laptop, something with the fine lines of The Framework and the raw aesthetic appeal of Lappy 486.
What a fucking travesty.
And note how this laptop has removable DDR4 SODIMM sticks!
I couldn't believe it when people were arguing that's impossible because signal pathways or some shit (too many laptops have it soldered these days).
"Responding to your comments on the Framework investment" - One of LTT channels
Surprisingly NSFW, because they show a clip from Louis Rossman's Video talking about Linus' investment (its pretty funny, because it was Live)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7f3DTDsocA
It's not bring your own but still upgradable, which is what I care about, especially with a smaller company obviously trying to keep everything ethics of repairability.
Forget the cost, but the waste!
> The environmental consequences of that system weren't lost on me, even given my very good track-record of re-homing my old computers with people who needed them.
> The environmental consequences of that system weren't lost on me, even given my very good track-record of re-homing my old computers with people who needed them.
Not really that uncommon especially with a MacBook Pro where a new one is released...every year.
How much sense it makes, that's another story.
If you buy a $2000 Mac and use it for as long as reasonably, it's going to depreciate by several hundred dollars (let's say, roughly $300) a year. At a certain point it's worth nearly zero, and you must buy a new laptop. After 6-7 years your total outlay is $2000.
Alternatively, every year or two you can sell the old one for a few hundred dollars less than the new model, and buy the new model. You always have a new laptop. And your total outlay is still only about $2000. Plus you are covered by free AppleCare every time you buy the new one.
Plenty of people do this with mobile phones and automobiles and other things as well.
Please note that I am not advocating it. I was still using my 2015 laptop until very recently. But economically it is not necessarily insane.
(Assuming you are selling the old laptops, that is. It's not clear to me that the author is doing that. He says he's donating/rehoming them. Not sure if that includes selling)
Though, with Macs, it's trivial - their migration tool is peerless. (As one would certainly expect and demand: since they control the whole software/hardware stack)
And they last for years and years, and I doubt the cost:performance:longevity ratios can be beat.
After the fourth or so time of doing this, and after getting higher-paying jobs, I ended up biting the bullet for a more expensive computer, and it lasted me five years, and I only replaced it because I wanted more RAM.
Point is, if you're lower-income, it's fairly easy to get stuck in the "one laptop a year" trend, because, while probably a better deal in the long term, it's really hard for lower-income to justify a multi-thousand dollar expense. I'm a proper tech bro now so buying a good computer isn't the worst thing in the world for me, but that wasn't always the case.
I think there's more junk at the low end to avoid, but it's not as if the high end doesn't have a lot of junk to avoid. Either way, you have to do careful shopping.
It's like just my opinion, but a lot of higher end laptop spending seems to be on increasing the screen's DPI, which is then run with scaling, at the cost of more CPU, more RAM, more GPU, and more software BS. Buying a cheaper laptop with fewer pixels that just runs 1:1 saves all that extra computation and BS, and maybe looks a bit less nice. Sometimes glossy screens are reserved for the high cost laptops, which is like wait, I want a matte screen, so I have to save money to get one, great!
For example, I used to have an Asus computer whose plastic surrounding the screen decided to start coming detached from the monitor flap. This made the laptop substantially more fragile and annoying to use, and after a certain point I tried to remedy this with gorilla glue and it led to this ugly mess on the bottom left corner. The laptop still "worked" in the sense that still did computation, but it was crappier. Then the 7 key broke off the keyboard, I was unable to put it back on, so I just decided I didn't need the 7 key, since I didn't type 7 that often, and when I did I could still hit the little switch. Again, the laptop still "worked" in the sense that it still did computation, but it was crappier. A bunch of other stuff ended up happening (e.g. the LED for the backlight started to go out and become this flickery mess, the connector to the battery didn't always seem to make contact, etc).
Stuff like that starts to add up, and "experience" is substantially more difficult to quantify. I bought an expensive Macbook, and I never had any issues outside of the inevitable "moores law" depreciation.
I hope that keeps going. I used a macbook for work for almost 8 years, and they did OK, but I had one that decided not to take external power and the hard drive wasn't removable, thankfully I noticed it wasn't charging while it was near full so I could pull a backup to a spare work hand. And then there was the year where iTunes would have a 25% chance of spewing high volume digital noise at me instead of playing music. I guess that was a software problem because it went away with the next major OS X release, but no useful forum contents. I think there was something else bothersome too, but not sure anymore.
I got a business class laptop in 2007 for probably 3 times as much. That laptop lasted me until last month. I maxed out the RAM and replaced the HD with an SSD about 7 years ago, but it was ultimately the now-anemic CPU and graphics that got me to buy a replacement. I'd have replaced it last fall but laptop stocks were too low.
It's a little less visible for laptops than for, say, kitchen appliances, but even there my thinkpad x220 was bought and upgraded for €400 in 2015, and it did its job well untill half way this year.
Either way, you'll pay about as much for a used ThinkPad in good condition with good specs as you would for a new HP Stream or other cheaptop.
Tangential, but a bit of a lifehack I figured out awhile ago is that corporations dump off old servers on eBay for basically nothing, and most servers allow you to install a regular desktop graphics card in there. Servers usually have a lot of CPUs and a lot of RAM, so 9 years ago when a broke me needed enough power to do cool stuff on the computer, I would go buy a used server on eBay, and it was good enough for video processing and editing and gaming and distributed computing experiments...as long as I remembered to turn it off when I wasn't using it. Whenever I would accidentally leave it on for a few days, I would end up increasing my power bill by ~$40, a lot of money when you don't have much.
Still, it's a trick I still use occasionally, even now that I make decent money. I semi-recently bought a 48 core, 128gb RAM server for around $400, which I use for any big computing experiments. Could I just spin up an AWS box with these specs? Probably, but I think there is value in being able to have the hardware locally.
Four cores and 12gb of RAM would make a pretty solid build server, with enough room left for a Minecraft and video streaming server to boot! Sounds like a pretty awesome find.
> That was my homework: go away and think of an immediate reason not to smoke. When I came back, I had my answer ready: “I spend two laptops per year on smokes. That money goes directly to the dirtiest companies on Earth, the literal inventors of the science-denial playbook that is responsible for our inaction on climate change. Those companies’ sole mission is to murder me and all my friends. I’m going to quit smoking and I’m going to buy a laptop this year and every year hereafter, and I’ll still be up one laptop per year.”
[0]: https://doctorow.medium.com/i-quit-9ae7b6010c99
There is a severe ecological impact to the wider environment that comes from electronics, let's not kid ourselves. That doesn't mean buying electronics makes you like, a terrible person, but if you're sitting around prostheyzing on blogs like Doctorow about how these companies are killing you, it's a bit funny to essentially go from a thing that kills people you know in the first world to one that only kills people in the third world you never cared for. Modern comforts like cutting edge electronics have extreme externalities. Like, okay, let me just throw the "murders people I care about" problem over the fence, where it will surely not be an issue for all those people halfway across the planet from me (that I coincidentally do not care or think about.)
In general I'm not trying to be too hard. It's not like anyone else deals with this level of cognitive dissonance much better, and I say that as someone who mostly quit cold turkey over a year ago...
I feel like you're not really representing his argument on why he quit fairly. He does talk about the effects of tobacco on the developing world for one and also his overall reason seems to be more relating to the wider idea of tobacco companies being pioneers in the misinformation industry.
"With all the money you've spent on cigarettes in your lifetime, you could have bought a Ferrari."
"Do you smoke?"
"No."
"Then where's your Ferrari?"
It's a good question. Most of us have the financial capability to be extremely extravagant with a few select areas of our life, but instead we average everything down to boring mediocrity.
What a stupid comment. He saved the money and spent it on what he wanted. The hell?
He should save the money and you should call your grandmother.
Otherwise it's always Sure, I'll quit - tomorrow
Willpower is a muscle. It fatigues. So simply willing your way out of an addiction is not effective for many people.
The cigarettes are probably better for Nature since you'll live a shorter life.
He traded smoking for buying a new laptop every year. Now that it's been years, I guess he could quit and not buy a new laptop. But also people do more wasteful things. I do understand though, I drive laptops into the ground over many years but still 4-5 years per laptop
I worked with a guy who practiced this with all his personal hardware.
I replace my phone and laptop and iPad every year. I know people who replace their car and wardrobe and luggage every year, too.
In laptops and mobile devices in general, annual updates make a lot of sense as power efficiency is still regularly increasing. The M1 Air, is, for example, a fucking marvel. It's been out for way less than a year. I have an M1 Air, and will upgrade it again in less than a year when the Mx (where x > 1) Macbook Pro comes out.
They can just sell the laptop and someone else will use it. For example, I almost never buy new laptops, as perfect Linux support generally lags behind.
> Yesterday, I put my 2019 Thinkpad on my pile of "laptops to refurbish and donate." I've bought a new Thinkpad almost every year since 2006. I think that's over.
wat
As a quick aside, if you're ever one of the 15 people who will likely do this, buy a Thinkpad dock. They're cheap, and it basically triples your I/O!
I think you know the answer.
"Self described early adopter consumer sees early adopter friendly project and supports it"
One might see some cognitive dissonance between the state of mind of being pro recycling and supporting reduce and reuse and being an eager consumer. However early adopters dance this line and lead the way for the masses to come after.
All a matter of perspective or framing.
I sincerely hope they're around long enough to make a 15" version. My old eyes can't do 13" any more, unfortunately.
They are super light and all three fit in my backpack really easily....
I HIGHLY recommend.
With the exception of being able to repair and replace parts, the Frame.work laptop is very boring.
https://www.ifixit.com/laptop-repairability?sort=score
While, yes, they may be built well in your mind, in many other people's minds they aren't.
My other deal breaker is the fit & finish of Mac's touchpad. The qwan of it.
If frame.work + Ubuntu come within striking distance, I'd buy.
After seeing the framework, I'm more than a little annoyed that I fell for this. They proved you can have a slim, clean laptop that's somewhat modular, and more impressively, with something like 1% of Apple's budget to do it. Had I known about it, I probably wouldn't have paid an arm and a leg for a maxed-out Macbook Pro a year ago. MacOS is nice, probably my favorite consumer operating system currently available, but Apple's walled garden approach is beyond annoying.
Honestly, I'd rage if I had to throw it out together with the perfectly good CPU, GPU/VRAM and maybe half the RAM and pay for a used replacement board with all of those integrated.
Or what, buy a rework station and risk damaging them or having them work improperly due to shit soldering skills?
I guess I could learn to fix the board itself. But that's pretty hard, there are no schematics, no components for most laptops, failures are not evident and one component can lead to a cascade of failures across the board. A used board was $100. Now they're ~$500 because there's a CPU and GPU there.
My next computer will be a desktop in a handcrafted case (I'm also trying to fit a Li-Ion battery/UPS between the PSU and components).
I will still need a laptop away from home and/or as a portable display, that'll be one of my old 17 inchers or the cheapest one I can get (Haswell gen lol).
This should totally be a thing. I wish it was a thing. It doesn't even have to provide hours of runtime, just needs to be enough to handle the occasional stupid California brownout.
The battery will fit in an empty PSU case, I just need some custom cables and connectors for the passthrough, my biggest problem is charging and switchover. Looks like I will need a custom board for that. I thought it'd be easier heh
People care about Right To Repair; that's why the FTC has been pressured into action recently on the matter (not that I entertain any hope that that bunch of bought-and-paid-for bureaucrats will actually achieve anything.) Framework has blown a vast hole through the false arguments offered in opposition. One must simply care. That's all it takes. Every manufacturer that has opposed RTR has the means and talent to do at least as well has Framework has done, and probably better. They just don't care.
Thankfully the vestigial remains of our free market are sufficient to run the experiment.
And that's why "free markets" will never solve this. (And that's whether the "free" in free markets means freedom from regulations, or freedom for people to participate in the market).
IMHO this is why the European system of strong regulatory bodies tends to work better than the US system of "wait for a customer to experience damages, then recoup through the courts, and then the companies learn their lesson."
* analysts consider whether the cost > profit, if not then continue doing the same thing as before.
There's already no "standard" laptop design, just a set of desirable properties people want. And there's already no push to converge; there are many laptop vendors. There's plenty of room for a new vendor with different priorities (like modularity); there's more room for such a vendor than there is for one more undifferentiated vendor.
A competitive market isn't a marry-go-round where every idea gets its turn under the sun for all eternity. It's an arena where some rise and many perish. In the '90s and '00s, many ideas fell through, many companies collapsed, and many technologies become outmoded. What has come out of that is the sealed computer of today.
I have. I note that large numbers of people build PCs from components and that this market is large enough to be a primary concern for a constellation of manufacturers and has been for decades. You can buy an IC with 1200 contacts and install it yourself on the kitchen table. There is no other segment of the microelectronics world were this level of commoditization exists and yet it has stood the test of time. Transferring this behavior to mobile machines seems like an inevitable and long overdue step to me.
"Historically laptops were never as repairable as desktops."
History is a poor yardstick here. A number of forces have emerged that change the landscape. Among these are amazing design tools that enable a startup to go from zero to a complete, shipping modular design in 18 months (establishing a defacto standard, btw), tooling that delivers rapid fabrication in small volume, standardized, high performance serial busses that enable simple yet powerful architectures, robust solid state storage devices and the integration of some difficult components into CPUs. It used to require the resources of major manufacturers and their proprietary knowledge and capabilities to pull off marketable mobile designs. That era has passed and the commodity era is here.
"The adhesive-sealed laptop that you resent"
I do not resent monolithic products. I own several. I will buy more. I resent the lack of a choice. I expect that modular mobile machines will take their place among the equipment I acquire, and that these will become the major focus of my concern, whereas the monoliths will be relegated to ancillary tasks.
"What has come out of that is the sealed computer."
And they won't go away. The question is how much room is there for modular systems. I believe there is a lot. I imagine a Newegg filled with commodity mix and match mobile components from a vast number of vendors.
Time will tell.
That just leaves you with entrenched companies doing the bare minimum for compliance, and lobbying for loopholes to protect their own market positions.
However, people do keep in mind this still may not result in better third-party repairability - it may be things like easier reclaiming of components off of boards by the manufacturer to put into refurbished swap-out units.
Maybe they think they don't until one piece of their MBP fails and they have to pay Apple to replace 90% of their laptop.
Framework means you can custom-build it, just like your desktop. Reparability aside, that alone is a milestone.
I also don't really care to replace individual components in my systems, but being able to upgrade laptop hardware without throwing away the chasis and storage seems pretty nice to me.
If it were a big energy hog (it's not), then it may make sense to put it out to pasture and scavenge the parts for others.
The exception is my keyboard, is like my toothbrush, if toothbrushes could last for two decades. That I will keep and move to the new computer, as keyboard technology is not advancing.
For laptops, I see even less utility for upgrades than for a desktop, but perhaps that's just me.
You can move your keyboard to a new computer because you are able to detach it without melting half the device with a heat gun. With laptops it's not that easy. When the MacBook keyboards broke all the time a few years ago, a keyboard replacement meant also replacing the speakers, battery and touchpad. Not for any technical reason, but because Apple doesn't like screws. The MS Surface Pro and Surface Laptop couldn't be repaired by anyone, not even MS themselves - if a single $20-30 part fails you have to spend $1000 again. Doesn't sound like a great deal if you ask me.
You might not need or want upgrades and maybe you're lucky and nothing ever breaks. But having the choice only comes with upsides.
I mean, I've met people that only wear underwear once or twice before throwing it away, too, but I wouldn't say that's normal. People would generally rather replace a drive, processor, ram, or screen than spend 10x as much on an entirely new system. They don't because the manufacturers make that option difficult or impossible.
People didn't love VCR/TV combos, and people don't love this. Manufacturers love this.
And it's also about replacing broken components without having to ditch the whole laptop.
I'm really excited about how Framework could potentially shake up the whole industry!
As soon as Framework releases an AMD model I'm on board.
It won’t. The industry used to be like that back in the day before Apple proved that most people don’t want too many choices.
Also, anyone who says “it’s felt like I have to compromise on the hardware options” is an outlier by definition.
It makes sense from a business sense to have fewer models with small changes between them. You could have tech workers that assemble every custom order. That costs a lot more than a simplified inventory of a few different models that are already pre-assembled, with no hardware customization.
Please refrain from insults, or at least make an effort to justify this if you think it’s valid.
> The general populous/average consumer prefers simplified options. They aren't tech savvy as many here are.
Isn’t that exactly my point? The industry serves the general consumer. The framework laptop serves a niche.
What they want is to know they are getting a good deal and that they aren't buying a lemon, something that cannot meet their needs.
What Apple did is decide they should really distinguish on classes of identifiable hardware differences, eg. a better larger screen for a "pro" class, have good/better/best distinctions within that, and customization for those who are picky.
I assume the intersection between people who have particular hardware requirements and those who do not understand their hardware requirements is extremely small these days. Apple doesn't sell computers which really fall short these days, so I'm able to focus the conversation on usage, user-impacting hardware features, and long-term budgeting (e.g. planning even as far as the replacement for the machine they are buying)
They proved that taking away choices is still better than the shitshow their competitors are running.
Apple proved that a few simple product names are less confusing than literally 6 different "brands" of laptops from a single company. That doesn't mean people don't want choices though, they just don't want to feel like they're getting trolled by badly designed websites throwing all the possible laptop configurations in their face. Even if you know what the specs mean it still feels like a major waste of time to try and compare the 20 devices on the screen. I want to configure every detail of my laptop, not 2 details on one of 200 laptops.
Apple also proved that making devices difficult to upgrade, maintain and repair is harmful for everything and everyone other than Apple.
Almost nobody wants that, but the good news is that enough people do that framework exists.
I would understand it if a manufacturer offered some ultra high-end model with custom storage like in the PS5. But if the Framework laptop can have swappable RAM and SSDs with almost the same thickness as a (insufficiently cooled) Macbook it's obvious why that stuff is soldered in.
Can you actually find a quote for this? I’m quite skeptical that any such lie has been told.
If I understood it correctly, you can buy replacement parts only from Framework. They will have supply issues, and customers will be unhappy.
I guess if the laptops don't ever break, or if the customers' need for replacement parts is more theoretical than real, it could work out. Or they somehow manage to get over the small, niche manufacturer hump and become a Lenovo with massive scale. I doubt that's gonna happen.
The problem would come in if a Framework-specific part breaks, but at least those generally seem to be pretty simple (apart from the motherboard, at least).
They've also open sourced the modular components so people can develop their own third party compatible parts.
RAM, wireless, and storage aren't chained to Framework, and are effectively the only parts you can reasonably buy for any existing laptop in the current day.
I would not be surprised if battery and screen replacements start popping up, but that's just a guess not something I'd bet on.
That Framework will be the only suppliers of parts that other laptops don't even attempt to make replaceable is not a worrying situation, it's a hopeful one.
https://frame.work/blog/storage-memory-and-wifi
I upgraded my monitor and changed 2 keyboards(I am hard on them) with a laptop if you fuck your keyboard you probably have to use an external one or hope that replacing your laptop keyboard is cheap enough and you can find a spare.
Users care!
A desktop you built using standardized components you sourced from a competitive market with a plethora of alternatives specifically designed for easy assembly. Should any component fail you can obtain a replacement and perform the repair yourself. Doubtless these affordances are a part of why you chose to assemble you're machine yourself.
You do indeed care. The inability to extrapolate this to laptop machines seems obtuse.
I don't doubt that a huge market of interchangeable parts made this easier. But it's important to separate the ends from the means here, when it comes to customer concerns. The customers that want customizability and upgradability are a vanishingly small slice of customers. (Just as are the ones who want to run Linux, and that small slice does include me.)
Can you not imagine the vast market of people that might want a laptop not loaded with OEM crap ware? Because that is exactly what could emerge if Framework manages to establish a market of commodity mobile components.
I went the basket route because it required less research for me, because I just wanted to get to my end result as quickly as possible.
Grander goals about establishing ecosystems that serve other eventual end goals is not the way that most money is spent. (Though I do spend my money that way in other areas, such as with climate action, the PC market does not matter that much to me.)
You're a potential customer of this product, your cognitive dissonance on the matter notwithstanding.
My last desktop build is still going strong nine years later. Swapped out a broken motherboard, upgraded to OCed DDR3, and stuck in a PCIe card for NVMe: good as new.
I care. I often swap out parts. My family and friends care, because I help them swap out parts when needed, especially during critical failures when they need it working ASAP and can't risk some corporation formatting the hard drive for no reason.
And my coworkers care because they're fellow techies and do this stuff, too.
Reminder that Apple isn't the problem. Their customers are. I know movie quotes are seriously lowbrow for this audience, but somewhat relevant here, and correct:
"That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy."
Not to Godwin the thread, but this absurd apologia for anti-freedom products from the standpoint of convenience and apathy reminds me of the old quip about Hitler making the trains run on time.
I hope a decade from now you love the soul-crushing Snow Crash-esque dystopia your choices will have created, because you will have absolutely no moral authority to complain about it.
If my laptop was a Framework laptop, I'd just need to buy a pretty inexpensive new port and swap it out. It's a pretty big deal, in my opinion.
You’d never see Dr. Ian Cutress of AnandTech or Steve from GamersNexus pulling this shit.
Of course he makes much more money than both of them combined. Make no mistake that he is an entertainer and a businessman.
LTT also really always had the proper balance. Sponsored reviews are marked, sponsored segments are marked, and they are not holding back on negative reviews for long term channel sponsors. They totally ripped into Intel again and again for the failure to compete with AMD, and at the same time have Intel sponsor new hardware upgrades for team members in a sponsored mini-series. Totally fair.
Of course Intel did a big marketing push right as their products were the least competitive, and I'm sure LMG was paid large. Putting that kind of stunt in the same league as GN reviewing a product from a company that previously sponsored them (which is, of course, all that LTT does) is simply ridiculous.
"Balance" is such a weasel word in this context. They're playing both sides, plain and simple.
AnandTech quit doing SSD endurance testing as soon as vendors started selling trash TLC and QLC. Is that a coincidence? Can you really trust them?
There's a point where you need to put some trust in reviewers because the industry is set up to make them dependent on the manufacturers. However, there's a huge difference between traditional reviewers where employees are doing reviews and new age reviewers where influencers are doing the reviews.
People like Linus and Steve have way more incentive to put their own integrity over short term interests like pleasing a manufacturer, so it's very unlikely you'll ever see them shilling for anyone. Getting caught doing that once would ruin their brand (and credibility) because they are their brand.
In other words, there are no scape goats in the influencer space so they have way more incentive to be completely honest and transparent.
I remember when Tom's Hardware was new and I think the current generation of influencers / reviewers are going to obliterate the traditional media companies that have turned into affiliate marketing shills.
In the videos Linus does breaking down LMG's revenue, about a third of it comes from a tiny fraction of their audience - merch and direct subscriptions. I'm sure it's a similar chunk if not more for GN through modmats, mousepads, and Patreon.
Even if they sold out their integrity and still got millions of views, it's that "hardcore" audience they can't really get back. In an enthusiast space where a large chunk of the audience are professionals with disposable income, it's a lot to lose.
I haven't seen anything from Linus or Steve to suggest that's the only reason they care so much about their integrity, they both seem to genuinely care, but y'know parasocial relationships etc.
what they want is:
To sell you a laptop with a current cpu and memory.
If you are "price insensitive" they will allow you to get a better cpu or more memory for a significant upcharge.
next year, they want:
To sell you a laptop with a current cpu and memory.
They do not want you upgrading the cpu or memory yourself
They do not want you to add next-year's cpu yourself next year.
1/ A lot of them (most?) had 8Go of RAM. 16Go is rare and 32Go even more. What year is it?!
2/ Most have soldiered RAM without an additional slot.
Just being able to use my own NVMe disk in something like a Framework translates into savings for me because I don't need a huge disk in my laptop and can reuse one that's too small for my server or desktop.
"Imagine being an engineer at a company at Apple, and it being your job to design the mechanism that makes it so that machine cannot start up unless the chassis is fully sealed. Apple spent actual fucking money making sure that product would not work unless it is in the exact chassis they shipped it in."
That goes beyond not caring.
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSxbc1IN9Gg
Realistically, if your threat model is government secret services, and you're using unmodified consumer grade electronics, then you're in 'danger' no matter what. You can't effectively mitigate a threat at the state level using resources produced under the watchful eye of the same state. All they have to do is ask the producer to swap out the device they gave you with a device that comes compromised out of the box. And that's assuming the tech is perfect. Most likely they just hire someone to defeat the countermeasures. However many resources Apple has, I assure you even the most janky state has more.
Commenter above was saying though that the device's anti-tamper tech would save you from state level attacks. I'm just getting at the fact that that's not going to work, since if a proverbial 'they' want to take you out, there's other ways to do so you can't overcome. Just a few examples that came to me about how easy it is to foil anti-tampering measures.
> It seems obvious to me that if you're being targeted, tailed and tracked and probed, you've already lost.
Depends on which government agency watchlist you are. If you are some sort of Islamist terrorist, the tools that are open to the government are far more capable than if you are some sort of low level drug dealer.
I find it ridiculous that people build threat models around organisations with almost unlimited resources that will only care about you (enough to tamper with your hardware) if you have done something very, very wrong.
[0] https://puri.sm/security/
Security isn't a product.
Honestly, I would not be surprised if Apple 'invented' the idea of 'integrated dongles' before their next keynote so they could sell you a $95 usb 2.0 port.
While there are questionable practices by Apple and many other machine producers, what you can't argue against is that in limiting the hardware that MacOS has to work with, they're able to deliver a level of stability and user experience that you don't get with Linux.
Sure, it would be great if we could replace the batteries, if we could upgrade the memory, and easily fix broken parts, but that isn't the company's ethos. The company produces devices that are plug and play, high grade consumer electronics. Nobody forces us to buy these products.
Anyway, that being said, the framework machines look super interesting and if they were UK available, I'd probably get one for a non-critical Linux-based workstation.
As if choosing a $1k+ computer to use for years was equivalent to choosing the flavor of ice cream scoops.
The "voting with your wallet" argument doesn't work when there's several variables in play, and the optimal configurations don't exist on the market. Like e.g. I'd like to buy a computer that's just like Macbook, except with repairable/swappable/upgradeable components. Or a phone that's just like iPhone, except with replaceable battery, a headphone jack, and repairable home button. But I can't have them - even if I'm ready to pay a bit extra, and if I'd welcome a thicker device. These options literally don't exist. Nothing similar to them exists. Particularly on the repairability front, every vendor is choosing to just not offer it.
1) How do we enforce that at smaller scales?
2) How would we prevent our regulation from squashing innovative solutions to problems, or enhancing safety in critical applications?
That's the thing, making something plug and play and mostly "driver-free" would be very hard to almost impossible. Framework laptops look amazing but they will require at least a bit more maintenance and knowledge, and that is fine too.
I am against billboards in space but I would make an exception for this quote.
I agree that Apple shouldn't have to support random mods / hardware components / etc and that their selling point is "it just works".
But then again, they don't have to be dicks about it. If they're able to detect that the hardware has somehow been modified, maybe just show some message along the lines of "you've modified the hardware, we're not supporting this anymore, you're on your own" instead of bricking it.
I'm willing to bet real money that they did.
No, I don't want slim and tiny, I want to be able to replace and upgrade parts. I want a battery I can swap out or RAM I can replace.
The problem is that being able to swap parts extends service life of machines. Can't have that when they want you to just buy a new one ever 3 years.
Edit: Also the 16:10 aspect ratio :(
[1] https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Install-Guide/macos-limi...
Once we hit five pounds and I had a bag that stopped caring about smaller laptops? Well that was about the time that desktops died and I could have used a workstation class laptop with some more flexibility.
But I opted for simple and put my energy somewhere else instead. Seems a lot of people did.
Strictly speaking, the throw of the keyboard when in use is not limited by the dimensions of the laptop when it's not in use. There is air above and sometimes below that the keys can occupy. Having the keys raise up when opening the lid might be mechanically impractical, but having the lid depress all of the keys is a matter of ignoring key presses until the lid is opened past an angle where it stops touching the top row of keys.
Based on the shape of the smudges on my screen I'm pretty sure that already happens to an extent.
I think my overall point still stands. I still find it irritating that, until very recently, the only way to get a nice, slim laptop was to accept that everything is hard-wired in. Framework proved that that's not correct.
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsoft+Surface+Go+Teardow...
https://www.wired.com/2012/06/opinion-apple-retina-displa/
I.e. The last person who can be trusted to report on Apple’s motivations.
It’s an absurd explanation. Some obvious other factors are:
1. The idea that a modular chassis is less robust over time. Not that it can’t be made, but that if you make millions of them, vastly more of them will have problems because of all the connectors etc.
We don’t have any data on the framework. Perhaps they’ll prove this to be a misplaced fear, but it’s also possible that framework laptops in aggregate will need more repairs because of the extra complexity.
2. Limited hardware profiles are easier to support with software. If users can create limitless combinations, it becomes much harder to test. This isn’t an issue for the typical Linux user who can do their own homework and fix their own issues, but it’s a deal breaker for someone who just wants to buy a computer and get work done.
In short, it was not a lie that you get smaller, lighter, and better laptops with integration. You do, in fact, get all of those things.
Genuine question, I know very little about electrical components.
Do you have a reference for why it can’t be put on a removable module?
there is an inherent tradeoff between size, battery life, and modularity. if you can make a modular laptop with good specs and battery life, a competitor will always be able to offer the same thing in a smaller chassis or with a bigger battery.
However this is only because manufacturers don't make them. If Apple asked Micron or Samsung for them, I'm sure it would happen.
A better argument for non-replaceable RAM can be found in the Apple Silicon chips. Building the memory into the SoC provides very tangible performance and efficiency benefits.
And I don't think they ever will be. From the little bit that I've read, the higher voltage that SODIMMs have to use has to do with noise in transmission. LPDDR4s have been connection through the direct solder, so are able to use lower voltages.
Scroll down to the battery section
> Only 61 percent the battery life of a similarly configured XPS 13
And the XPS has an i7-1065G7 [1] vs the Framework with an i7-1185G7 [2]. So the Framework has a better screen and a better CPU. I'm not sure I agree with running that benchmark without other data alongside it like a score or the average clock rate.
For example, I put a 2nd battery in a ThinkPad once and it had the effect of locking the CPU clock to <1GHz. The battery was predicted to last much longer than normal, but it was useless as a computer.
1. https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/196597/...
2. https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/208664/...
The only laptop for which that seems to be true is the MacBook, but no x86 laptop will come close to that. From what I've seen the Framework has a mostly uninteresting battery life, outperforming some likely competitors (like Dell's XPS 13 and MS's Surface Laptop) and outperformed by others (like HP's ProBook x360 and ASUS's Zenbook 13).
Under the final section:
>>The ugly
> In our battery test, which sets the laptop’s screen brightness to 150 nits and tasks it with endlessly browsing the web via Wi-Fi, the Framework lasted 10 hours and 17 minutes. That’s better than the Dell XPS 13 (7:59)
https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/framework-laptop-review-th...
Maybe the XPS 13 configuration was different? Or maybe the tests were different in nature? Ars used PCMark 10, which is a standard benchmark that Dell could have specifically optimized for.
The Ars review does have this to say later on:
> The Framework also manages surprisingly high battery life under Ubuntu—in our semi-scientific video playback test, Framework runs neck and neck with the outstanding Acer Swift 3 at just over five hours, with everything else (including the XPS 13, which in this case is hampered by a 4k touchscreen display) trailing well behind.
It's a compromise in the short term maybe, but long term it's so much nicer.
You're supposed to replace the macbook by then.
https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Battery+Replacement+Guide/85...
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Retina+Disp...
Apple nailed that during the same generation they introduced the unreplaceable battery. Better density, less packaging, and improved power management virtually doubled the run time on that laptop versus the previous. That was a huge deal at the time.
Has everyone else caught up?
What’s the walled garden on macOS? You can run anything you want on the Mac.
This is why we don't have secure computing in 2021. Users don't like the usability problems that come with security.
at the same time, I personally don't see what all the fuss is about. you can upgrade both DIMMs, which is cool, but not exactly unheard of these days (I guess it's getting there in an ultraportable?). you're still stuck with DDR4, which is almost EOL, and the max capacity it entails. it's neat that you can customize your IO options, but how many people are going to do that more than once? being constrained by the chipset, it's not like you're going to be able to "upgrade" your IO in the future.
the most likely parts of a laptop to fail are the SSD and the battery, both of which are fairly easy to replace on almost all laptops. past that, you aren't really gaining that much when you're locked into whatever CPU/chipset was current when you bought the laptop.
Framework is also proactively making documentation, schematics, etc etc available for repair shops.
Which newer laptops? Other than Macs and crappy $199 Walmart grade tablet-chromebook thingamajigs, I don't know any mainstream PC laptop that does that (thankfully).
Even super light and super slim laptops still have replaceable storage. Even niche Pocket Computers like the GPD and Valve Steam Deck still have replaceable SSDs.
So I don't buy your statement.
The truth is, unlike with RAM, it's still cheaper for the other laptop manufacturers to have a single motherboard SKU which they can later plug whatever cheap COTS SSDs they can get from various sources rather than waste effort tayloring a motherboard for a specific SSD controller, specific DRAM cache chips and specific Flash chips, as that gives them way less flexibility in component sourcing during production lifecycle and more expense in board design resulting in more expensive products with no extra margins for them.
Apple can do this economically as they have a very tightly controlled supply chain with high volumes and due to the little variation in SKUs so they can just use the same SSD controller on all their products and just change the amount of Flash chips soldered on the board and call it a day.
Which you can replace/upgrade too.
also, pretty sure that is correct english, why the [sic]?
> also, pretty sure that is correct english, why the [sic]?
Perfectly correct English yes - I just meant that I was disagreeing with that, you're not locked to it. (I don't think it's an incorrect use of it, but thinking about it it's not a common one - can just quote and say 'that's not right' after all - so I don't know I bothered, sorry.)
fair enough :)
and I saw that guide too. my skepticism is regarding what happens when the next generation (or an AMD variant) arrives. will the new mainboards be drop-in replacements for the old? if nothing else, this would make it difficult to radically change the cooling solution, which could be a big problem for the dGPU machine I'd like to see.
maybe my initial comment was too harsh. they have delivered a fully user-repairable machine, which is a great thing. but what I want is a fully upgradable machine, in the sense of a DIY desktop build. they have made some vague promises around the latter, but I'll reserve my judgement until I see it actually happen.
I have a MacBook Pro w/ Retina Display from Mid-2012. It cannot be fixed for a reasonable price, despite it being still mostly perfect for my daughter's school computing.
This computer definitely interests me (as someone who moved back to Ubuntu / Regolith this year)
I bought a laptop at the beginning of 2020 after the GPU on my old one fried. What I wanted was something with a Cat6 and DisplayPort built in for when I'm in my office, and multiple USB-A ports for the peripherals I use (mouse/keyboard/mic/speakers). I had to settle for one with a single extra USB-C port, an additional USB-C hub to get enough USB-A ports and a Cat6, and an adaptor for the built-in HDMI port to hook up to the DisplayPort on my monitor, which set me back a total of like $100 on top of the cost of the laptop itself. The laptop also has a headset jack and large card reader that I have yet to use, so that's just wasted space that could have potentially been something I would have actually used.
e.g. By this theory, android would become more popular than iphone.
EDIT yes, which happened, favouring the theory; despite iphone still leading performance, due to integration even to cpu and gpu.
Well Android already is more popular than iphone worldwide.
Because it’s true. The thing is “power users” and “regular users” look at that tradeoff differently. The bad part of economies of scale is that they reward conformity (you can pick your model T in any color, as long as that color is black).
The framework would a hard time competing in the general laptop market, but luckily for them, they don’t have to. There’s a niche for specialized products and they are taking advantage.
I’ve looking at their laptops since they announced, I’m just hoping they can release a Ryzen one, and then I’ll be on the fence between theirs and whatever Apple has to show for a ARM pro laptop (14”-15”).
I'm in the same boat. While I in principle would love to invest in a powerful AMD laptop with tons of upgradeability with decent Linux support, Apple's next offerings which may give upgraded displays, my favorite trackpads, impressive power and ~20 hours of battery life is very hard to ignore.
XPS 13: $1020
* i5
* 8 GB RAM
* 256 GB storage
* 1920 x 1200 display
* 1.2 kg, 11.6" x 7.8" x 0.6"
MacBook Pro: $1300
* M1
* 8 GB RAM
* 256 GB storage
* 2560 x 1600 display
* 1.4kg, 12" x 8.7" x 0.6"
This isn't even accounting for repairability as a feature. Consumers don't care about that as it stands, because they don't know they should. But once they realize, it will become a selling point, too.
That said, I love the concept and plan to buy one next year, when they hopefully will have means to sell in the EU without outrageous shipping+import duties.
Me too. An I'm annoyed I fell for the lie that board level repair is impossible. What the manufacturers really should be saying is "it's impossible for us" because it's obviously possible for 3rd parties to do it and make a business out of it.
I'm willing to pay +$100 for something that's assembled with screws instead of glues.
Why should we believe anything any for-profit company says, without verifying (whenever possible)? Drug companies lie all the time, about having to price their drugs absurdly high. Facebook lies all the time about not being able to fact check, without even attempting to try seriously. And on and on.
The insane thing is not that companies lie. It is that the general public has either given up or duped into thinking these companies cannot possible lie. We have created an economic system where profit trumps everything else.
The three internal upgrad-ables are nice if you think that things will drastically change in RAM, SSD, or Wifi before the CPU, mainboard or faster connections to faster RAM and SSD make the effect of said upgrad-ables to be gilding a turd. Otherwise periodically buy the midrange storage and allow the secondary market to absorb your environmental guilt.
Nothing epoxied shut or soldered in place, and the metal cases on recent generations of these HP models are sturdier than the older plastic. Our lead tech has replaced HP laptop batteries, keyboards and displays when needed with no issues. HP is also one of the few brands with backlit keyboards standard on most laptops, even down to the lower-end models I've encountered since 2018.
But the Frameworks sure look intriguing!
Finally, somehow got one via Amazon supplied from a state 1600 KMs away from here for about $80 in a week time. It could very well be expensive than the one gotten from the service center but, was left with no option.
In the event that I must get a non-m1 laptop, I can definitely see myself buying the framework laptop and putting ubuntu on it.
I got the framework laptop, which should be able to push the intel chip to the max 28 TDP. I heard the fan is big, and thus not annoying. I am curious to see how it will turn out (My batch 3 order gets delivered tomorrow).
My experience has mostly been that when any work is being done, the fans spin up. It's jarring when you're trying to focus on the problem at hand.
https://www.csoonline.com/article/3220476/researchers-say-no...
No. You can boot and run an x86 without ME and most of that other stuff.
> It makes total sense that there are mandatory supervisor chips at this point
ME, secure boot, UEFI have nothing to do with virtualization.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKH5nGLgi08
At 47:10, they mention that they haven't found anything evil. Ofc, this isn't hard proof, but if I trust anyone's answer, then it's theirs. I think the likelihood of it being malicious is nonzero, but small enough that I'd condemn active backdoors into the realm of conspiracy theories.
There's always the possibility of it being exploited by others, but c'mon: Basically ANY other exploit would be way easier to distribute and activate than one in the PSP.
https://system76.com/laptops/pangolin
EDIT: did I said something wrong? -2 votes already.
[1] https://community.frame.work/c/expansion-cards/developer-pro...
[2] https://community.frame.work/t/what-new-expansion-card-types...
[3] https://community.frame.work/t/youtuber-elevated-systems-mak...
In what way do they limit the USB-C they pass through?
GP means that if you use one other than the USB-C pass-through module, it's (trivially) a proper subset of the USB-C functionality that you started out with.
I don't really see the issue: the alternative is that you do that in a dongle more external to the laptop anyway?
Once they're more established and have money in the bank (hopefully that happens), they can think about ramping up manufacturing and actually keeping inventory before it's been spoken for.
Until then, at least the commodity parts (RAM, storage, WiFi card) can be replaced with off-the-shelf parts bought from NewEgg or wherever.
CPU isn't up-gradable without switching out the entire mainboard, which I'm fine with, once I get an AMD version that is :)
btw certain distro devs were provided with Framework laptops a while back
https://frame.work/blog/linux-on-the-framework-laptop
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_graphics_...
https://01.org/linuxgraphics
I've always heard the opposite, that AMD's linux support is amazing and that it's windows drivers are lacking. Especially in the GPU department where it struggles with minecraft.
No, you don't. You see people complaining about NVIDIA's linux support.
Wouldn't it be nice if there just 'CPUs', and you could pick whatever was appropriate for your desktop or laptop. Sure some would maybe only make sense in one package, but there must be some considerable overlap. I use my desktop for work because it has upgradeable RAM and I needed to do that, not because it has a beefier CPU than is available in a laptop.
It also fixed complaints about keyboards.
I’d rather get my work done at the desk and then enjoy my hammock or couch without the computer, preferably with a good book.
I'm currently writing this at a coffee shop surrounded by others all working on various things. I really like the option to work from anywhere.
Personally I loved the idea of working from a coffee shop until I actually tried it. Then I found that the glamour of the idea was much more than the experience of trying to do focused work in a noisy environment on a cramped keyboard. So instead I do work in my office, and leave my laptop permanently closed and connected like the worlds most expensive Mac Mini.
Outside of work, 90% of people I know have a laptop as their main computing device at home. Very few have a desktop PC - those are the PC gamers.
Your anecdotal experience doesn't match with my anecdotal experience.
I was really late to switch and I don't regret it at all. Almost everyone I know made this switch 5+ years ago before me.
I also needed a laptop anyway with the battlestations, because I travel for work. Now it's all in one package and I spent a lot less money on it.
I don't know a single person who uses their laptop in one place. Hell, every one of my co-workers has been at home or in the office with their machine at least a couple times over the past month.
Laptop ergonomics are catastrophically bad. Doing any meaningful work on them for any length of time without my keyboard, monitor, and mouse just plain sucks, so I don’t do it.
My personal machines (gaming and non) are both desktops. I’ve never wanted to move them, and they cost me a fraction of what an equivalent laptop would have.
The only other solution I could envision I'd be happy with is one that doesn't exist: where I have a processor and storage "core" that I can use in a variety of dumb terminals. That's my real dream, but a dockable laptop is kind of similar.
The one thing I want to do in a mobile fashion is take notes and do zoom meetings, a need that my iPad meets handily.
The funny thing is that the laptop is actually incapable of doing the one thing I would reasonably want it to do: work outside. It overheats within 5 minutes and slows to a halt if I dare let the sun hit it. Both the iPad and iPhone handle this task easily, weirdly enough.
And this is really the issue I have with laptops; they try to be everything to everyone and they end up sucking at any given one task as a result. Compared to my Mac mini my MBP is expensive and underpowered with compromised ergonomics and thermals. Compared to my iPad my laptop has poor battery life, weighs a ton, and overheats in the sun. All that buying a MBP has done is waste $2k extra of $CORPs money, and produce a bit more e-waste given the short upgrade cycle they have me on.
[1]: https://github.com/erpalma/throttled
I upgraded all 3 laptops with more or better ram, wifi, and ssds. And currently ordering a Traditional Chinese keyboard for the L5P for the wifey. But I took AMD for the legions.
Thank you for mentioning this alternative! Just found him on Etsy. I have always preferred the old-style concave nibs for TrackPoints over the new convex ones. This will be a serious improvement for my Thinkpad.
I still use one of those on my external Thinkpad keyboard.
Tip: search "<model name> psref" to quickly get to a PDF with specifications.
I don't need a touchpad though. Actually, one of the best laptops I've owned was one without a touchpad [1].
[1]: https://thinkwiki.de/Datei:TP_X60_2.jpg
Those are good points. I'm thinking there could be patents involved too.
> I don't need a touchpad though. Actually, one of the best laptops I've owned was one without a touchpad [1].
That's true! I don't really use the touchpad on my X230, even though it's there.
My fear is that when it becomes popular enough, one of the BigTech's may just make an offer too good to refuse, and just buy and bury the company.
Why? I bought a thinkpad and used it for 7 years. Who needs a new laptop every year? Especially these days
Sorry I know it's besides the point of the article but it stood out to me
A 2019 Carbon X1 (14") weighs 2.4lbs and the laptop they're drooling over starts at 2.8lbs.