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I'm spoiled by Apple Silicon but still love Framework

simonhartcher.com

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Re: I'm spoiled by Apple Silicon but still love Framework

#21

Post by Aurornis »

flkiwi wrote: post #10

This sounds like the so-called "modern standby" (S0 vs S3, if I remember correctly). I bought a thinkpad a while back with "modern standby" and the thing wouldn't last the night suspended, and would often wake me up with its fans howling and end up being very, very hot while suspended. I disabled "modern standby" in the BIOS and it was back to sleeping for weeks without losing charge. I have no idea if that's what's…

The standby issues with Framework laptops (at least the early ones, I don’t know about recent developments) was a well known issue.

I recommended Framework to someone looking for a laptop a while ago and they were bit by the standby battery drain issue. I felt bad having recommended it to them because I assumed such a basic issue would have been addressed in a laptop that was so highly regarded.

Re: I'm spoiled by Apple Silicon but still love Framework

#22

Post by didacusc »

cardanome wrote: post #8

As a Linux user I feel you. The Mac Desktop is vastly inferior to the Linux world (for power users) but the hardware is so, so good. For me it is about having a completely silent setup. It is so, so hard to go back to noisy fans. I really hope Asahi Linux keep going so I can have the best of both worlds.

Saying that the macOS desktop is vastly inferior to Linux desktops is absolutely nuts. I've tried to get my relatives on Linux desktops so many times, just for it to go completely wrong a couple of weeks after and having to reinstall Windows. It's just not made for average (or below-average) users, so I don't see how it can be VASTLY inferior to something as easy and polished as macOS.

Re: I'm spoiled by Apple Silicon but still love Framework

#23

Post by gjsman-1000 »

deevus wrote: post #20
aurareturn wrote: post #13

What mission do you love from Framework? Is it environmental? If so, I seriously doubt that the lifetime pollution of a Framework laptop is better than an Apple Silicon Mac. Macbooks tend to last a very long time. I used my Intel Macbook Air for 10 years. After that, I sold it and maybe it continued to get used by the second owner. While you can keep upgrading Framework laptops (parts require shipping/pollution to ma…

For me it's the repairable nature. Prior to the Framework 13 I had a bunch of Thinkpads until the enshittification by Lenovo in recent years.

How often have you needed to repair a MacBook?

The enhanced repairability is basically insurance in case of a fault. Compared to a MacBook, or insurance for a MacBook, this insurance is overpriced.

As for the environment, the power consumption + larger design with extra parts to make it repairable + how few people ever buy parts makes this a virtue signaling wash.

Re: I'm spoiled by Apple Silicon but still love Framework

#24

Post by aurareturn »

deevus wrote: post #20
aurareturn wrote: post #13

What mission do you love from Framework? Is it environmental? If so, I seriously doubt that the lifetime pollution of a Framework laptop is better than an Apple Silicon Mac. Macbooks tend to last a very long time. I used my Intel Macbook Air for 10 years. After that, I sold it and maybe it continued to get used by the second owner. While you can keep upgrading Framework laptops (parts require shipping/pollution to ma…

For me it's the repairable nature. Prior to the Framework 13 I had a bunch of Thinkpads until the enshittification by Lenovo in recent years.

I know Windows laptops are very finicky and unreliable. For example, loads of people complain that $3000 Razer laptops break after a few months.

I guess I'm mostly talking about Apple overall.

You're paying a lot more money for self-repairability. Frameworks are generally more expensive than Macs, sometimes 50% - 100% more expensive for a similar laptop. That's crazy.

Macs are tanks. Not a single issue with my 4 year old M1 Air. Even if there is an issue, I can still take it to an Apple Store to get it looked at.

Re: I'm spoiled by Apple Silicon but still love Framework

#25

Post by zipy124 »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #3

> Apple Silicon is built upon ARM64 which is apparently core to such great battery life. Not really, actually. ARM isn’t terribly more efficient to decode than x86, and both are converted into micro-operations that are internal to the CPU. The real strength is Apple’s custom ARM cores; as evidenced by the failure of Qualcomm and MediaTek to make anything quite like it, even with the same manufacturing nodes.

I think as jeffbee said below it's not even the custom ARM cores, but rather Apple's ability to control not only the hardware but the software on-top of it. In a typical Windows machine you are dealing with your CPU and microcode made by AMD/Intel/Other, then the BIOS/Driver code written by your motherboard manufacturer, and your GPU from either the on-board, or dGPU from Intel/Nvidia/AMD and then Windows made by Microsoft. All of this leads to silly things like the ASUS ACPI driver bug [1] or Dell [2]. Apple does not suffer from this lack of control and communication, instead allowing tight integration.

[1]: https://github.com/Zephkek/Asus-ROG-Aml-Deep-Dive

[2]: https://triangulatedexistence.mataroa.blog/blog/i-uncovered-...

Re: I'm spoiled by Apple Silicon but still love Framework

#26

Post by corndoge »

jeffbee wrote: post #6

The ISA has nothing to do with the battery life. Battery life is the result of getting details right at every level of the software stack. Framework doesn't control every level of the stack. Arguably they don't control any of it.

Yes, it's this. I also own an M4 mbp and an AMD framework 13. With both on maximum screen brightness, side by side, doing similar workloads, battery life isn't that much better on the M4. I think the difference maker is that the mac constantly decreases screen brightness when possible, turns the backlight completely off when there isn't any activity, heavily leverages power efficient scheduling and efficiency cores, no doubt turns off power to all peripherals whenever possible, and so on. And of course lid-closed suspend on a mac lasts indefinitely. Arch does none of these things and even on cohesive distros like Fedora there's only so much you can do in user land. Linux is designed for compatibility across a huge breadth of devices; darwin only has to support Mac hardware and can extract every ounce of power efficiency from deep hardware integration.

Re: I'm spoiled by Apple Silicon but still love Framework

#27

Post by deevus »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #23
deevus wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it's the repairable nature. Prior to the Framework 13 I had a bunch of Thinkpads until the enshittification by Lenovo in recent years.

How often have you needed to repair a MacBook? The enhanced repairability is basically insurance in case of a fault. Compared to a MacBook, or insurance for a MacBook, this insurance is overpriced. As for the environment, the power consumption + larger design with extra parts to make it repairable + how few people ever buy parts makes this a virtue signaling wash.

Funnily enough, I had to get my M1 Pro repaired on day 1 of receiving. It had a defect in the screen that caused a white horizontal line. I was livid!

Re: I'm spoiled by Apple Silicon but still love Framework

#28

Post by stephen_g »

flkiwi wrote: post #10

This sounds like the so-called "modern standby" (S0 vs S3, if I remember correctly). I bought a thinkpad a while back with "modern standby" and the thing wouldn't last the night suspended, and would often wake me up with its fans howling and end up being very, very hot while suspended. I disabled "modern standby" in the BIOS and it was back to sleeping for weeks without losing charge. I have no idea if that's what's…

I had* an 11th Gen Intel NUC that couldn’t sleep at all for something like a year due to EFI bugs… They finally did eventually fix the regression but really, it’s just incredible - if one company should be able to do EFI right it’s Intel!

I’m not sure if this was related to “modern standby” (it was around that time if I recall) but that hasn’t really helped anything. This is a desktop so why they insist on deprecating real standby for everything is beyond me…

* I actually still have it but it became my home server, so now doesn’t ever need to standby, luckily.

Re: I'm spoiled by Apple Silicon but still love Framework

#29

Post by jeffbee »

maverwa wrote: post #17

The complaint about power usage in suspend is especially sad because it’s pretty much a common problem for Linux on laptops. Not sure if that’s what applies here, but the numbers about match what I see with my Framework. Basically: if you want to use secure boot you usually also want kernel lockdown mode, and you cannot hibernate a lockdowned kernel. At least not without out-of-tree patches. IMHO that’s a giant issue…

> If you can’t hibernate (aka suspend to disk) you will never be able to get that power consumption low.

This is cope. An Apple Silicon Macbook does not need to suspend to block devices to save energy (they only do this when the battery is empty). ChromeOS doesn't offer hibernate at all. The only reason that a Framework can't have good battery life in an operating state is that nobody is paying attention to the details.

Re: I'm spoiled by Apple Silicon but still love Framework

#30

Post by gjsman-1000 »

deevus wrote: post #27
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How often have you needed to repair a MacBook? The enhanced repairability is basically insurance in case of a fault. Compared to a MacBook, or insurance for a MacBook, this insurance is overpriced. As for the environment, the power consumption + larger design with extra parts to make it repairable + how few people ever buy parts makes this a virtue signaling wash.

Funnily enough, I had to get my M1 Pro repaired on day 1 of receiving. It had a defect in the screen that caused a white horizontal line. I was livid!

That’s called a shipping accident, from which Framework is hardly immune.
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