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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

#91
post #15

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.

> The Mac Desktop is vastly inferior to the Linux world Asking out of curiosity, why is this? What's the functionality you miss on Mac?

The one I have always missed is proper focus-follows-mouse support. The mac desktop always feels really clunky without that when working with multiple windows.

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

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

#93
post #7

I wish Framework offered a laptop with an ARM64 processor. I have a Surface Laptop 7 with a Snapdragon CPU on Windows 11 and it's been awesome so far. Insane battery life, especially in standby. I can reopen it after 48 hours and it only lost 3% of battery, while it stayed connected to WiFi and received notifications all along.

My wife loves her (ancient) Surfacebook and is thinking of upgrading. Any comparability issues with the ARM chip?

No issues so far, almost 1 year in, but I don't use specialized software: only web browsers, Office suite, Obsidian, Dropbox, PowerToys, FileZilla, Putty, VLC, Notepad++, WSL and random .exe utilities. I've found the emulation to be pretty good, but avoid it if you plan to do any gaming.

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

#94

I want to love framework, and I really do want to get behind their mission, but a few things stand out. First and this is the elephant in the room, it's probably better for the environment to buy a refurbished think pad. The most environmentally friendly product is one that gets reused instead of going to a landfill. The 13-in framework only offers one SSD slot, The expansion Bay offers a nice storage option but thes…

> if you're popping in and out expansion cards all the time eventually the ports are going to fail

If you're plugging and unplugging USB-C cables all the time, eventually the ports are going to fail, but we generally consider plugging things into USB-C acceptable.

The Framework expansion modules are just USB-C ports, but they're not subject to much twisting or bending when using the modules so they should last longer.

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

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What mission do you love from Framework? Is it environmental? The fact that I can repair it, exchange every part, get every part, upgrade every part, and I never have to use a hairdryer or heat gun to do so.

Are you willing to pay 2x the price for a Framework and get a worse overall experience in exchange for repairability? Keep in mind that the Framework spare parts are generally also pretty expensive.

  ...worse overall experience...
Worse how? RAM, SSD and main board can be upgraded as an when needed, which is the point.

I like Framework's aesthetics more than MacBook already, and like the little customisablity (i.e bezel, mismatched coloured parts etc). I can accept a lower quality screen (compared to MacBook), speakers and camera no problem.

I'm willing to pay higher than MacBook price for the above package due to superiority of Linux over MacOs and supporting this model in general. However, I draw a line in the sand at battery life, so Mac it is for me for the foreseeable future.

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

#96
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Mac Desktop is vastly inferior to the Linux world I have to use Mac, Linux, and Windows desktops in my work. They all have their pros and cons, but I can’t say I’d ever argue that the Mac desktop experience is vastly inferior to the Linux desktop experience. Edit: Getting a lot of downvotes but most of the comments are about someone’s highly customized Linux desktop compared to completely vanilla Mac desktop. I…

On a Mac, you can switch between apps with Command-Tab or windows of the same app with Command-` but there's no way to cycle between all windows or bounce between to two most recently used windows. Maybe this used to make sense when apps were single purpose but I do basically everything in a web browser or a terminal so not being able to bounce between the previously selected window(of whatever kind), as I can with A…

For web apps, spinning them into “installed” apps (doable in both Chrome and Safari now) is the move. This unclogs your tab bar, gets rid of the pointless persistent browser chrome, and gives you the benefit of OS task management capabilities.

You can add Shift to both Command-Tab and Command-` to move in the reverse direction.

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

#97
I don't think Framework will be able to compete on efficiency with their design philosophy.

The NVMe disk is swappable, which means it has its own controller which manages power management itself. I did my research to pick an efficient SSD and ended up with a Lexar NM790. It tops Tom's efficiency charts and comes in third place for lowest idle power consumption [0]. This is still ~0.8W at idle. On a 60Wh battery an idling drive alone will kill the battery in 3 days.

Now technically there is the APST (Autonomous Power State Transition) feature in the NVMe specification. Is there some lower APST power state that can get the power draw down? Potentially, but that is a feature well beyond the purview of any SSD reviews I have seen, so I don't know- does this drive have reliable and well-implemented APST state support? How does this interact with the platform-specific sleep state implementation, which presumably wakes the disk sometimes to do some Modern Standby features- how often is it spending time in that 0.8W state versus lower? This can vary between board rev or BIOS version certainly. Beyond the actual drive configuration and ACPI interaction, there is also kernel interaction. Do certain drives behave poorly with Linux? Etc etc.

On the RAM side of things, they are using DDR5 and not LPDDR5. There is a lower voltage on LPPDR5 which is a constant inefficiency, but also LPDDR5 has dynamic voltage scaling and dynamic frequency scaling. There is also technically some voltage drop across the SODIMM connector which you don't need to contend with when you solder RAM, which would be a constant source of loss, but I am not sure how significant that is.

Beyond this you have different behaviour for every model of RAM. This post on the Framework forum shows the user could get 7.82 days of suspend time with the HMCG66MEBSA092N DDR5-4800MHz 16GB kit whereas only 2.25 days with the CT2K48G56C46S5 DDR5-5600MHz 96GB kit [1]. Consider that there are effectively infinite combinations of memory people can run, and even inside a model series, vendors can swap their chip providers, etc. Which kits give the best battery endurance? I can't tell you.

Now someone could certainly embark on a long adventure to test different drives, RAM kits, and measure their performance, recommend tunables for the Linux kernel you want to set for each particular set of hardware, etc. But this is effectively what Apple is doing for you with the MacBook. They are choosing their memory supplier, their flash supplier, and integrating as much as possible into their SoC with presumably an entire team focused on extracting the most efficient behaviour out of both.

Consider this same thing extends to display behaviour (beyond VRR support, which I believe Framework has now, you also have local dimming behaviour to tune on the MBP), wireless behaviour, all sorts of embedded controllers that Apple can wrap inside the SoC that I probably wouldn't think of... I don't see how a modular system like Framework can achieve anything close to the idle efficiency of a MacBook.

[0] https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/lexar-nm790-ssd-review/...

[1] https://community.frame.work/t/impact-of-ram-density-on-susp...

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

#98
post #7

I wish Framework offered a laptop with an ARM64 processor. I have a Surface Laptop 7 with a Snapdragon CPU on Windows 11 and it's been awesome so far. Insane battery life, especially in standby. I can reopen it after 48 hours and it only lost 3% of battery, while it stayed connected to WiFi and received notifications all along.

i also want an arm laptop running linux with good hardware. hearing it a lot too. fingers crossed.

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

#99
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Mac Desktop is vastly inferior to the Linux world I have to use Mac, Linux, and Windows desktops in my work. They all have their pros and cons, but I can’t say I’d ever argue that the Mac desktop experience is vastly inferior to the Linux desktop experience. Edit: Getting a lot of downvotes but most of the comments are about someone’s highly customized Linux desktop compared to completely vanilla Mac desktop. I…

On a Mac, you can switch between apps with Command-Tab or windows of the same app with Command-` but there's no way to cycle between all windows or bounce between to two most recently used windows. Maybe this used to make sense when apps were single purpose but I do basically everything in a web browser or a terminal so not being able to bounce between the previously selected window(of whatever kind), as I can with A…

32" 6K monitor from ASUS costs $1400, 27" 5K Dahua monitor is $500, it's not $250, but we are slowly getting there ...

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

#100
post #99
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a Mac, you can switch between apps with Command-Tab or windows of the same app with Command-` but there's no way to cycle between all windows or bounce between to two most recently used windows. Maybe this used to make sense when apps were single purpose but I do basically everything in a web browser or a terminal so not being able to bounce between the previously selected window(of whatever kind), as I can with A…

32" 6K monitor from ASUS costs $1400, 27" 5K Dahua monitor is $500, it's not $250, but we are slowly getting there ...

Not bad! Thanks for pointing those out.
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