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It's hard to justify buying a Framework 12

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: It's hard to justify buying a Framework 12

#111

Post by dd8601fn »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #80
mschuster91 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Efficiencies of scale and experience, on multiple levels. Component sourcing is the most obvious thing - Apple is known to buy up inventory years in advance for example and at insane quantities. TSMC's last new node? Apple paid billions to be the initial and, most importantly, exclusive customer. With hundreds of billions of dollars in cash and liquid assets, Apple can afford to sit on "dead money" for years - a smal…

The MacBook Neo is just the response to the question of "what do we do with all these binned iPhone chips without making yet another even lower cost iPhone?" It's literally recycling Apple's garbage.

> It's literally recycling Apple's garbage.

…and still blows the doors off anything in its market.

Re: It's hard to justify buying a Framework 12

#112

Post by Luker88 »

Framework was never the best hardware given a fixed budget, but it is true that Apple prices have become more competitive in the latest releases.

Still, few do the math of upgrading just the motherboard after a couple of years, vs buying a new laptop.

Framework laptops have been retrocompatible for the last 6 years.

Re: It's hard to justify buying a Framework 12

#113

Post by joe_mamba »

whimblepop wrote: post #83

I was seduced by Apple Silicon after experiencing the exceptional battery life and performance. Those things are great, as are the screens and the speakers. But I'm still excited about the Framework 12 because I don't love macOS. I don't need an alternative to beat Apple on every line of the spec sheet. I just need them to align with my values, support Linux well, and cross a certain "good enough" threshold. The late…

>I was seduced by Apple Silicon after experiencing the exceptional battery life and performance.

DHH showed the Framework laptops with latest Intel Panther Lake SoCs having similar battery life to AS Macs (~14 hours) under Omarchy linux while gaming benchmarks put their iGPUs in line or better than AMD's Ryzne SoCs at gaming.

The era of long battery life being the USP feature exclusive to Macbooks is slowly going away, especially if AMD pulls a similar move and heats up the competition.

Once the chip shortage from AI datacenters bubble pops, we could see even better SoCs from Intel, AMD, and even Qualcomm and Nvidia could join the ARM laptop battle in a serious way.

X86_amd64 + Linux let's goooo!

Re: It's hard to justify buying a Framework 12

#114

Post by vaylian »

ddxv wrote: post #65

I wish Framework had released a gamepad or a printer instead of a keyboard. I get that they need to expand their ecosystem and revenue stream, but keyboard just wasn't it for me. There are so many good reliable cheap keyboards already, though I guess none with the touchpad, but again just not for me. The gamepad I think would have been the killer device. Look at how much attention the steam gamepad gets. Sure, I have…

> or a printer

Someone else is doing that: https://www.crowdsupply.com/open-tools/open-printer

Re: It's hard to justify buying a Framework 12

#115

Post by ssl-3 »

hadlock wrote: post #67
throwaway2037 wrote: post #2

This is a brutal (but polite -- classic US Midwestern Geerling 'kill them with kindness'!) side-by-side comparison. My heart goes out to the Framework Computer team. Any team trying to compete in this product space against the surprise from Mac Neo must feel crushed. That said, I am still very optimistic for Framework Computer. It seems like nerds are going wild for them.

Framework is and will always be a statement device. Like modern 4x4 suvs that only haul groceries and may never see dirt roads, the upgradability of a laptop is something few will ever exercise. Most people are buying the idea.

I keep my laptops a very long time.

Every single one of them has seen repairs like screen replacement and hinge improvement. Every single one has had upgrades to storage, RAM, and CPU -- and at least one battery replacement. Ye olde Thinkpad is presently one hairy-looking BIOS flash away from a wifi upgrade.

I usually buy these machines inexpensively on the used market. And I'd love to buy an inexpensive Framework. Except... The supply/demand ratio seems to be in favor of the seller, as they seem to hold their value surprisingly well compared to many other machines.

Anyway, I don't want one for style points. I want one so I can keep it even longer than the Thinkpads and Dells of yore.

Re: It's hard to justify buying a Framework 12

#116

Post by 46493168 »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #107
46493168 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Framework needs an audience bigger than that because mostly people don't think in terms of ecosystem, they think in terms of 'does it do what I want for a cost I want to pay' and Apple wins on this.

This is why no one buys Windows laptops I guess.

Windows is the most popular OS for laptops in the US precisely because it does what people want for a price they want to pay.

Re: It's hard to justify buying a Framework 12

#117

Post by bigyabai »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #110
bigyabai wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that the CPU and GPU can pull from the same pooled RAM is a major advantage over competitors It can be an advantage, it also has downsides though. LPDDR5 is fairly slow as far as GPU memory goes, and on Apple Silicon it splits the bandwidth across the entire chipset. Many recent Macbooks have dGPU-tier hardware constrained by Wintel-laptop memory bandwidth. And if Apple uses DDR5, why not CAMM? If Apple uses NVMe,…

Right now, at this point in time, for applications like local AI and certain types of gaming, I would argue for most people having more VRAM is more useful than having faster VRAM. I personally now do more AI stuff and gaming on my M5 mac with its 24 GB shared (300 GB/s) RAM pool than my 12 GB 5070 Ti (900 GB/s). Apple still lives in its walled garden and defends it vociferously, but I would argue they have made the…

For applications like local AI and the majority of PC video games, you are not expected to have DDR5-level GPU bandwidth. It is a constraint, there is no "good enough" when you're selling a desktop-grade M5 Max that is bandwidth-constrained in practice. Modern gaming at native resolution is pretty much impossible on most Macbook Pros.

It's an acceptable approach for iPad-level stuff, but for professional workstations and desktops it's not competitive.

Re: It's hard to justify buying a Framework 12

#118

Post by tracker1 »

Aurornis wrote: post #103
tracker1 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now pretend you can't get the student discount and actually want the extended warranty/applecare and compare the final result. Now pretend you want to bump up to 16gb of ram so you can run a VM.

> Now pretend you can't get the student discount Okay it's $599 vs $799 now. 33% premium. > and actually want the extended warranty/applecare The Framework warranty is only 1 year, same as the MacBook Neo. If you add AppleCare+ to the MacBook Neo you could get a 3-year warranty laptop for $739 that performs better than the $799 Framework 12 > Now pretend you want to bump up to 16gb of ram so you can run a VM. I don't…

But bumping to 16gb ram means buying new hardware, moving over your profile/configuration and then trying to sell your old hardware, losing money on the trade... vs just upgrading the ram.

I'm not saying don't buy a Neo... I'm just saying there are objective reasons why you might not want to... for me, it's that I would prefer to run a Linux distro on whatever I buy. I might just go for a Lenovo IdeaPad and save a little over the Framework and the Neo at that point... they aren't the only two options on the market.

Re: It's hard to justify buying a Framework 12

#119

Post by tobinfricke »

whimblepop wrote: post #83

I was seduced by Apple Silicon after experiencing the exceptional battery life and performance. Those things are great, as are the screens and the speakers. But I'm still excited about the Framework 12 because I don't love macOS. I don't need an alternative to beat Apple on every line of the spec sheet. I just need them to align with my values, support Linux well, and cross a certain "good enough" threshold. The late…

Is it feasible to run Linux on the Apple hardware? Seems like that could meet your requirements, except possibly "align with my values." I saw https://asahilinux.org/ but don't know how usable it is, or whether the long battery life and hardware support is preserved.

Re: It's hard to justify buying a Framework 12

#120

Post by benoau »

tobinfricke wrote: post #119
whimblepop wrote: post #83

I was seduced by Apple Silicon after experiencing the exceptional battery life and performance. Those things are great, as are the screens and the speakers. But I'm still excited about the Framework 12 because I don't love macOS. I don't need an alternative to beat Apple on every line of the spec sheet. I just need them to align with my values, support Linux well, and cross a certain "good enough" threshold. The late…

Is it feasible to run Linux on the Apple hardware? Seems like that could meet your requirements, except possibly "align with my values." I saw https://asahilinux.org/ but don't know how usable it is, or whether the long battery life and hardware support is preserved.

Every generation of Mac has its own requirements that Asahi has to support through a painstaking process of reverse-engineering, so it lags behind quite a bit. Realistically it will probably be 2030 before you can use it on any current-generation Mac.
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