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It's hard to justify buying a Framework 12

jeffgeerling.com

301–310 of 695 posts

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

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still do all my work on an M1 MBP ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

That’s wonderful for you and apple.

What does Apple gain from this scenario?

Just to add, I also do my work from an M1 MacBook that I crammed Asahi onto. I got it used for a few hundred dollars last year and it's a perfectly fine experience (for me).

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

#302
> The problem is, for an overall worse experience, are you willing to pay 20-40% more?

This is subjective. For me: yes. It buys me a lot, repairability and not being in the apple ecosystem are two things I value enough that it makes sense for me to go with Framework. It flips it to an overall better experience.

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

#303
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When is reasonable to stop supporting a platform that only hinders the user experience? Should they have supported PPC emulation forever? x86 is on the way out in for most consumer devices. Apple is usually a bit early to drop technologies, but still acknowledges and fixes real mistakes (USB-C-only laptops and the associated keyboards) when they impact customer experience.

> Should they have supported PPC emulation forever Yes.

Linux hasn't even bothered continuing supporting processors in the same family, dropping support for 386:

* https://www.zdnet.com/article/good-bye-386-linux-to-drop-sup...

and more recently, 486:

* https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/linux-devs-start...

and here we are expecting support for completely different CPU classes. :)

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

#304
post #6

If you're ideologically willing to use a Mac, you're really not the market that the Framework is targeting. Apple has always had some of the best hardware. Where they really struggle is in respecting user choice and allowing power users to alter their systems. The Neo is an appliance. The Framework is a tool. They're fundamentally intended for different people. If your choice of platform is driven by hardware instead…

As an Apple user: not always. When I left Windows for PPC my PowerBook G4 was at best even with my previous (not new) PC laptop.

It looked great. Quality was great. Grunt was not.

Since the Intel era they have been fantastic, on the whole.

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

#305
I think that there’s a little bit of pointlessness in comparing the Framework 12 to essentially the best laptop value of all time, a laptop that was basically unthinkable by the industry as a whole 6 months ago.

The framework 12 is also oriented toward the kind of person who will not be happy with macOS. At least for the 13, over half of framework’s customers use Linux. More of their users are on Linux than on Windows.

macOS is a commercial operating system that advertises paid subscriptions for you. Even my Apple TV started opening the TV app recently upon wake up which is new behavior. Apple is starting their subscription enshittification just like Windows 11. They see the end of hardware profitability and they like serving and and subscriptions more than building innovative hardware.

Framed this way, the framework 12 is perhaps the best convertible Linux laptop in its price range. And in that sense, it’s not hard to justify.

That said, framework’s clearly most competitive piece of hardware is the 13 Pro.

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

#306

> The problem is, for an overall worse experience, are you willing to pay 20-40% more? This is subjective. For me: yes. It buys me a lot, repairability and not being in the apple ecosystem are two things I value enough that it makes sense for me to go with Framework. It flips it to an overall better experience.

Let’s not forget that Apple advertises paid subscriptions in notifications and settings pane alerts when you first buy the computer.

They offer free trials which you can’t cancel without immediately ending the trial. (E.g., you can’t turn off auto-renewing without forfeiting the trial)

A device that has ads and/or behavioral pushes to subscription services and costs $500 doesn’t really cost $500.

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

#307
What I don't like in Frameworks:

Tiny screens. Imagine running a browser on a 13" screen, where part of screen space is used by taskbar, tab headers, address bar, sticky site header, cookie bar and you get less than 50% left for content. And of course site designer will use the largest font available so that you can fit only one paragraph of text into remaining space. Obviously you cannot fit VS Code or KDEnlive (it has so many panels!) into this small screen as well.

I would prefer to buy 17" but sadly such laptops are considered "professional" and therefore overpriced so I had to settle with smaller screen size and cope with it. Small screens are only good for browsing social networks with post character limits and not for work.

You could buy a monitor, but monitors aren't free and you cannot take it with you when travel (to the couch).

They tend to use the most expensive CPUs which do not have the best cost/performance ratio. Mid-range, mid-low CPUs are better.

Standard US-style keyboard. Doesn't have layout switch keys and extra keys for languages which have more than 26 letters which is like half of the world? To be fair, Macs or PCs don't have them either. PC manufacturers would rather add useless numpad than keys for foreign languages. Also, it doesn't have large arrow keys, and page up/page down and how do you scroll the code without them.

I also do not like an idea with expansion cards for ports. Just add 6-8 USB ports, video and audio and you do not need any expansion modules which could save lot of money for the customers. Having 8 USB ports for free is better than having to buy 4 expansion modules.

Also there is no need to customize color, it is waste of money

Obviously it has lot of good features but currently it is more reasonable to buy a standard laptops for ⅓ price of 1 framework and install Linux.

By the way, Macs seem to have no replaceable parts, like RAM or SSD. I wonder what Mac owners do when keys start falling out from keyboard, do they buy a new Mac, or keys on Macs never fall out? On PCs, I replace the keyboard every 2-3 years.

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

#308
post #145

What Framework is trying to do feels like something that would've made more sense 10 years ago. And the reason for that is b/c of Moore's Law approaching its end. The way to manufacture more efficient compute now is do things like put DRAM closer to the chip and even closer integration between CPU and GPU. The fact that Apple can co-design their silicon such that the CPU and GPU can pull from the same pooled RAM is a…

SSD is also soldered for little performance advantage.

You say "little" but the actual numbers seem to point to none. There are M.2 NVMe SSDs that are faster than Apple's soldered ones.

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

#309
post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

i've tried getting linux to run on a 2018 MB Pro (intel/nvidia based). Even after a ton of research and installing a couple "compatible-ish" distros, I couldn't get it to work, and gave up. And then further reading suggested I was always going to live with a semi-bricked machine. I just wanted a simple writing and couch surfing laptop. But the version of MacOs running on that old hardware is so slugish, it's painful.

You may have more luck with Omarchy - apparently they test against most Intel Mac based models.

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

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love Windows Arm. My latest machine, an Asus Zenbook A16 is great. 18 core Snapdragon X2 extreme, 48 GB of memory, and OLED screen--all for $1699. It feels very fast, faster than my 24-core Xeon desktop (though benchmarks would put my Xeon ahead) and has great "all-day" battery life. You can remove the screws on the bottom and replace the battery (which is screwed in, too, no glue to peel) or the M.2 NVME which is…

You should try Linux on it someday, to really see what the CPU can do, night and day difference :) With that said, I'd probably prefer a Windows laptop over a MacBook too, their hardware is great, but the software is just so awful. But whatever you do, don't get Microsoft's hardware, I got a Surface Pro 8 some years ago and throughout my ~25 years of computing I've never had a worse laptop, and just 2-3 weeks after t…

Unfortubately Qualcomm killed open source support efforts for Snapdragon X*
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