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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

#351

Post by makeitdouble »

tencentshill wrote: post #133
benoau wrote: post #101

As nice as Apple's hardware is it's all undermined by who they are as a company, intentionally limiting their devices more and more while they relentlessly argue in courts and to regulators that we owe them more and more for using our devices. Rosetta 2's retirement announcement was when I realized I won't buy another Mac, I'm not interested in a computer that is preoccupied with stopping me from running software. Wo…

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.

> When is reasonable to stop supporting a platform that only hinders the user experience?

When people who care about it can carry on the torch.

Dropping support wouldn't matter if anyone outside of Apple could keep it alive instead, or if Rosetta 2 users could stay on the last supported OS and keep their devices secured through community patches etc.

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

#352

Post by sheepscreek »

joe_mamba wrote: post #113
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 awa…

The (memory) chip shortage saga is not going away for a few years. Most fabs are going to be capacity starved. Apple will happily pony up billions to TSMC to set up a new plant in exchange for exclusive capacity. No other laptop manufacturer can do this. This will put them in an even more advantageous position. In all honesty, the Neo couldn’t have arrived at a better time for them.

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

#353

Post by analogpixel »

nucleardog wrote: post #312
analogpixel wrote: post #254

- The Framework is more expensive : Kind of care, but not really if it's worth the money. - slower (in most cases) : I care about this. Blender needs to render. - louder (its fan ramps up quite often) : I care about this, it needs to be silent. - has a pretty poor display : I care about this, I don't want poor screen quality, poor color quality, poor text rendering. - but it is a touchscreen: could care less about th…

> I'm thinking Apple might just be better at figuring out what specs actually matter, and which specs just make nerds happy but don't actually sell. (except liquid glass, they failed on that.) Or maybe this is just a totally different product? I'd also call out, anecdotally, of the people in my life the non-technical people are interested in touch screens, don't care about speed as long as it runs a few Chrome tabs w…

I don't play D&D, but I do play with computers, so I'm more of a geek than a nerd.

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

#355

Post by tshaddox »

fl0ki wrote: post #50
aftbit wrote: 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…

> The Neo is an appliance. The Framework is a tool. I get where you're coming from in principle, but I'm not sure to what audience this actually applies. If you just want a laptop that can run the software you use, both are adequate as tools. The Framework's greater flexibility only applies to making changes to the tool itself, which doesn't matter if you didn't need to change it to suit your purposes. (And I say tha…

It's a bizarre distinction, because "tool" does not imply "highly customizable" or even "repairable." In fact, even the distinction between "appliance" and "tool" is odd, since those are nearly synonymous in everyday usage, and both strongly imply a device designed for a narrow use case.

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

#356

Post by makeitdouble »

Havoc wrote: post #238
awakeasleep wrote: post #72

I don't like the comparison's fundamental assumption that they're addressing the same market. If these are both addressing the same market then yes of course the Neo wins. But I think actually one of these is for linux nerds and one is for the masses who barely understand what OS is running on it.

If you've got a device that is both cheaper and more performant then there is very little room for "different markets" arguments. >linux nerds Is unfortunately not enough to carry a product Framework (and windows flavour laptops) will need to respond to the neo. Something along qualcomm's snapdragon is probably the best bet

> Framework (and windows flavour laptops) will need to respond to the neo.

Framework doesn't even sell in half markets Apple is in (They only manage 40 or so countries [0]), they can't afford to fight race to the bottom battles.

The Neo exists because Apple has crazy economy of scale and a stranglehold on chip supply, smaller makers should be fighting on other grounds.

[0] https://knowledgebase.frame.work/what-countries-and-regions-...

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

#357

Post by makeitdouble »

akkartik wrote: post #66
SoftTalker wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't watch the video but isn't the main selling point of the Framework line (from their website) "Designed for easy customization, upgrades, and repairs." I would imagine the Mac Neo is a sealed unit that you use as-is until it's e-waste.

It's actually not bad. The rhetoric has had an effect over the years. https://www.ifixit.com/News/116152/macbook-neo-is-the-most-r...

It's still a 6 on the scale, and parts pairing, third party restrictions are still in place.

For reference, the latest Thinkpad T series is 10/10, so a better build is clearly possible.

It is actually bad. Not as bad as previous models, but still bad.

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

#358

Post by daneel_w »

benoau wrote: post #101

As nice as Apple's hardware is it's all undermined by who they are as a company, intentionally limiting their devices more and more while they relentlessly argue in courts and to regulators that we owe them more and more for using our devices. Rosetta 2's retirement announcement was when I realized I won't buy another Mac, I'm not interested in a computer that is preoccupied with stopping me from running software. Wo…

But Rosetta was always meant to be just a temporary compatibility bridge. Surely you too would consider it kind of crazy if they were today, still, pouring time into maintaining Rosetta 1 for people wanting to run PPC software on macOS/x86. The first Arm build of macOS is now 6 years old, and when Rosetta 2 is ultimately removed from macOS in late 2027 it will have been available to us for close to 8 years. That's a pretty generous amount of time given to us to move forward.

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

#359

Post by youre-wrong3 »

dijit wrote: post #271
embedding-shape wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

last time I tried Linux on ARM (a month ago) nothing worked. No sound, no webcam, no USB-C(iirc) and no video hardware acceleration. It was a Thinkpad T14s with Snapdragon Elite X-2 if it matters.

Had a similar issue and just pointed codex at my laptop and it got everything working.

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

#360

Post by entropie »

NicuCalcea wrote: post #267
mixmastamyk wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do it once and spend an extra hundred dollars or do it twice, including occasional restrictions to the user. Poor tradeoff imho. This is a young person with a long life ahead, we shouldn’t buy disposable ewaste with a short life.

Someone has to buy that (presumably second-hand) laptop to prevent it from becoming e-waste. 8GB can be plenty for a student, most don't need much beyond a browser and PowerPoint. Many of my university colleagues were using new $5,000+ MacBook Pros exclusively for Google Docs, that seems more wasteful to me.

8gb ram is not enough for normal browsing if you are forced to use windows 11 which eats easily half of it.
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