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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

#501

Post by schaefer »

saidnooneever wrote: post #315
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…

battery life is not only factor of the laptop. having moved from Linux (ran gentoo quite minimal...) to freeBSD default install makes my laptop last about twice or thrice as long. the art of idle software and efficient energy consumption is not landed in windows and Linux takes too much work.. mac does it not too bad + having good batteries, but thats not to say a laptop with a lesser battery should be trashed by a b…

> having moved from Linux ... to freeBSD default install makes my laptop last about twice or thrice as long.

I’ve literally never heard this from anyone before, and I have to admit, I’m curious enough to try it for myself.

The last time I tried FreeBSD was 2001.

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

#502

Post by itake »

rbanffy wrote: post #494
kelnos wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider that maybe you've just gotten lucky? Laptop components do break. I haven't had Mac laptops in a bunch of years, but just off the top of my head I've had a keyboard key break (MacBook Air), and a mainboard die (MacBook Pro). But if you don't need repairs, you might want upgrades. I have a Framework 13 from 2022 and I expect I won't be buying a full new laptop for many many years. It's great that you've been a…

The whole selling point of the Framework is easy upgrades, thanks to modularity. It is a laptop that’s designed to be your laptop for at least two or three upgrade cycles, which, for Apple, implies a new laptop.

Apple's upgrade cycle (for me) has moved from 4 years to ~6 years.

Maybe upgrading the RAM or HD could be useful, but wear and tear on all components is a bigger concern for me than just one. My laptop is a critical part of my life. I can't risk being out of service for a week while parts arrive.

Its like buying a car... you can repair and maintain it to 200k miles, but the reliability will go down as more things break. Or you can buy a brand new machine to reclaim your time.

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

#503

Post by rbanffy »

nl wrote: post #432
sheepscreek wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

TSMC doesn't do memory. AMD actually got access to TSMC 2nm before Apple: https://www.amd.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-4-14-amd...

Also, a completely new fab takes up to five years to come online. The best bet is investing in increasing throughput of existing RAM plants, but that isn’t fast either. The other is buying RAM from Chinese suppliers which are less oversold (but not much, and not for long anyway).

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

#504

Post by rbanffy »

criddell wrote: post #350
joe_mamba wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Now they need to work on a fanless option. It would be nice to have at least one SKU be a silent machine with no moving parts.

That, in the x86 universe, has some heavy penalties in performance terms. I got myself a fanless “student” laptop (another name for “rugged”, but sells for less) and, while performance is acceptable, it ain’t fast - like a 10 year old i3.

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

#505

Post by pepperoni_pizza »

cardanome wrote: post #213
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…

That is all true but even as a hardcore Linux and Thinkpad user, I have to admit it is a hard sell when no one can offer the quality of Apple. Apple is the only hardware company where you can buy a product and it is good hardware wise. Sure other companies have flagship offerings but with apple you get a really good base model. And that is where it breaks down for me. Pay 20% more for freedom? Yes, absolutely. But pa…

This is a common dilemma.

Apple's phones and laptop are 100 % the best in the market, but Apple is a terrible evil company - the walled garden stuff, the "you don't really own your device" stuff, the normalization of enshittification (removing headphone jack, nonreplaceable glued batteries, not giving charger with $1000 laptop, ...) that other manufacturers followed, the gold statue Cook gave Trump as a bribe.

But not just Apple. Teslas are the best electric cars on the market - but Musk got Trump elected, literally killed millions of people with his DOGE and did Sieg Heil on stage (twice, so we don't miss it). Or Garmin - objectively the best sport and adventure watches on the market, but evil anti-consumer planned obsolescence policies. You could go on.

I guess the choice is, am I willing to "suffer" (as much as using inferior product is suffering anyway) to not support these people? Or is my comfort mire important than doing the right thing?

And I'm not just being preachy - I have aging M1 macbook, aging Garmin watch and an aging ICE car and I spend few last months pondering. It's easy to prioritize comfort. Or I'm just being a whiny bitch.

(Funnily enough, for phones the dilemma really isn't there - you have just choice of Apple or Google having all your data and no matter how bad Apple is, Google is orders of magnitude worse.)

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

#506

Post by rbanffy »

ramijames wrote: post #399
cardanome wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is all true but even as a hardcore Linux and Thinkpad user, I have to admit it is a hard sell when no one can offer the quality of Apple. Apple is the only hardware company where you can buy a product and it is good hardware wise. Sure other companies have flagship offerings but with apple you get a really good base model. And that is where it breaks down for me. Pay 20% more for freedom? Yes, absolutely. But pa…

I think that people aren't seeing what Apple is doing through the lens of efficiency, and the wider impact that has on their software and hardware. Them not having to support 30+ year old software means that they can be more nimble and make better hardware choices. Look at the mess that Microsoft has made for itself by setting the requirement that software made in the 90s must still run on modern OSs and hardware. It…

The way Windows implements backwards compatibility is not sustainable in the long term, as it increases both maintenance costs and attack surface, but the current state of Windows and its dwindling appeal has little to do with it and more with poor design decisions, and a competition that has made better design choices. Linux has been a viable desktop for years, and Macs have been the gold standard against which everyone is judged since the 1980s.

Windows still owns the corporate drone desktop, but, oddly enough, that’s now being served as a VDI through a Linux thin client.

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

#507

Post by ongy »

I have the Framework 12".

It's hard to justify the price unless you put value to Framework's gimmicks and mission.

There's no illusion that I'm not paying extra to vote with my wallet for sustainability. And I'm on with that.

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

#508

Post by rbanffy »

nicce wrote: post #450
boobsbr wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a 2015 Air running El Capitain, never updated itself.

Just 2 days ago my MacBook closed all apps it could and tried to update from 26.3.1 to 26.5 I guess current version matters.

It’s most likely about the severity of the bugs they are fixing. I’m OK for my laptop to save my work and self upgrade if that closes a browser drive-by RCE vulnerability that could have hit me.

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

#509

Post by michaelt »

curt15 wrote: post #383
hparadiz wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a feasible option I just can't use it for work because here's how that goes: > "Hey can you remove MDM from this Macbook so I can install Linux?" No. > "Hey can I get a linux laptop for a hardware refresh?" Sure. Asahi on an M2 Macbook Pro supports almost everything https://asahilinux.org/fedora/#device-support

"Hey can you remove MDM from this Macbook so I can install Linux?" Is there no MDM for Linux clients? How do the big tech companies with Linux developer machines (Google, Facebook, etc) manage their inventory? Do they roll their own MDM?

IT departments can mandate tools like ninjaone and kolide, which let them run queries across the fleet of devices, and (as I understand it) basically gives them root-level remote code execution.

The corporate VPN (or equivalent) can then perform 'posture checking' requiring that the tools be installed and working before connecting to the corporate network.

Obviously, 99% of Linux users have root on their device so nothing stops them wiping it and installing something new from scratch. But then they'll fail the posture checks until the device is returned to the approved setup.

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

#510

Post by steve_taylor »

> But there's one performance-related area where the Framework pulls ahead—a little—and that's sustained performance. When running a heavy workload like HPL (a FP64 HPC task, that taxes the CPU and RAM constantly for many minutes), the Framework's fans allow it to throttle less than the Neo.

People are seeing big gains in sustained performance on MacBook Neo with a simple thermal pad mod. The disadvantage is the underside of the Neo can get hot, but that's not an issue if it's sitting on a desk instead of your lap.

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