61–70 of 695 posts
> The GPU fares poorly on Intel's side 'Twas ever thus. I really wish we had a better baseline default without having to reach for NVidia/AMD.
That being said, for retro gaming or even playing games from the mid 2010's, the iGPU in a modern intel chip should do well enough.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They might disagree with that framing, but it does seem to be the majority of folks I see who are interested in them. And I'm not saying that as a negative - my Framework 13 is my favorite laptop by a fairly wide margin, but it's clearly not at the hardware level of my work issued mac. Apple produces fantastic hardware. It's a shame I can't stand them as a company, and that they cripple that hardware with their OS. P…
> But a mac hands-down the best hardware you can get for a personal laptop right now That's pretty much almost always been the case with Mac laptops though. Last Intel gen(s) aside for heat at the top end. I find that Apple's overall build quality, display and touchpads have pretty much always been second to none... I like the keyboards on most Thinkpads, especially historically, more than Apple's though. That said,…
I think that's a Rosy take. I remember the macs from before the intel generation, and they were hardware garbage (there's a reason they finally gave up and went to intel)
Then the intel macs were nice looking exteriors with very lackluster internals.
So for a long time it genuinely was an overpriced laptop from a performance point of view.
I'd say it really wasn't until the M1 that Apple has been at the top on both sides of the hardware equation.
But they are there now. I'm waiting to see if we get some real competition opening up in that space (hopefully).
Is it DRAM, NAND flash storage, SoC cost, simply scale?
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.
I would imagine the Mac Neo is a sealed unit that you use as-is until it's e-waste.
The gamepad I think would have been the killer device. Look at how much attention the steam gamepad gets. Sure, I have two gamepads already and I use them to play games on a dedicated (framework) computer hooked up to the living room TV. But guess what doesn't work? Turning the computer/TV on with the gamepad. It's so small, but so frustrating, also anytime the screens go off or sleep. So I have to keep a little $10 wireless keyboard there to turn the TV on / wake the computer.
My understanding is this is what holds it (and all other gamepads) back: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/SoftwareFirmwareIssueTr...
Steam is going to get there by having both the gamepad + the computer which then makes it possible to workout the various TV implementations.
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.
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.
https://www.ifixit.com/News/116152/macbook-neo-is-the-most-r...
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.
What's the real cause of them being unable to price competitively? Is it DRAM, NAND flash storage, SoC cost, simply scale?
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 small shop like Framework can't.
As for the Neo specifically, this thing shouldn't even exist, but Apple found themselves sitting on a stash of half defective iPhone SoCs. But instead of trashing them, they effectively recreated the netbook market segment...
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...
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 major advantage over competitors. There are also latency and bandwidth benefits how they setup their RAM just from pure physics. And chip manufacturing is moving towards chiplets where you have cores manufactured separately and then wired together at nanoscale level on top of a silicon interposer.
The current best-practice unfortunately is closer to Apple's "hemetically sealed appliance" philosophy, and not the "I build my own PC" philosophy.
When you have CPU, GPU, and even DRAM sitting on the same "die" the only things you're going to be swapping out on your Framework laptop are going to be relatively trivial.