It's hard to justify buying a Framework 12 • Hacker News Board

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

#611

Post by nozzlegear » Sat, May 30, 2026, 6:36 PM UTC

bigyabai wrote: post #608

nozzlegear wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not interested in dragging my eyelids over whatever esoteric setup notorious Apple shittalker bigyabai uses to feel haughty when dispensing cherry-picked bullshit on HN. Move on.

That must suck. I have no reservations challenging unqualified ideologues over their selfish platitudes, you should try it sometime. Have fun defending DRM requirements, and thank you for subsidizing my 4k Netflix torrents!

If you review what I've said above, I think you'll be hard pressed to make an argument that I'm actually defending DRM. Instead, I think you saw someone say something not negative about Apple and that activated your own "unqualified ideologue", causing you to jump into the conversation with some blithe Steve Jobs quote. Nobody gives a shit that you can run arch or gentoo or whatever, and configure it just so to get around Netflix's DRM. Superfluous details, not germane to the conversation.

> and thank you for subsidizing my 4k Netflix torrents!

I don't watch or pay for Netflix lol

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

#612

Post by themacguffinman » Sat, May 30, 2026, 6:39 PM UTC

functionmouse wrote: post #375

daneel_w wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The work is done. Why not just leave it in? Or FOSS it so the community maintains it, like WINE?

I remember reading about how the reason that Rosetta 2 had good performance compared to other x86-on-ARM emulation efforts (like Windows') is that Apple built special instructions into their M chips dedicated to emulation, so maintaining Rosetta 2 support occupies silicon space when developing new M chips.

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

#613

Post by klardotsh » Sat, May 30, 2026, 6:41 PM UTC

regexorcist wrote: post #537

clircle wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pro motion and battery life for me

Pro motion has been working for a while, you can get 120Hz now.

My understanding from a friend who has one of these machines is that while 120Hz works, VRR does not and so the panel can’t clock down to save battery life when you’re just idling staring at a terminal.

(Not that I know all that well how good Linux machines are at clocking down anyway - my XPS and desktop both have VRR panels, but for all I know Niri runs them at full bore at all times - haven’t tried to measure, wouldn’t even know where to start)

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

#614

Post by Sasisundar09 » Sat, May 30, 2026, 6:44 PM UTC

Modular hardware is a great concept, but local model development lives and dies by memory bandwidth. Apple’s unified memory architecture is a physical moat that current modular buses cannot bridge.

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

#615

Post by nerdsniper » Sat, May 30, 2026, 6:51 PM UTC

p2detar wrote: post #596

swiftcoder wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my case, the corporate MDM solution consumed so much resources that a 16GB MacBook was basically unusable for dev work (my personal Mac, also with 16GB in those days, was fine)

I find it hard to believe that it was due to the MDM? The Apple MDM protocol is embedded in MacOS. Were you using some sort of agent software?

Both FireEye and Microsoft Defender make my MBP run super fucking hot and drain the battery from 100% -> 0% in <2 hours of just basic web browsing.

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

#616

Post by ksec » Sat, May 30, 2026, 6:59 PM UTC

bigyabai wrote: post #568

ksec wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> repairability I would actually rate Neo having higher repairability. It is simply much better design and built even from a repair point of view. Speaker, Keyboard and Battery are the most common thing for repairing. It is only RAM and SSD that is better, but that is a different set of trade offs with performance and battery usage compromise.

> Speaker, Keyboard and Battery are the most common thing for repairing All of which are famously nightmarish repairs on Macbooks, and line-replacable on Frameworks. I think you're alone in this regard, I'd trust the Framework 8 days out of the week.

>All of which are famously nightmarish repairs on Macbooks,

Not for Neo. Which is why Neo is a much bigger deal in its design, but most are focusing on its pricing.

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

#617

Post by swiftcoder » Sat, May 30, 2026, 7:28 PM UTC

p2detar wrote: post #596

swiftcoder wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my case, the corporate MDM solution consumed so much resources that a 16GB MacBook was basically unusable for dev work (my personal Mac, also with 16GB in those days, was fine)

I find it hard to believe that it was due to the MDM? The Apple MDM protocol is embedded in MacOS. Were you using some sort of agent software?

> Were you using some sort of agent software?

Of course, corporate almost always does. I don't recall which vendor, but one of those security + policy + logging frameworks

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

#618

Post by Melatonic » Sat, May 30, 2026, 7:52 PM UTC

Doesn't the framework 12 use a pretty old Intel CPU and design?

Better comparison would be the new 13 compared to a current MacBook Air.

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

#619

Post by normie3000 » Sat, May 30, 2026, 7:54 PM UTC

close04 wrote: post #601

jnovek wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What web stuff are you guys working on that 16GB didn’t cut it a few years ago? I’m not questioning your statement, it’s just completely different world from my day-to-day and I’m curious.

Probably building web stuff. This is how you end up with software that needs buckets of RAM. Because the dev never felt the pain. The classic “works on my machine”. Every dev I know works on the beefiest machines they can get their hands on.

Building web stuff doesn't require crazy hardware. Working on React and Vue apps, 16GB on a 6th gen Intel processor is fine today. Google Docs or Meet are more likely to cause issues.

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

#620

Post by throwaway894345 » Sat, May 30, 2026, 7:56 PM UTC

zhivota wrote: post #515

throwaway894345 wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s what I would do too, but I haven’t found a desktop build that can rival a Mac Mini or Mac Studio on performance per watt. I haven’t looked super hard, but it seems like Mac is in a different ballpark.

I mean, once it's a desktop, watts are pretty cheap, so it's a bit strange to optimize on that factor for the desktop form factor. For laptops it makes a ton of sense.

If I was optimizing solely for cost I wouldn't use a desktop in the first place. Watts are cheap, but they result in pollution and noise (e.g., fan) or you need some costly alternative. Also I just value efficiency.