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.<p>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 latest laptops from Framework meet all of those requirements, and I'm excited to buy one after I've saved up enough money. I've missed Plasma for a long time. At the same time, I wouldn't even consider a MacBook Neo.
M-series MacBooks stink, literally. [1]<p>My newest MacBook reeks of strong adhesive from the vents.<p>Googling revealed hundreds of similar complaints, it's allegedly a solvent they use, perhaps flux. I thought it was the battery.<p>Many claim "they all smell like that". Some (insane) people like the smell, I assume they sniffed glue as kids.<p>Unfortunately it's the last one I buy. I won't tolerate a smelly laptop.<p>[1] <a href="https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/unpleasant-solvent-like-smell-coming-from-macbook-pro-m4-2024.2447010/" rel="nofollow">https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/unpleasant-solvent-like...</a>
Yeah if your Macbook smells like that you need to be contacting Apple. That's obviously a manufacturing flaw. I've had multiple M series Mac pros from M1 up M5 and none of them have ever had an unpleasant smell.
> M-series MacBooks stink<p>I've been around a lot of modern MacBooks both in my company and I've also owned a bunch, none of them stunk.<p>I think this is a rare issue. At least it is lower than 1/20, if not much much lower.
I've never had a smelly Mac, and I've owned maybe 10 different ones across personal and various work laptops. And 90% of devs I've ever met have used Macs and none of them smell either, so it's zero out of maybe 200+ in my personal experience.
Reminds me of when Dell laptops started smelling like cat urine. Dell denied it for a long time then admitted it was an issue with the manufacturing process.
<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-24741832" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-24741832</a>
My Mac Mini M4 has a distasteful smell when I pin in with AI prompts. And MacOS isn’t super great either. The Remote Desktop options suck and if I leave mine running for a week it can’t function without a reboot.<p>The tech industry might actually be worse than it was 20 years ago.
Software has been riding on the backs of the insane hardware growth curves for the last 20 years. I miss the days of reading about how software engineers had to delete standard C libraries in build time to shave extra memory so they can stream more of the level in.<p>I also fully acknowledge that change starts with me, unfortunately those changes don't pay the bills.
I can almost excuse Apple for not being concerned about the relatively niche “mac as a server” use case. The thing that boggles my mind is how their keyboard and autocorrect experience get steadily worse with each release. This is the primary way to interact with their flagship device—the thing that generates an enormous share of their revenue. Why go out of your way to make that worse?
100% I’ve used iPhone voice dictation for years. My voice has r changed, but its speech to text makes me sound like a stroke victim. AutoCorrect is not quite as bad, but it’s definitely regressed over the years.
Can you compare/contrast with the steam deck vent smell?
On an M4 Macbook Pro it's mild and faintly sweet but not really pleasant the way the LCD deck is. Requires a lot of heat for a long time to become noticeable. Vent is less convenient for sniffing.
Thanks for confirming I'm not insane!<p>It is a sweet odor, but chemically irritating. It cannot be good to breathe.<p>I'm shocked no one has identified the source of the odor yet. Is it thermal paste? Flux/solder paste? Turtle jizz?
Some conformal coatings, which protect PCBs from dust and moisture, can emit ethyl acetate or butyl acetate if they weren't fully cured. The smell is sweet but absolutely revolting.
First I heard of this.<p>Apparently it's a meme and Zoomers are huffing their Steam Deck exhaust. Hmm.<p>From the descriptions I've read the smell is similar or identical.<p>Maybe they use the same magic ooze.
You're not supposed to use it as a urinal.
Is that true with the mac book airs? My understanding is that they're completely sealed, and they use the case as a heat spreader.
A few*. I have 4 at home and none smell
There's always something with apple, from the breaking keyboards, scratched screens, antenna-gate, cracking gpu solder, ...<p>The comparison itself seems moot, comparing a consumer-grade consumable device built out of a phone, to a more sustainable, modular, upgrade-able device.
weird, we have around 150-160 macbook pros (anything m3/m4/m5) in the office and i never smelled that
I have an M1 Pro and have no idea what you're talking about.
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 <a href="https://asahilinux.org/" rel="nofollow">https://asahilinux.org/</a> but don't know how usable it is, or whether the long battery life and hardware support is preserved.
I love the Asahi project and I'll probably keep my oldest M-series Mac around to continue to play with Asahi. But even for the oldest Macs it supports, the feature list is not quite complete. The way Apple does a lot of things is bespoke and involves a different division of labor between firmware and operating system than conventional UEFI systems. It's hard to support. I don't want to be required to wait years for features like full support for Thunderbolt docks, and I also want to give my money to a company that proactively supports Linux (e.g., sending hardware to kernel developers, FreeDesktop graphics driver developers, DE maintainers, and distro maintainers in advance of the release of new products) rather than always buying used or giving my money to a company that merely <i>tolerates</i> Linux support.<p>Again, I love the ambition of the Asahi project and what they've done. They're impressive hackers, and thousands of people will doubtless get years of happy Linux life out of their work— maybe including me! I have no complaints for them, and no wishlist I want to bring to them. In fact, I think maybe I should send them a donation or a kind email or both upon their next release.<p>But I want to give the bulk of my financial support to a computer vendor who offers me first-class, day-1 support for software environments that make me feel happy and respected. The Asahi team can't turn Apple into that by themselves.
Every generation of Mac has its own requirements that Asahi has to support through a painstaking process of reverse-engineering, so it lags behind quite a bit. Realistically it will probably be 2030 before you can use it on any current-generation Mac.
The current leadership team at Asahi decided to prioritize upstreaming their existing work over reverse engineering on newer systems.<p>Given that you can score a used M1 Air for half the price of a new Macbook Neo (and have Linux be supported), it's an even better value compared to the Framework, for those who prefer Linux.
It's irritating to see it constantly recommended as a real option.
I think it's a feasible option I just can't use it for work because here's how that goes:<p>> "Hey can you remove MDM from this Macbook so I can install Linux?"<p>No.<p>> "Hey can I get a linux laptop for a hardware refresh?"<p>Sure.<p>Asahi on an M2 Macbook Pro supports almost everything <a href="https://asahilinux.org/fedora/#device-support" rel="nofollow">https://asahilinux.org/fedora/#device-support</a>
I believe it's what Linus Torvalds uses.
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.
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.<p>the art of idle software and efficient energy consumption is not landed in windows and Linux takes too much work..<p>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 bad OS.<p>mobile operating systems are usually much more tuned to being good with battery life. I suppose Linux and perhaps windows do not seem to have laptops as main target even for 'desktop' distros or versions.
I would happily jump ship for any competitor that offers solid AI inference benchmarks at a competitive power efficiency, but as far as I can tell Apple owns that market by a pretty big margin. I’m sure someone will point out if I’m wrong.
I just have a desktop at home that I run inference off of. It is a great setup and I don't find myself wanting to inference models directly on my laptop.
Humans own inference power efficiency by a much bigger margin
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.<p>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 enough "servicability" for me....
You should try Linux on it someday, to really see what the CPU can do, night and day difference :)<p>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 the warranty went out, the entire machine bricked itself during an update and it no longer boots at all, basically threw 1500 EUR into the sea with nothing to show for it.
last time I tried Linux on ARM (a month ago) nothing worked.<p>No sound, no webcam, no USB-C(iirc) and no video hardware acceleration.<p>It was a Thinkpad T14s with Snapdragon Elite X-2 if it matters.
Unfortubately Qualcomm killed open source support efforts for Snapdragon X*
<i>>I was seduced by Apple Silicon after experiencing the exceptional battery life and performance.</i><p>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.<p>The era of long battery life being the USP feature exclusive to Macbooks is slowly going away, especially if AMD pulls a similar move and heats up the competition.<p>Once the chip shortage from AI datacenters bubble pops, we could see even better SoCs from Intel, AMD, and even Qualcomm and Nvidia could join the ARM laptop battle in a serious way.<p>X86_amd64 + Linux let's goooo!
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.
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.
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.<p>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. Work can buy them for me but I won't spend my money on a platform like that anymore.<p>Depending on how their Supreme Court argument goes in a few weeks I will stop buying an iPhone too, if they establish the precedent that any method of paying for Netflix deserves a $5/month fee then they will leverage that to extract the same fee everywhere else.
But Rosetta was always meant to be just a <i>temporary</i> 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.
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.<p>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.<p>And that is where it breaks down for me. Pay 20% more for freedom? Yes, absolutely. But pay more for much worse? Yeah, not many people are going to be so idealistic.<p>I don't know why no one else can produce a laptop with decent battery life with an near silent fan and good display and overall great production quality. Yes, it is much easier when you are as big as apple and can rely on economics of scale but that doesn't totally explain the lack of quality when it comes to the competition.
ThinkPad X1 from 2 years ago was very solid and under Fedora everything but camera worked out of the box. And for camera issue I had to blame myself for not checking details of a specific model as Lenovo was offering at that time fully-Linux compatible model. It took about one and halve year before Linux fully supported it. And I already upgraded SSD on it which took less than 10 minutes.<p>The only complain is bad battery life. With several VMs running mostly idle it doesn’t lasts even two hours. But then I used beefy MacBook M2 at my previous work and with VMs it lasted only 4 hours.
I've been using an asus zenbook 14 OLED with linux. Compatibility is great.<p>The screen blows apple out completely. It's clearly, obviously better. The fan noise and battery life are worse than Apple. The keyboard feels better to type on, the trackpad is slightly worse, but not enough to annoy me.<p>The new Pop OS cosmic is a very fun OS concept for laptops with the autotiling workspaces as a fundamental primitive.
Is the fan turning on often? Is it very loud?<p>From my research on Macbook alternatives only the Zenbooks looked like almost-an-even-match to me. Curious what's your experience with day-to-day fan noise and heat.
From a quick search online, the max brightness of your laptop is 400 nits SDR and 500 HDR. My M5 MacBook Pro is 1000 and 1500 nits.<p>Screen brightness is not something I will compromise on after having a taste of greatness.<p>I personally wouldn't mind spending 30-40% more for a Linux laptop with similar qualities + repairability. But I will not settle for something much more expensive and worst in some aspects.<p>There are also arguments agains repairability in Framework's laptop. I did the calculations and for the Framework 16, it would be cheaper to buy a gaming Asus laptop and throw it out in a couple years to replace it versus buying a framework and upgrading it. Utter insanity.
> The fan noise and battery life are worse than Apple.<p>That's the main issue for me. I am on M1 Max 32GB RAM. Except for local LLMs, there is absolutely nothing that gets even close to the performance limits of this device. As a result, all the work I do is performed in perfect silence. Very occasionally the device would get warm, never hot. Based on my usage, I could probably go for an Air model, except for how many external screens it supports.<p>Zero-noise is non-negotiable for me. It's lamentable how absolutely no-one comes even close.
> you get a really good base model.<p>Why does it matter to _you_ in particular that the base model is good ?<p>For a decade buying macs I never got the base model, I switched to the Asus ROG series and a Surface Pro, and again I'mm not on the base model of either.<p>I get that MacBooks are very good volume purchases and excellent value for those right in the target, but IMHO that's not the people writing in this thread.<p>I'm also not a fan of the "winner takes it all" view, customers should care about their very specific needs and do their research, it shouldn't matter that some product matches 80% of other people's needs if it doesn't fit them.
And that device is the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 OLED. The paper specs are great, all that's required is to turn it into a fully fleged Linux laptop and get rid of ChromeOS and core boot entirely. I just got hibernate working on it last night, wifi, sleep and sound and the fingerprint sensor works. There's some more polish and tuning to be done, but this'll be the machine I move off my apple silicon laptop for.<p>Apple hardware is only perfect when looked at through rose tinted glasses. The whole butterfly keyboard issue should be enough to indight them from being seen as perfect with hardware. There's a reason Applecare exists, and it's not just because of accidental spills.
Forcing developers off of Rosetta 2 is a pro-consumer move because it gives the ultimate incentive for developers to modernize. I don’t want to use Lightroom (replace with whatever app is part of your workflow) through x86 emulation, I want Apple to bitch slap Adobe into porting it to native. Microsoft will be forced to expend resources to support x86 emulation for all of eternity.<p>Apple throwing their weight around in a pro-consumer way (Rosetta, ask app not to track) is why I use their devices
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 <i>is</i> 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?<p>When people who care about it can carry on the torch.<p>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.
> <i>x86 is on the way out in for most consumer devices.</i><p>Define "consumer devices"? I am holding on to my AMD Ryzen machines until they literally fall dead. I have no complaints from them. Maybe some modern or even next-gen ARM CPUs will be even better on Linux but I don't think we are quite there yet.<p>x86_64 is here to stay for a long time still.<p>But maybe you literally meant x86 as in the 32-bit CPU arch? If so, I'd mostly agree but not quite; they could be used in low-power micro-PCs for a long time still as well.
> Should they have supported PPC emulation forever<p>Yes.
Linux hasn't even bothered continuing supporting processors in the same family, dropping support for 386:<p>* <a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/good-bye-386-linux-to-drop-support-for-i386-chips-with-next-major-release/" rel="nofollow">https://www.zdnet.com/article/good-bye-386-linux-to-drop-sup...</a><p>and more recently, 486:<p>* <a href="https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/linux-devs-start-removing-support-for-37-year-old-intel-486-cpu-head-honcho-linus-torvalds-says-zero-real-reason-to-continue-support" rel="nofollow">https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/linux-devs-start...</a><p>and here we are expecting support for completely different CPU classes. :)
Supporting everything forever is how you end up with Windows
Here I was thinking the problem with Windows was the dog-slow RAM hogs the team replaced most of the core applications with so they could serve web ads in the launcher and OS chrome. Silly me, the real problem with Windows is that it can run old apps if you still have the exe kicking around.
Windows did not even support Final Fantasy 7 between two versions due to their broken Direct X design. Let's bury that turkey; just because there are compelling blog posts doesn't mean they are a legitimate reflection of Microsoft.<p>As a customer I expect my software to work, permanently. Don't expect me to cry for the richest companies in the world.
They had the classic environment. They could have kept that going.<p>Business decision, pure and simple. Value added and risk of people not moving forward was not worth the cost to them. They were also way smaller at the time than today, though the iPod had taken off.<p>I’m fine with them eventually dropping support for things. Some things I think they do too early.<p>Microsoft HAS to keep supporting stuff forever. That’s their bread and butter. Line of business apps. If they drop support businesses lose THE reason to stay with them.<p>It’s far less of an issue for Apple. And people do leave because of it. But not enough. It’s also one of the reasons (of many) they’re not very popular in business.
Windows has many flaws, being able to run any binary made in the past 30 years is not one of them.
You think the worst thing about windows is one ofnthe best things about windows?
Not really, Apple was doing something right at that point they got almost everything from classic to OSX, ppc to Intel, from 32bit to 64bit, x86 to ARM.<p>I used it through all of that and really at no point was it feeling forced and the only one with real friction was classic mode the rest felt seamless.<p>They must have just been doing something right with dev relations and community.<p>Although I will say now a lot of people don’t seem to care with keeping up with far less extreme random iOS hurdles.
You mean, being able to run binaries from 25 years ago? Yes, please!
The other day i saw a slick scifi movie and really liked the interface in one of the random background terminals. I thought id recreate a working version of it. I snapped a screenshot on my iphone where i was watching, but lo it was blacked out? Same after several attempts. Ugh fine, go to my macbook, fire up netflix in a browser there,
screenshot from desktop. Nope. Still blacked out.<p>Its not just older architecture we are losing out on.
So with the Framework you're paying a premium for maintainability. When the specs fall behind you can upgrade easily. With Apple you have a good laptop that will last awhile assuming you take very good care of it. And, of course, you can't upgrade or maintain it easily.<p>I can't say I agree with the thesis at all. With unstable hardware prices and leveling performance improvements, flexibility is becoming a far more important goal.
Bought the Framework 12 as my personal daily driver (limited hobby projects, Obsidian, light browsing) and for the hardware to grow with my use cases.<p>So even if I could get more bang for my buck with a Neo (yeah, I could), the tinkerability and repairability win over raw specs for what I actually use it for. Did I pay more for a less polished, less powerful machine? Yep. Is it enjoyable to use and fully capable of meeting my requirements? Yep.<p>Came to bikeshed but the video was more nuanced and fair than this title.
> Came to bikeshed but the video was more nuanced and fair than this title.<p>Same here. It isn't hard to justify buying something like the Framework 12 in principle.<p>I have bought multiple Framework computers and I continue to be a fan, not because it is the best in any single category. It is because I want computers to be bought and sold in the <i>vision</i> that the Framework folks seem to have.<p>When I purchase a Framework I'm not purchasing a single computer. I'm buying a laptop-of-Theseus that I can continue to use throughout the future. When parts get broken, or a fancy new part is better, I buy the parts and upgrade it rather than buy a whole new device.<p>I also run an operating system that is publicly developed and available.<p>You won't see these things on a spec sheet or influencer demo.
I've never bought a new laptop in my life, and I have a Framework 13 Pro on preorder because it's the only new laptop I will ever need to buy.<p>When I did my research, I found that Framework costs more than the competition across the entire stack, but it's by a fixed amount, $150 give or take. That's maybe a 7% premium for a high-end laptop, but a 30% premium at the low end. Obviously the price gap vs a Neo is even wider.<p>The question is whether that price gap arises from a fixed cost inherent to better product design, or if it's just the cost of Framework's smaller scale. I tend to think it's the latter.
This is the same reason I bought my Framework 13. For the same price/less could I have bought a nice MacBook? Yes, but Framework's mission is something I wanted to support and it's an exciting product. I'm still very happy with my purchase.
You could get 4 Lenovo X280 if you just need an overpowered notepad.
The point of the Framework is to run Linux, and not to be part of Apple's ecosystem. I don't want my computer to update itself without my permission, report telemetry to Apple, upload anything to any "cloud" or request that I log into something. If you don't think this is a big deal, wait until an age or identity verification law is passed somewhere, and Apple will enforce it against your will, on the computer that you bought and thought that you owned.
> The point of the Framework is to run Linux<p>Until recently they've been almost as second-class-Linux-to-Windows as say Dell, but perhaps you just meant 'non-macOS'?<p>(For example, I'm currently struggling to get my early-days pre-ordered 11th gen Intel BIOS updated from v3.07 without a) the official Windows updater; b) modifying the supplied firmware on the instruction of AI or stranger third-parties in unmerged PRs/GH issues.)
> I don't want my computer to update itself without my permission<p>Does this happen on MacOS? I don’t think I’ve experienced this.
I have a 2015 Air running El Capitain, never updated itself.
For an MDM managed computer (JAMF I know for sure), it can be configured that way per a company policy. I am not 100% sure of the answer for a computer not managed by JAMF as I have not experienced a forced update while using a non-MDM managed Mac in ~1.5 years of using a pre-owned M1.
No.<p>They opt you in to it. Possibly repeatedly. But you’re never fully forced.<p>I realize that’s far from ideal, but as a home user you do have control still.<p>Staying updated is part of “the Apple way”. If you don’t like it, you’re in for a fight until your hardware loses update support.
That's not the <i>only</i> point of Framework. It also has to be a good laptop, and priced well enough that its repair/upgrade story actually makes sense.
> The problem is, for an overall worse experience, are you willing to pay 20-40% more?<p>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.<p>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)<p>A device that has ads and/or behavioral pushes to subscription services and costs $500 doesn’t really cost $500.
What Framework is trying to do feels like something that would've made more sense 10 years ago.<p>And the reason for that is b/c of Moore's Law approaching its end.<p>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.<p>The current best-practice unfortunately is closer to Apple's "hemetically sealed appliance" philosophy, and not the "I build my own PC" philosophy.<p>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.
> CPU, GPU, and even DRAM sitting on the same "die"<p>This is actually great. The laptop body stays the same and you swap out a small mini circuit board that has the CPU + GPU + DRAM on it.<p>This is the point of the Framework laptops. They are just unfortunately stuck with non-Apple parts and thus are slow / inefficient.<p>Maybe Qualcomm can make a motherboard for Framework high end laptops with their Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme ARM-based CPUs that are supposedly competitive with Apple's M4 offerings?<p>And then offer a cut down Qualcomm mobile phone CPU + GPU + DRAM offering for the Framework 12 so that it can compete on price/performance with the MacBook Neo?<p>I think you need to complete with Apple with the right equivalents.
Funny thing is, the circuit board on the Neo is barely smaller than that of the lowest end iPhone. The only remaining big cost item swappable item at that point is the display.<p>The benefits of modularity begin to get outweighed by the costs when 85% of the cost of the machine needs to be swapped out with each upgrade. For consumers, why would they not simply opt to spend the rest of the 15% to get a whole new computer?
You underestimate how much of the cost is the chassis, hinges, screen, speakers, keyboard, which add up. Sure the CPU is the single most expensive component, but CPU + mainboard for the fw13 is less than half the price of a new fw13. And of course part of the idea is that you don't know what you'll have to replace first, when you're staring out. You might bust the hinge, or get excited about their touchpad upgrade, or decide you need a higher resolution screen, long before you need the new mainboard. The flexibility, in other words.
> spend the rest of the 15% to get a whole new computer?<p>I can see why the manufacturer would want this. As a user though why would you? If the rest of the body is familiar and works well, why toss it?<p>Maybe the sentiment springs from the general culture of consumerism and new-is-better thinking, and historically that's been warranted in the consumer electronics space. Most things aren't really like that though. Humans have long built tools, clothing, furniture, and infrastructure designed to last a long time. You commit resources up front to make sure the thing is of high quality and then benefit for anywhere between decades to centuries. Replacement carries the risk of <i>downgrading</i>. Again, rapid technological advancement has blown this way of doing things away, but at some point parts of the tech plateau and this will need to be rediscovered. For things like keyboards, trackpads, and laptop cases, I don't see how "new" will beat "good" from this point on. Even displays are starting to reach limits. This seems like the right time to be working on "here is your reliable human interface device, drop in whatever crazy magic chip fabs have cooked up every X years to keep it capable."<p>From a humanist perspective there's another reason to move this way. People like to grow attached to objects and tools. Something has been lost in the shuffle of swapping out our most personal objects every few years.
Yes, the CPU+GPU+Memory is fused but the rest of it doesn't have to be. These are still separable components and they do cost something:<p>- NVMe drive (or two)<p>- Bright, wide gamut, high resolution screen<p>- Aluminum case<p>- Great keyboard<p>- Wifi/ports<p>- Battery
Yeah, I think this is the right idea (or the most optimistic path towards M-series power/performance). If you wanted something fully/aggressively open you could do something like build a mainboard compatible with one of MNT's fully open SOMs like [1].<p>[1] <a href="https://shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-reform-rcore-rk3588-processor-module" rel="nofollow">https://shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-reform-rcore-rk3588-proc...</a>
> 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.<p>People have been hyping things like this for decades, but then it turns out the number of applications that need to frequently share data between a CPU and GPU at a faster speed than PCIe can handle are pretty uncommon. Meanwhile putting them closer together has some pretty significant real disadvantages, because then you're trying to deliver more power and dissipate more heat over a smaller area instead of putting more physical separation between the two largest loads in the machine.<p>Notice that high end PC GPUs are significantly faster than any of Apple's integrated GPUs, and that's why.<p>> There are also latency and bandwidth benefits how they setup their RAM just from pure physics.<p>Soldering RAM has a modest latency advantage over SODIMMs at the most extreme timings and CAMM turns even that into basically nothing.<p>> 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.<p>You're describing a move to <i>less</i> integration. They were originally on the same die, and the change has no real effect on modularity. The user doesn't even have to know that some Ryzen CPUs have a separate I/O die or more than one compute die, they all still fit into the same socket and are even interchangeable with the ones that have only a single die.
- For high end AI inference chips, DRAM already goes onto the interposer right next to the GPU to bring the bandwidth as high as possible. Apple will eventually do this for the exact same reasons. It's not just soldering RAM to a PCB
- The chiplet technique and putting everything on an interposer is less integrated from the perspective of the chip manufacturer, but for the consumer -- folks who are going to buy Framework laptops, this is a far less integrated package. CPU, GPU and RAM will sit on the same interposer and purchased together as a unit with no upgrade or swap path for any component. This is not the same as simply soldering everything together on one PCB. The level of intergration is far higher
> For high end AI inference chips, DRAM already goes onto the interposer right next to the GPU to bring the bandwidth as high as possible.<p>The high end AI inference chips use HBM and cost tens of thousands of dollars. HBM uses 1024 data pins instead of 64, which is crazy expensive, which means that to the extent that consumer devices get it at all, it would be <i>in addition to</i> rather than <i>instead of</i> ordinary DRAM, e.g. you might have 12GB of HBM on the CPU package but then 64GB of less expensive DRAM. Increasing the number of cache hierarchy levels is a long-term trend. HBM as L4 cache is pretty plausible for high end CPUs as a supplement rather than replacement for DRAM.<p>There are already servers that work like this, e.g. Xeon Max has 64GB of HBM but then further supports up to 4TB of DDR5.<p>Moreover, the AI inference hardware integrates the <i>CPU</i> into the <i>GPU</i> because it's really just a giant GPU. They're not getting some major advantage from that, they just know nobody is going to want to swap out the CPU on a system where the CPU is mostly irrelevant. If you wanted that level of inference performance on a normal PC which is used for other purposes where the CPU actually matters then you would drop the AI accelerator with the HBM or GDDR into a PCIe slot.
I think the long term trend is typically the high end technology of today will be the mid to low tier technology of the future.<p>If putting 1024 data pins all connected via a nanoscale manufactured silicon interposer right now seems complicated and expensive, that doesn't mean we won't see it in tomorrow's consumer devices. If anything we will be MORE likely to see this one day. Apple and other companies are gradually working towards moving AI models to be more local which means memory bandwidth has a real killer app use case right now. Witness Liquid AI and their partnership with Mercedes Benz to put 8B param LLM models into vehicles.<p>Both Desktop PCs and the CPU are becoming less and less relevant as we move further in the decade to be honest...
> 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.<p>Lots of laptops have integrated graphics. And many recent CPUs have strong integrated graphics. They're not doing anything special there. I don't understand why that gets so much attention.<p>The special thing they do is having very wide bandwidth on the higher end models, to a CPU with integrated graphics. That doesn't affect the Neo though.
> There are also latency and bandwidth benefits how they setup their RAM just from pure physics<p>What sort of physics? Dedicated GPUs achieve massive memory bandwidth without needing to put all of their memory on-die.
Shorter PCB traces because of insane timing requirements for DDR5, GDDR7, and beyond; GPUs put the memory chips as close as possible surrounding the CPU die to reduce the latency and prevent timing/signaling issues.<p>But even there, the fastest AI accelerator GPUs are putting memory on die, and using chiplet designs, to get the memory closer and closer to the cores.
Simply physically moving the RAM closer to compute can make communication faster.<p>Ideally, RAM and compute should be combined. That's kind of what our brains do. We'll probably need more mature memristor technology to achieve that one day.
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.
It might give great financial performance advantage though.
> Moore's Law approaching its end.<p>People have been calling the top on Moore's Law for at least as long as I've been buying computers. (~20 years). I'll believe it when I see it.
> that the CPU and GPU can pull from the same pooled RAM is a major advantage over competitors<p>It <i>can</i> be an advantage, it also has downsides though. LPDDR5 is fairly slow as far as GPU memory goes, and on Apple Silicon it splits the bandwidth across the entire chipset. Many recent Macbooks have dGPU-tier hardware constrained by Wintel-laptop memory bandwidth.<p>And if Apple uses DDR5, why not CAMM? If Apple uses NVMe, why not M.2? Many of the advantages you've listed are marginal compared to the real-world constraints of the hardware, and cover up some boneheaded decisions that don't significantly impact the laptop's efficiency.
Right now, at this point in time, for applications like local AI and certain types of gaming, I would argue for most people having more VRAM is more useful than having faster VRAM.
I personally now do more AI stuff and gaming on my M5 mac with its 24 GB shared (300 GB/s) RAM pool than my 12 GB 5070 Ti (900 GB/s).<p>Apple still lives in its walled garden and defends it vociferously, but I would argue they have made the correct design tradeoffs for their business.
> Right now, at this point in time, for applications like local AI and certain types of gaming, I would argue for most people having more VRAM is more useful than having faster VRAM. I personally now do more AI stuff and gaming on my M5 mac with its 24 GB shared (300 GB/s) RAM pool than my 12 GB 5070 Ti (900 GB/s).<p>The issue is that this in no way requires soldered memory. CAMM2 supports speeds up to 9600 MT/s. You can get over 300 GB/s from two CAMM2 sockets.
For applications like local AI and the majority of PC video games, you are not expected to have DDR5-level GPU bandwidth. It is a constraint, there is no "good enough" when you're selling a desktop-grade M5 Max that is bandwidth-constrained in practice. Modern gaming at native resolution is pretty much impossible on most Macbook Pros.<p>It's an acceptable approach for iPad-level stuff, but for professional workstations and desktops it's not competitive.
> Moore's Law approaching its end.<p>No it isn't. We are going more parallel and the transistor counts will continue to rise.
No, it ended long ago.
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I don't like the comparison's fundamental assumption that they're addressing the same market.<p>If these are both addressing the same market then yes of course the Neo wins.<p>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.<p>>linux nerds<p>Is unfortunately not enough to carry a product<p>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.<p>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.<p>The Neo exists because Apple has crazy economy of scale and a stranglehold on chip supply, smaller makers should be fighting on other grounds.<p>[0] <a href="https://knowledgebase.frame.work/what-countries-and-regions-do-you-ship-to-r1899ikiO" rel="nofollow">https://knowledgebase.frame.work/what-countries-and-regions-...</a>
There is a segment of Framework's customer base which is ride-or-die for Linux, but it's not their <i>entire</i> customer base: they still exist in a market where they need to compete on features and cost. Before the Neo, that wasn't too bad because they were more-or-less at parity with Apple on cost, close enough on polish, and better on repairability. But the Neo is just so cheap, and with Apple's level of polish it's really tough to compete with.
The Neo costs the same as an on-sale Macbook Air, but doesn't support Asahi Linux. If any Framework customers were tempted by Apple hardware, they would have bought the Air a year ago and probably look at the Neo like it's a Fischer-Price laptop. Cost and polish aren't going to push sales for this market segment.
I love that Framework exists and I hope they succeed.<p>I have been recommending them to friends and family who are looking for Windows or Linux laptops, though with some reservations due to the problems with a couple of their models.<p>However I don't see the value in the Framework 12 over a MacBook Neo if someone isn't choosing by OS first. The $499 MacBook Neo is just so good for the price and so well built. The $499 price is the education price, which is relevant for the student in the story.<p>The upgradeability is a benefit of the Framework 12, but look at the premium you pay for that option: $799 versus $499 is a 60% premium paid up front. You could sell the MacBook Neo for $200 in a couple years and buy a next-generation MacBook Neo for probably a very similar financial to buying the Framework 12 and <i>not</i> upgrading it.
> if someone isn't choosing by OS first.<p>What a surprising idea! I have always and only ever chosen by OS first. Are there really a significant number of people willing to buy a computer with no concern for the type of software it will be able to run?
> Are there really a significant number of people willing to buy a computer with no concern for the type of software it will be able to run?<p>Most common software that typical buyers use is available on Mac or Windows: Web browsers, office software, maybe an e-mail client.<p>This is why Chromebooks are a viable option, too.<p>Even my software development workflows are mostly cross-platform when I think about it. I can run all of my IDEs and text editors on my Mac, Windows, and Linux computers.
> Most common software that typical buyers use is available on Mac or Windows<p>That's not how most people think. Most non-techies are either fluent with "how to use a Mac" or "how to use Windows" and they will just stick with that inertia.<p>For a lot of people, learning a new OS is an ordeal.
IDK. Until the Neo you basically didn’t have a choice unless you were in the $1k+ bracket, which is not where most machines are sold.<p>You could buy Windows, or a very cheap Chromebook that felt like it.<p>People in that $600-700 range have never had a choice like this.
Also possible that people have paid for licenses / apps and thus want to stay with the OS those will run on, instead of having to pay again (if it's even an option).
Besides, the Linux app is available for Windows - no need to run it bare-metal: <a href="https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install" rel="nofollow">https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install</a>
Outside of tech professionals, yes.<p>It’s 2026 and what people don’t do in an app, they mostly do in a browser. An entire generation of “digital native” people are now adults who don’t even understand what a file system is, don’t understand folder structures, and don’t care what OS they run.<p>That said, having a computer that seamlessly integrates with their mobile device is a huge feature. So the MacBook neo not only being so affordable but fitting into the Apple ecosystem is a slam dunk for normal people
What type of software will you not be able to run? Your browser will work just the same, and your dev env and devtools will be just the same, and it's a posix environment. If that's what I need most and it runs just about the same on macos/linux then why not prioritize the hardware?
Most regular users do everything via the web, where there is little difference between the OSes. Gaming is the only thing that comes to mind where regular users notice a dramatic difference.
It's $599, and they validate students for discounts now so for the vast majority of people $599 is the price.<p><a href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/926675/apple-education-discount-unidays-verification-us" rel="nofollow">https://www.theverge.com/tech/926675/apple-education-discoun...</a>
This. People really underestimate or straight up ignore resale value of Apple products. Just because you can upgrade a Framework laptop it doesn't make it a better value over the long term.
Can't believe the cost of the trash can mac pros. I always wanted one and put it on my long term to-do list, but they're still $500+. Even if they can be had for less, I won't buy one because my tolerance for tinkering has since dwindled. But it's quite a testament that they are still that expensive.
They’re a collectors item. And they look cool, not like some of the PPC beige boxes. There’s never been anything else on the market like it.<p>I doubt it will ever drop. At least not for a long long time.
I mean, you have always wanted one. Can you say the same thing about any other PC?<p>You understand the demand for them. It’s you.
Dell just announced an XPS 13 that is $699 (with a $599 education pricing) and fairly nice CNC machined body (1 kg) and nice screen (2560x1600 30-120 Hz 500 nit 100% DCI-P3). That could be a tempting alternative to the Macbook Neo for people who don't want to use macOS. Unfortunately for the Framework, it is no longer competitive even with other PC laptops.<p><a href="https://videocardz.com/newz/dell-unveils-xps-13-its-lightest-xps-laptop-yet-with-intel-wildcat-lake-starting-at-599" rel="nofollow">https://videocardz.com/newz/dell-unveils-xps-13-its-lightest...</a>
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."<p>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.<p><a href="https://www.ifixit.com/News/116152/macbook-neo-is-the-most-repairable-macbook-in-14-years" rel="nofollow">https://www.ifixit.com/News/116152/macbook-neo-is-the-most-r...</a>
It's still a 6 on the scale, and parts pairing, third party restrictions are still in place.<p>For reference, the latest Thinkpad T series is 10/10, so a better build is clearly possible.<p>It is actually bad. Not as bad as previous models, but still bad.
It's actually not bad? "The most repairable MacBook in years" means practically nothing. And for someone who might be comparing with a Framework, it's probably an insult.
What would mean something to you captain?
You're preaching to the choir, brother. But reread the comment I replied to. "Use as-is until e-waste" the Neo is not.
EU regulations have had an effect.
You will be able to drop an old Neo off at an Apple store and they'll recycle it. Same as with most of their other products.
You won't be able to upgrade it, but it is at least moderately repairable.
Framework is and will always be a statement device. Like modern 4x4 suvs that only haul groceries and may never see dirt roads, the upgradability of a laptop is something few will ever exercise. Most people are buying the idea.
Maybe. My wife is non tech and after dropping her XPS and breaking the screen she was real interested in something that can have a replacement display installed in about half an hour. She wishes her F13 were a little slimmer like her XPS, but she gets a lot of peace of mind knowing that repairs something that "even" she could do.<p>I'd also say that Linux support basically from day 1 is their hidden killer feature. Literally zero fuss. That's mattering to a lot more people these days even if they don't daily drive Linux, it's a good plan B in case Windows manages to get even worse.
Most people who want a user-replaceable screen just buy a Thinkpad. I've replaced the screen on all two of the thinkpads i've owned over the last 16 years. I still have my X series from 2010; it still works, only an ant crawled between two layers of the screen and died near the center and after 7 years it was time for an upgrade. It also ran (still runs) linux just fine due to that one guy at RedHat (who very recently retired) who maintained so many of the drivers for the world. I never needed anything more complicated than a philips head screwdriver to replace the screen, ram, keyboard, hard disk, or battery. And you can get parts for a thinkpad in most countries you're likely to visit.
Bought the Framework 13 in March 2022 with 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD for about $1000. Later, I upgraded RAM and SSD to 32GB/2TB (for about $180), which made it a breeze to run multiple VMs and Docker containers in parallel. Meanwhile, the Macbook M1 Pro I got from work half a year earlier cost more than $2500 for 16GB RAM and a 1TB SSD and crashes when I dare to open Docker or the Android Simulator and keep a browser open for too long. I really like the M1, but it is unusable for my current workloads, and there is no way to adapt it.
my partner is a non-tech woodworker and fucking brutal on hardware, so she was addicted to Chromebooks. they cost nearly nothing, they came in weird small form factors, and they had a knack for lasting forever.<p>she had a day job that required her to use an older Mac and it was a relative pain in her ass that put her off Macs at home. I had a pile of retired laptops and kept trying to find one that would sway her off google.<p>she expressed interest in drawing functions so I started with a Lenovo Yoga. Windows wasn't an issue as soon as she figured out that she could sign into Chrome and just stay in it like a chromebook. but it was too big, too heavy, too glossy, and crashed too often. she also ended up cracking the screen in 2 months, and while the display was replaceable, the stylus digitizer part never worked again, which eliminated the one compelling feature.<p>next one we tried was an M1 MBA, which had all the things she hated about her work laptop. she also destroyed one of its USBC ports after 3 days, despite getting a protective cover for it, and it never consistently charged again after that. got donated in the end.<p>during this time I decided to upgrade my FW13 mainboard and instead picked up another full DIY kit to get the updated hinge, screen, and bottom chassis. The old Ryzen mainboard got the SSD and 2 x 8GB RAM pulled from the Yoga, and I offered it to her as an interim until she found something she liked.<p>she was mixed on it, but it stood up to her. what sold her on it was that when she dropped it on a concrete floor and bent the bottom chassis near the expansion ports, I just bought her a new bottom chassis and linked her to the replacement video. She had it swapped out in an hour and a half, her first solo computer repair.<p>so now her top two laptops of all time are:<p>- that shitty 10" Acer chromebook, still, because it was 10" and matte and about $60<p>- the FW13, which she's since added about 2 pounds of stickers to and also upgraded the hinge and battery on herself<p>most people are buying the idea, yeah. we have to, in order to show other people what the idea means in practice
I keep my laptops a very long time.<p>Every single one of them has seen repairs like screen replacement and hinge improvement. Every single one has had upgrades to storage, RAM, and CPU -- and at least one battery replacement. Ye olde Thinkpad is presently one hairy-looking BIOS flash away from a wifi upgrade.<p>I usually buy these machines inexpensively on the used market. And I'd love to buy an inexpensive Framework. Except... The supply/demand ratio seems to be in favor of the seller, as they seem to hold their value surprisingly well compared to many other machines.<p>Anyway, I don't want one for style points. I want one so I can keep it <i>even longer</i> than the Thinkpads and Dells of yore.
You're probably right for most people. But in laptops I've owned, I've done stuff like upgrade storage, upgrade/add RAM, swap out the WiFi module for one that has better OS driver support, replace batteries.
It may be less valuable now because of RAM/SSD prices, but I was able to benefit from my framework's modularity on Day 1 by saving hundreds of dollars by buying those components a la carte Instead of paying the heavily marked up prices some vendors charge for upgrades.
How would one know though by just looking at the device? I have chassis that came with Intel 11th gen, but the brainboxery, keyboard, battery, touchpad -- all have been swapped over time.
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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.<p>If your choice of platform is driven by hardware instead of software, and you really like tablet mode, check out a Surface Pro. They're decent tablets that run full Windows/Linux instead of some neutered tablet OS, with a keyboard you can attach to use like a laptop.
> The Neo is an appliance. The Framework is a tool.<p>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 that as someone who has built their own Linux & Windows PCs from parts since high school, because I know I'm not the target audience for a Neo)<p>It's like I consider my Dewalt power drill a very decent tool because it has exactly the modularity I need -- it even has interchangeable batteries -- and it wouldn't even occur to me to call it an outright appliance even if another power drill offered more customization for some niche use case. The Neo is an adequate tool for many people even if other tools do offer more customization or maintainability.<p>This would be a much stronger argument against using an iPad for productivity, because many people simply cannot run the software they need, or only at a significant expense to productivity and quality of life. I use iOS devices only as communication and media terminals, and even then I would struggle to call them appliances, they're still tools for their particular tasks.
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.
True, I was being a bit loose with my terminology. Some tools reward customization more than others. Machine tools and 3d printers are often used to produce parts, mods, and upgrades for themselves, for example. Screwdrivers aren't usually used to work on themselves though.<p>The principle I was trying to express is that a Framework (and Linux, for that matter) is a tool more like a mill or an older 3d printer from the RepRap era. You will get the most out of it if you spend time customizing it, altering it, upgrading it, understanding it, etc. A MacBook Neo is a tool more like a screwdriver or a power drill. It is immediately fit for its purpose, even if that purpose isn't quite as wide ranging.<p>It feels a bit odd to compare them directly across categories. The MacBook Neo feels like it should be compared to a Chromebook or a cheap Windows laptop, not a high-end Linux-first upgradable machine. That's like comparing a Dewalt power drill to a 1930s drill press. They can both drill a hole... but they're just not the same tool, and I (personally) wouldn't expect to use them in the same way.<p>Framework's hero image when you build the laptop is someone removing the keyboard to tinker with the machine.[1] If you don't intend to do that, then yeah, it's probably not the choice for you. If you are indifferent between macOS and Linux, then it's probably not the choice for you.<p>1: <a href="https://static.frame.work/8pbsbvkvt7p9nayyn32gzyg84spa" rel="nofollow">https://static.frame.work/8pbsbvkvt7p9nayyn32gzyg84spa</a>
One thing I miss from when I mained workstation-class Linux laptops is indeed just how tinkerable they were, in a way that didn't feel like a compromise because no other workstation-class laptop was smaller, and smaller laptops had limited performance. You could upgrade RAM and replace a HDD with an SSD, you could drop in a PCMCIA card, you could bring interchangeable batteries, etc.<p>I appreciate that Framework has not only brought that back but expanded on it further, but they've done it at a very different time in the market. Now that maintainability and customizability does come at a compromise to at least one of cost, bulk, or performance. That's not only the case when compared to the Neo, as far as I know it's also the case at the high end compared to a MacBook Pro.<p>They've set out to do something that would be difficult in any case, but they're also doing it against Apple's advantages of vertical integration and economy of scale. I'm sure I'm not the only person that can deeply respect that while still not feeling any interest in buying any of their available products.
I think Framework would disagree that their target market consists solely of people ideologically opposed to owning Apple hardware.
They might disagree with that framing, but it does seem to be the majority of folks I see who are interested in them.<p>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.<p>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>Prior to framework, I'd be buying something along the lines of a Dell XPS (developer edition for linux compatibility) because a mac is just a non-starter for me. But a mac hands-down the best hardware you can get for a personal laptop right now. Turns out that's not the main driver of what laptop I want.
> But a mac hands-down the best hardware you can get for a personal laptop right now<p>That's pretty much almost always been the case with Mac laptops though. Last Intel gen(s) aside for heat at the top end.<p>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, being able to run Linux proper has become a higher priority... I plan to continue using my M1 air until it dies or I can't stand it anymore... but I bought it with 16gb ram and a bigger drive, so it does what I need and then some.<p>I don't "work" on it, so that isn't a big deal and I can remote edit in VS Code to my desktop via wireguard+ssh wherever I am with internet access. That could be a differentiator, but my vision is so bad, I probably won't be able to get away with the maxed out display on any laptop eventually.
> That's pretty much almost always been the case with Mac laptops though<p>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)<p>Then the intel macs were nice looking exteriors with very lackluster internals.<p>So for a long time it genuinely was an overpriced laptop from a performance point of view.<p>I'd say it really wasn't until the M1 that Apple has been at the top on both sides of the hardware equation.<p>But they are there now. I'm waiting to see if we get some real competition opening up in that space (hopefully).
I guess it's hard for me to judge, I never really used Macs during the PowerPC era... I used the prior generation when I was at school sometimes, but not much. Mostly a PC user most of the time until well after the Intel transition.<p>But even if the performance wasn't great, they did have very good displays, and touchpads with good keyboards and better than most speakers. A lot of laptops didn't come close to that portion of the experience at least at the base pricing, which IMO matters. That physical level of interface is what has had me use Apple more than most other factors.<p>I'd say there's definitely a lot of competition from Apple... I'd even say the Neo is a surprisingly good option for a lot of people... too many compromises, imo, for anyone doing technical work though. But even a base model M1 Air is also pretty good value.
>If you're ideologically willing to use a Mac<p>A grouping that has substantially expanded recently. Me included.<p>I'd prefer to run linux, but if my usage case is browser, opencode, neovim and terminal...all of those I can make work in a mac world if need be
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.<p>It looked great. Quality was great. Grunt was <i>not</i>.<p>Since the Intel era they have been fantastic, on the whole.
Well, if Apple killed it, Lenovo killed it even more. I recently was looking for a laptop for a student. The Lenovo E14 Gen7 is 800 Euros here in Germany (where prices are always higher, the MacBook Neo is 700 Euros), it has 16GB of RAM, 1TB SSD, a 2.8k IPS display, a Intel Ultra5 12core CPU, and it has a repairability score of 9/10 from ifixit. Framework doesn't even come close to that package.
Dammit. I got an IdeaPad of similar price in december 2024. It didn't have one of the fancier displays from the era but still a decent option, it has 16Gb and I thought I'd try a Ryzen mobile thing that time. Wish I'd gone for the Thinkpad E series had I known about it then : that lower-end IdeaPad feels like trash.<p>SSD IO is sluggish, fans always spin when plugged in, audio crackles if I so much as scroll a page while a youtube video is playing, the keyboard might be the worst I've touched in many, many years, the 3.5mm audio jack wore out into intermittent connectivity within a couple of months. At least the display still looks good.
Went through the windows optimization motions with it too. My x230 with an i5 still has lower and more stable DPC latency and has remained my DJ laptop.
Framework is definitely premium-priced, but I don't think most people are cross-shopping the Framework 12 (a 12" convertible tablet) and the Thinkpad E14 (a 14" dedicated laptop).
Same thought, as an owner of a similar Lenovo, that's top bang for the buck. Also, matte screen and hinge that opens 180 degrees is something the Neo and most Macs doesn't have.<p>Though I assume the Apple clientele is always different than those shopping for PCs, and doesn't care about specs, they just want MacOS and the Apple ecosystem, most likely they already have an iPhone or are planning to get one anyway so then a Macbook is the only thing on their radar. Those people aren't really shopping for PCs anyway unless they need some Windows/Linux exclusive apps like CAD/CAE.<p>But if you want to run linux and game then that Lenovo would be a good deal.<p>Similar to the Framework, it has its own niche clientele who values the company motto, tinkering and repairability aspects way more than the value proposition. Most likely they run Linux too.<p>There's something for everyone.
It is funny how Mac OS is a draw for some, when it is the main reason I don't use a Mac. Their hardware is excellent, but when I've tried using a Mac as my main machine, my productivity suffered. The only part of the Apple ecosystem I wish I could get on Windows is iMessage, and maybe FaceTime.
I’m way more productive on a Mac.<p>Different strokes.
> <i>The only part of the Apple ecosystem I wish I could get on Windows is iMessage, and maybe FaceTime.</i><p>It annoys me that these are such a draw. There are a dozen other viable messaging and video call apps, but there's always someone who feels like spending two minutes to install and activate one is a major imposition.
I like Apple hardware. I like the Apple integration. I like the hardware quality. I LOVE the silence of the M series machines.<p>But for me you’re right. More than anything, I’m not giving up Mac OS. Despite Tahoe, which I do severely dislike, I’m still far happier using it daily than Windows or Linux.<p>Until that changes, or the hardware gets bad enough (it’s going in the other direction), I’m not leaving. I don’t even look at other options for my real computers.<p>“Toy” computers that I want to throw Linux or BSD or something on just to play with, yeah of course. But not what I want to use all day every day.
> and it has a repairability score of 9/10 from ifixit<p>Do you mean a 6/10? The only score I saw for the neo on iFixIt is here: <a href="https://www.ifixit.com/News/116152/macbook-neo-is-the-most-repairable-macbook-in-14-years" rel="nofollow">https://www.ifixit.com/News/116152/macbook-neo-is-the-most-r...</a><p>I checked the "Laptop repairability scores" page and the Neo doesn't appear to be listed. <a href="https://www.ifixit.com/repairability/laptop-repairability-scores#Laptop-Scores" rel="nofollow">https://www.ifixit.com/repairability/laptop-repairability-sc...</a>
16GB of RAM? Good for browsing the internet and nothing else.
Isnt the reason to by a Framework (or similar) because you would not want to be part of Apple's ecosystem? Why would benchmarks even matter here?
Uncles don’t let relatives buy less than 16gb ram. That has been my standard since ~2010 and our 2013 mbp is still running fine because I insisted on it.<p>I prefer FW for freedom reasons, that’s worth a few hundred as well as the ram. Would also wait for the new intel chipset that is more efficient however.<p>Finally I think the FW 12 is weirdly positioned, as the 13 is already thin and light. For a tablet, I recommend the Star Labs Starlite instead. Both in same package? Clunky.<p>Guess I’d recommend a used FW 13 and Starlite instead. That’s what I have now and no real reason to upgrade, and freedom to tinker is off the charts, perfect for a student.
> Uncles don’t let relatives buy less than 16gb ram. That has been my standard since ~2010 and our 2013 mbp is still running fine because I insisted on it.<p>Just last weekend I bought 8gb ram thinkpad t14 for an elderly relative. 240 EUR.<p>It replaces his thinkpad x220 where the fan and ssd slowly dies.<p>I doubt it becomes an issue, and if it does then I can upgrade it later.
You can do it once and spend an extra hundred dollars or do it twice, including occasional restrictions to the user. Poor tradeoff imho.<p>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.
> we shouldn’t buy disposable ewaste with a short life.<p>Indeed. That makes two of us.
MacBooks don't need as much ram - I have an m1 air with 8gb of ram and it's perfectly serviceable, I can even run IntelliJ on it...
I never run out of memory on macoOS on my M1 Air 16GB. Now that I use Asahi on it, I had plenty of OoM crashes.<p>macOS is really good at memory management, including the compression and offloading to the fast SSD.
Compared to what? Not really true, and hard on the swap drive. Penny-wise meet pound.
> I had already put both laptops through my benchmark gauntlet<p>Who needs to justify it? I make good money, fell in love with the Framework 12 at first sight, maxed it out with 64GiB RAM and 2TB SSD, and never even thought about “comparing” it to other companies' machines before buying. Something about that being a thief of joy? :p<p>Peep my one-wire desk setup, and that awesome tablet mode: <a href="https://ibb.co/album/1YGRfh" rel="nofollow">https://ibb.co/album/1YGRfh</a>
I recently got a FW12 and, for a random data point, my kids love it: the color, the ability to do art on the touchscreen, the foldability. And I love all those things too, in addition to getting to play with various flavors of Linux on it. (Now running Fedora with Cosmic, but keeping GNOME for the handful of things Cosmic glitches out on.) It is just a fun computer, and I appreciate that playfulness about it every day.
For most of 2024, my main daily driver laptop was a little pink chinese laptop from 2019 I bought on amazon for roughly $200. It was marketed toward communication students. I put arch with cinnamon on it and it was pretty damn adequate for my needs, serviceable for browsing, watching videos, and even some dinky games, and of course fine for development, able to run tiny prototype code locally and ssh into more powerful servers (or cloud vms, whatever) when work was to be done for people paying for the compute<p>You really don't need that much computer for most things, but most operating systems shove a lot of extras on there by default. Leaving windows on the thing obviously would have been untenable, but even ubuntu would probably chug on such a device. I think if the supply crunch continues this logic will make sense to more and more people<p>I use a macbook for work now because I'm required to. It's just at every level an obnoxious operating system to work with, its permission model is a mess, every program on it is an ad and keeps trying to vie for my attention and I can't remove half of them. It bugs out often, including maxing out its application memory opening programs I didn't ask to open. It updates itself in an obnoxious way without my permission. It would be unusable if it didn't have a unix shell, and not everything on it is accessible from shell commands. Apple makes fundamentally incredible hardware, even if they're not perfect, but I would never intentionally buy something from them that didn't support getting out of their godawful software ecosystem
I have a Framework 12 and I absolutely love it. It's cute and super portable, and the 12-inch form factor is just perfect.<p>Sure, the hardware might not be the newest, but it's more than enough for me since I mostly do remote development. Plus, it has 48 GB of RAM, which lets me load the entire system into memory, making it feel super responsive.<p>But what I love most is how durable it is, which matters a lot because I'm honestly pretty careless with my stuff. Just yesterday, I grabbed my backpack off the table without realizing it was open. My Framework went flying across the entire room and slammed into the wall, and there wasn't even a single scratch on it. An aluminum laptop would've had a nasty dent at the very least.<p>And even if the whole frame <i>had</i> shattered, I could just order a new one for 55 dollars. Same story with the keyboard. One of the keys was making this annoying clicking sound, so I just detached it, stuck a little piece of tape underneath, and it was good as new. I only felt comfortable doing that because I knew that worst case, I could get a whole new keyboard for 55 dollars.<p>Honestly, not having to handle my laptop carefully is worth so much to me. I also don't stress about battery care, whatever to preserve long-term battery life, because replacing the battery costs, you guessed it, 55 dollars.
The repair ability is why I went with a Framework. My last two laptops had keyboards that lasted until a few months after the warranty. Rest of the laptop works, but I can't find replacement keyboards at a reasonable price. So a framework, and I bought a spare keyboard upfront on the off chance they go bankrupt.
It is such a shame, too, because what Framework has achieved at this pricepoint should be commended. The fact that their business can sustain a lower-margin SKU like the Framework 12 is nothing short of extraordinary! But wow, the MacBook Neo threw a bomb into the low-end market.
> the Mac is faster (in most cases), more efficient, quieter, built better, has a much nicer display, and costs much less.<p>The Framework is more expensive, slower (in most cases), louder (its fan ramps up quite often), has a pretty poor display, but it is a touchscreen, has a 360° hinge, and is more repairable and upgradeable.<p><a href="https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/its-hard-to-justify-framework-12/" rel="nofollow">https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/its-hard-to-justify-f...</a><p>The thing I was not expecting was that the Intel i3 was not that far ahead on sustained loads, even with the fan at 100%.<p>> there's one performance-related area where the Framework pulls ahead—a little
I wish Framework had released a gamepad or a printer instead of a keyboard. I get that they need to expand their ecosystem and revenue stream, but keyboard just wasn't it for me. There are so many good reliable cheap keyboards already, though I guess none with the touchpad, but again just not for me.<p>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.<p>My understanding is this is what holds it (and all other gamepads) back:
<a href="https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/SoftwareFirmwareIssueTracker/issues/129" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/SoftwareFirmwareIssueTr...</a><p>Steam is going to get there by having both the gamepad + the computer which then makes it possible to workout the various TV implementations.
> or a printer<p>Someone else is doing that: <a href="https://www.crowdsupply.com/open-tools/open-printer" rel="nofollow">https://www.crowdsupply.com/open-tools/open-printer</a>
I know nothing about this, but they do seem to have a gamepad: <a href="https://frame.work/products/8bitdo-ultimate-2c-wireless-controller?v=FRANZA0003" rel="nofollow">https://frame.work/products/8bitdo-ultimate-2c-wireless-cont...</a>
That's not made by Framework, they're just reselling it.
it's an 8BitDo product in the Framework store that wasn't designed or manufactured by Framework
I have both the Framework 12 and the Framework 13. While I agree that the 12's display is not the best in class, it has one of the nicest touchpads I've ever used. It's hard to describe what makes the difference, but your fingers can glide nearly effortlessly across it. Both my Macbook and the FW13 have touchpads that feel a bit more "sticky".
- The Framework is more expensive : Kind of care, but not really if it's worth the money.<p>- slower (in most cases) : I care about this. Blender needs to render.<p>- louder (its fan ramps up quite often) : I care about this, it needs to be silent.<p>- has a pretty poor display : I care about this, I don't want poor screen quality, poor color quality, poor text rendering.<p>- but it is a touchscreen: could care less about this.<p>- has a 360° hinge : care even less about this.<p>- and is more repairable and upgradeable : really don't care about this at all, by the time this laptop needs to be upgraded, i'll just buy a new one anyways since the new parts probably won't work in the old machine.<p>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.)
> by the time this laptop needs to be upgraded, i'll just buy a new one anyways since the new parts probably won't work in the old machine.<p>It's only been 5 years since their first laptop, but yes they sold motherboards for 5 different CPU generations that all fit in the same chassis. They've also released a Pro chassis that uses the same parts as well.<p>Whether most people want to keep the old beat up chassis/keyboard/trackpad/battery when they're ready to upgrade is another question.<p>But they have lived to their promises, despite your claim that they wouldn't.
> 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.)<p>Or maybe this is just a totally different product?<p>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 without feeling slow, and have literally never mentioned noise except to complain about some absolutely absurd "gaming" laptops. I've only ever heard the "nerds" talking about this stuff you're saying actually matters to the non-nerds. Maybe you're one of the nerds?
> the new parts probably won't work in the old machine<p>Except with framework, where you can actually upgrade it piecewise. The CEO had a video showing of them doing it in like 10 minutes, part by part
I'm not sure that there's a lot of overlap between the target markets. Most schools near me require windows and require a stylus capable touch screen, so the mac is out of the running immediately.<p>Even if it weren't, the fact that if you're giving a computer to a teen as their first machine to take to class and use every single day, you really, really, really want to be able to separately repair the screen and the ports.<p>As always, you're paying a premium for the repairability, but if your teen cracks the screen a single time in three years of carrying it to class every day, then you've already saved money.
but I can't run Arch on the neo. literally unplayable<p>I have a fw13, best Linux laptop I've ever had, & I've bought System76 in the past
It is really annoying how the x64 CPU's seem to constantly ramp up and down seemingly at random. I've been trying to tweak the fan curves on my Ryzen 9950x to avoid this but haven't been successful yet. Next stop is lowering the voltage once I figure out how to do it on my motherboard.
You can get a lot of laptop in the ~$700 range if you look beyond Apple and Framework.<p>I picked up a Nimo N155 for $570 back in September 2025. Today it's $700 due to RAM prices. Its specs are:<p>15" 1080p IPS display, AMD Ryzen 7 6800H (8 cores / 16 threads), 32 GB of DDR5 RAM, 1 TB NVME SSD with an iGPU Radeon 680M that can use up to 8 GB of memory all wrapped up into a metal case that weighs less than a MBP. It has a nice feeling backlight keyboard and a pretty good track pad. It comes with Windows 11 but it's all compatible with Linux too. Also it comes with a 2 year manufacturer's warranty.<p>I've been using it quite a bit since I picked it up. Been running Arch Linux on it since day 1 with niri. It's really solid IMO.
I really want a Framework 12, but not in current incarnation. Hoping for an upgrade with aluminum body. I don't mind the pricepoint. But didn't want a plastic notebook at this point. Want a great couch computer for surfing the net, ssh'ing to machines, writing, etc....<p>What I surprisingly really miss, is my macbook air 11".<p>But probably won't be surprised if I end up with a Framework 13 Pro once they're caught up on delivery. I'm really hoping they have an announced 12 revision by then, though.
And Panther Lake or competitive AMD.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panther_Lake_(microprocessor)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panther_Lake_(microprocessor)</a>
I had a MacBook Air 11" back in the day. 2nd or 3rd generation, I can't remember. The one that didn't stutter on YouTube. Amazing machine! I had always wished the screen was slightly bigger though. The insanely large bezel was a waste of space.
Both of them seems suicidal, 8GB RAM is really annoying to deal with.
It's funny how people talk about macbook neo being the cheapest option that gives you access to macos (If my brain isn't fried that was one of the points mentioned in the video) cause when I was checking macbook neo's price a couple of weeks ago I almost did hit the purchase button then I remembered I can't use macbook and I'm too used to my arch config to change.
Oh man I couldn't imagine comparing Framework / 12 to Apple / Neo: apples and oranges<p>I would never bother with Apple's locked down proprietary software / hardware "ecosystem"<p>For me it's hard justifying buying an Apple Neo ever basically as a contrary article
I would love a way to mute particular domains on this website
Framework was never the best hardware given a fixed budget, but it is true that Apple prices have become more competitive in the latest releases.<p>Still, few do the math of upgrading just the motherboard after a couple of years, vs buying a new laptop.<p>Framework laptops have been retrocompatible for the last 6 years.
This is a values misalignment. Or a purchaser misalignment.<p>Corvette is a much better performer than a Toyota pickup because it is has better performance and weighs 100 lbs less.<p>on the other hand, how much would a macbook neo with 48gb of memory and 2tb of ssd work out?
I would be interested in hearing from framework users who have gone through upgrade cycles on their laptops. General experiences with the process but also the costs.<p>I had the first gen framework but had to return it to my old employer so I never went through an upgrade cycle.<p>Also, this may be specific to the first generation but I had terrible battery life and overheating issues. If that carried over through upgrade cycles I would be pretty bummed out.
What I don't like in Frameworks:<p>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.<p>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.<p>You could buy a monitor, but monitors aren't free and you cannot take it with you when travel (to the couch).<p>They tend to use the most expensive CPUs which do not have the best cost/performance ratio. Mid-range, mid-low CPUs are better.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Also there is no need to customize color, it is waste of money<p>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.<p>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.
You know they have a framework 16" ? And the keyboard of the 16 is running customizable firmware so you can have your layout switch key and whatever else you want ? It has 6 usb-c ports, that are the other end of the extension modules<p>I bought it two years ago, I like it, but I still think it's too expensive for the actual hardware, but I liked funding the mission as well as receiving a product that I liked.
> so you can have your layout switch key and whatever else you want ?<p>I do not think so. Many languages have more than 26 letters but Framework doesn't seem to provide the keyboards with extra keys. They use the same keyboards as PCs, and for languages that have many letters PCs just use punctuation keys for extra letters, and move punctuation to inconvenient places. Some languages like Czech have so many extra letters that they have to use keys with digits for extra letters and type digits with Shift. And the root of the problem is that manufacturers try to fit all these letters into standard US keyboard instead of adding extra keys and adapting the keyboard for foreign languages.
A truck will always be a worse car than a car, the question is do you need a car or a truck? If you need a car, get a Neo, if you need a truck, get a Framework. They’re not competing past that initial question.
I haven't used the Framework 12, but I got a Framework 13. It really is modular and easy to repair, and they give great instructions and all the tools you need. For example, I dropped mine and bent the screen while carrying it. I ordered a new screen and when it arrived, it took maybe 15 minutes to replace. But the reason I dropped the laptop was because the hinge really sucked. It swings freely. So as I was carrying it, it suddenly swung wide open and threw off my balance.<p>The caps lock key, which I remapped to control, got a crack in it because I use it a lot. Worst of all, it doesn't stay pressed, depending on its mood. So maybe I'm pressing ctrl-a to get to the beginning of a line and it decides to type the letter a instead.<p>I really wanted to like it, but alas, the quality was too bad and I won't buy another one.
it remains my pet peeve that the 12 and 13 didn't find a clever way to share a mainboard by ditching the expansion cards on one side and just exposing the USBC ports. I would've sacrificed a lot to be able to just move my mainboard intact to another chassis if I needed the features. (which is exactly what I'll be doing with the 13 Pro, and IMO should've been a top goal of the 12)
The framework 12 is the ideal couch device for a developer, in ultra power saving mode it’s good enough for most websites, and it having a quickly getting hot 13th gen intel cpu means you also got a dev machine on the low end spectrum, not a vm, but an actual piece of hardware a typical user might have and not some 32 thread 64 gb monster
I wait for the day that Linux runs on newer Apple Silicon Hardware.
If Apple could give away a macbook neo to students, locked to the one individual student somehow, for free! they would still make money on it in the long run through the subsequent purchases over the person’s lifetime.
The title should read 'it's hard to justify buying any other laptop than the Neo in the sub $1000 space'. It's an absolute unit of a computer; the only more revolutionary box would be the M1 Air (or the original Air. maybe. my vote is on the M1.)
The original Air was not good.<p>I think you mean the second gen Air (SSD-only, c2010), which was an incredible combination of price, performance, and usability.
> The GPU fares poorly on Intel's side<p>'Twas ever thus. I really wish we had a better baseline default without having to reach for NVidia/AMD.
Intel's iGPU has gotten better over the years, but an external is always going to have vastly more capability than an internal one.<p>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.
What's the real cause of them being unable to price competitively?<p>Is it DRAM, NAND flash storage, SoC cost, simply scale?
Macbook Neo is manufactured with leftover / binned A18 Pro iPhone chips, these chips have a defective GPU Core and Apple was sitting on millions of these. Apple does not have an easy way to dispose of these chips, the base iPads use 2 generations old A16 chips & the iPad pros use M series chips. So they created a new product line.<p>The Macbook Neo is cheap because the CPU/GPU/Memory chip is sold below cost. The Neo line exists to dispose of / repurpose binned A18 Pro chips and when these run out Apple will significantly raise prices.<p>This is the identical situation to what happened with the original Raspberry Pi, the Pi company acquired leftover Broadcom BCM2835 chips for almost nothing, and were able to sell Raspberry Pis for an impossibly cheap price of $35.
All of these, and more. Macbook Neos benefit from all the hardware that Apple makes in-house, reusing CPUs that they already make for iPhones but didn't make the cut, have zero upgradeability, benefit from massive economies of scale, contracts are already signed in advance, the delivery and logistics of an existing chain...<p>Framework has to go talk to Intel and AMD, get parts shipped, assembled onto a motherboard that they have to make themselves and ordered in very low amounts then shipped all to their fulfillment center, then fedexed, have to source components... Even not taking into account the fact that Apple already has all of the hardware made or available in-house, just the supply and logistics chain is an easy 10% of the final price.
Efficiencies of scale and experience, on multiple levels.<p>Component sourcing is the most obvious thing - Apple is known to buy up inventory <i>years</i> 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.<p>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...
They are different types of innovations, but Framework will be recurring excitment when your Godson gets to switch to a brand spanking new component.
I understand Jeff's argument, but he is missing the fact that one of the features of the Framework 12 is the modularity of the components. So if that is not a valued feature in this scenario, sure it's hard to justify.
> he is missing the fact that one of the features of the Framework 12 is the modularity of the components<p>He does explicitly make that point.<p>> The biggest win is the modular ports.
I love building and upgrading stuff as well as paying (much) more for tools that will last. But this is a laptop not a socket set, paying (a lot) more for worse performance up front makes absolutely no sense. Seems like the argument should be the Framework 12 just shouldn’t exist.
I think what makes the perspective in the article interesting is that buying individual components a la carte isn't a good value in today's market. Sure you can upgrade the RAM and SSD in the Framework, but 16 GB of laptop DDR5 is $200 and a 1 TB 2230 SSD is another $200. The question becomes, is it worth it to spend 40% more for a laptop with 40% less performance (as well as worse build quality, a worse screen, worse speakers, worse battery life, and running hotter) so you can have the potential to spend half the price of the laptop to upgrade it in the future?
I agree, that the Framework 12 is too expensive - especially in comparison to the MacBook Neo.<p>However, not everything can be a huge success. I think that the Framework 13 Pro shows that they are very capable in the premium segment and evolving as a company. I can't even imagine taking such a huge risk just to make a difference while still providing relatively small quantities (in comparison to the big players) of repairable devices... So in my opinion the money is not wasted. It's the price for being part of a change.<p>In times of AI Slop, privacy nightmares and ads everywhere, I'm saving money for the Framework 13 Pro with Linux freedom right now and can't wait to get my hands on it.
You can replace Framework with Dell, HP, Lenovo in the title. Why pick on Framework?
If a “repairable” laptop is in any way comparable to a high-volume model from the most successful laptop maker in history; one that is currently upending the whole industry and backed by an extra-generous education discount funded by huge cash reserves and a long-term strategy; then Framework has succeeded beyond its wildest dreams.
The problem with Apple laptop is few years into the future - it's what will happen when Apple drop support for this hardware in OS X. Even if Asahi Linux or similar will be in a good enough state, you will still have to go through pain of adjusting to new system, moving data, figuring out how to access your iCloud/time machine/etc...<p>Unfortunately for Framework, people who think this way make poor customers - can't justify buying Framework while my Lenovo X230 is working fine.
I tried using refurb'd Thinkpads as my travel machine for a long time - they're very brittle hard to fix laptops - kinda like Macbooks.<p>The Framework on the other hand is so easy to work on and get parts for - I know this isn't probably a main selling point for most users, but if you need this, Framework is like the only game in town.
Imagine Neo running Linux. Maybe I should contribute to Asahi Linux.
If you're not willing to pay a 20% premium for upgradability/fixability, then you don't _really_ want it. And that's fine!<p>The Neo is an example of how this tradeoff <i>should</i> work: You lose flexibility but gain a lower price. For other Apple laptops, the price is on the high end and also you lose flexibility. This seeming contradiction is what helped open up the market opportunity for Framework.<p>(To complicate my argument a bit, it happens to be the case that the Neo is actually, for a Macbook, highly repairable, but the original article doesn't actually mention this so presumably they didn't think much about that. <a href="https://www.ifixit.com/News/116152/macbook-neo-is-the-most-repairable-macbook-in-14-years" rel="nofollow">https://www.ifixit.com/News/116152/macbook-neo-is-the-most-r...</a> )<p>(Also, I'm not putting down the overall value of pricier Macbooks. You get other things in return for those prices, they are still a good value and I own some Macbooks, I'm just looking at the price <-> repairability axis here... The Neo is a particularly clear example of price vs repairability)
> If you're not willing to pay a 20% premium for upgradability/fixability, then you don't _really_ want it. And that's fine!<p>$799 versus $499 is a 60% premium.<p>The best case numbers are buying used RAM and SSD for the Framework like Jeff did in the article ($749 total, if you can find the RAM at those prices) and comparing against the non-EDU MacBook Neo at $599. That's still a 25% premium.
> If you're not willing to pay a 20% premium for upgradability/fixability, then you don't _really_ want it. And that's fine!<p>This is a completely sensible take, but many on this forum believe upgradability/fixability should be mandated by law in spite of posts like this where consumers choose against this option in spite of what the repairability activists say. It's likely that the EU will in fact pass some laws to mandate this because of this vocal minority and because it's popular to stand up to Big Tech.
It's insane we've somehow come back to 8GB RAM laptops in 2026.<p>I have an old circa ~2012 era Dell Latitude Laptop with 16GB in it. While it may not be powerful enough to play modern games or anything and may not run Win 11 (although why would you?), it's certainly served me well for at least a full decade.
I sincerely don't get the point of a post like this. You buy a Framework for repairability, flawless Linux support, ability to tinker, etc. Yes it would be extra nice if on top of everything it also had a faster CPU <i>and</i> a higher-density screen for <i>cheaper</i> than the aggressively priced entry model of corporation with the literal deepest pockets in the world. But is that a realistic complaint? I swear I don't get it.
I'm sorry but sometimes performance is not everything. Apple silicon - great except you are now in the Apple walled garden with all the consequences of it. Not to mention perpetually subpar developer experience without the rich Linux/Docker ecosystem. Yes, I know it is getting better but for developers there are still many warts. We just retired the last OSX laptops from my dev team because they were unproductive trying to work around some Docker limitations on OSX/Apple silicon.
>and is more repairable and upgradeable<p>Oh no, that didn't matter to anyone[1], who would've thought!<p>Meanwhile AAPL goes brrr ...<p>It's sad because by the time other laptop manufacturers understand what people really want, Apple will have a 20 year lead on them. Hard to catch up with that.<p>1: Ok, 0.01% of consumers is not exactly "anyone" but close.
Next up...It's hard to justify buying a refundable airline ticket.
Eh, I think the framing isn't quite right here. The Neo is a wonderful machine but if you want to upgrade it you're out of luck, the damn thing is sealed shut. By comparison the Framework lets you upgrade individual components over time to keep your system up to date without buying a whole new one.<p>Maybe that doesn't matter for the godson. But it's an important differentiator: the Framework is a (semi) premium product with premium features. If you don't intend to use those features, paying the premium rarely makes sense.
I think this model works for the 13 and 16, because you're already buying a good laptop that you can keep longer by upgrading. The 12's base specs and more than that the experience is pretty bad. The screen and speakers are terrible.<p>The 13 also targets people buying it for themselves and who value ownership. The 12 targets the education market and how many 14 year olds are sensitive to ownership, repairability and e-waste? If they are they would probably get something better second hand. You'd have to have a parent that is sensitive to this issue and is also willing to force down this bad laptop onto their children instead of whatever they prefer.<p>I love Framework, and the bet to try to win over the education market was worth making but the execution is so poor that I don't think it works out.<p>The MacBook Neo will happily last you the 4 years of highschool and maybe your bachelor.
The 12 for me has a very strong appeal as a smartphone / tablet replacement.<p>I've had smartphones and/or tablets for approaching 20 years now, and they've always struck me as <i>very</i> frustrating compromises. Mostly Android, but some use of iOS as well, and yes, the OS (in both cases) is fundamental to the limitations.<p>I've also used MacOS heavily (I'm on it now), and I <i>don't</i> like it, relative to Linux.<p>The Framework Laptop 12 is smaller than my most recent tablet (a 13.3" e-ink), though somewhat more massive. It frees myself from a plethora of Android limitations, crapware, inconsistencies, and the non-repairability of the hardware itself (presently an issue). It gives a real-computer experience, with some compromises for size, but I'm pretty sure that's a net win.<p>Paired with a limited-feature phone and possibly a few dedicated devices for specific uses (camera, audio recorder), I'm good.<p>And the 12 should provide an easy decade of service.
> The Neo is a wonderful machine but if you want to upgrade it you're out of luck, the damn thing is sealed shut. By comparison the Framework lets you upgrade individual components over time to keep your system up to date<p>The Framework 12 in the story costs $799, a $300 premium over the $499 MacBook Neo.<p>So you're paying an extra $300 up front for the option of spending more to upgrade it in the future, and getting a slower computer during that time.<p>That's a 60% premium to have the ability to upgrade a slower laptop.<p>Alternatively, they could sell the MacBook Neo for $200 in a couple years and buy a next-gen MacBook Neo and they'd still come out ahead.<p>Some people value upgradeability to an extreme, but I can't see a justification for spending a 60% premium to buy a worse product just to be able to maybe upgrade it in a few years. This is a starter laptop.
That might be true to some extent but what about the current product? It's nice to tell yourself that you can upgrade it in the future but the best of what the product is today isn't a great value, will the future upgrade make it better? Should we purchase a product today on what it might be tomorrow?<p>I think Jeff is correct when he says, "for an overall worse experience, are you willing to pay 20-40% more?". That's a tough sell. I think the only reason for me to take the Framework 12 over the Neo would be because I want to advocate for a world where upgradability and repairability are common things.
I don't think the idea is that the upgrade will take it from decent to stellar compared to other things you might be able to buy for the same money, it's about paying a bit extra now to be able to go from decent-in-2026 to decent-in-2031 while paying a fraction of the cost that you would buying a full replacement in 2031, not to mention saving a bunch of waste. And then in 2036, and 2041, and 2046... They haven't been around long enough to be confident it'll work out that way, but that's the bet in my mind.
The neo isn't upgradeable, but it also isn't sealed shut. It's actually one of Apple's most repairable devices. If I were in the market for this class of device, I personally would still go with Framework for a variety of reasons, but I still think it's important to give apple praise for the pro-consumer choices they made (and probably could have gotten away without) in the Neo.
I'd guess the problem with the display is software, not hardware, and it just goes to show that the model of slapping parts together and using random downloadable software doesn't always turn out right.
It seems like they had two issues (both hardware) related to display quality: one is they couldn't have a custom display made to their specs, so they had to pick something off the shelf to meet requirements. Two is they used a 30 pin display connector (see <a href="https://community.frame.work/t/does-fl12-have-a-40-pin-edp-cable/67250/2" rel="nofollow">https://community.frame.work/t/does-fl12-have-a-40-pin-edp-c...</a>), so certain resolutions and refresh rates probably can't work.
Never understood the people who keep saying Macbooks are expensive. They make it sound like unreasonably expensive. Sure maybe before the Intel Macs in 2006. But for the last 20 years they've been not the cheapest but not the most expensive either.<p>And when you factor all the time you waste on Windows, especially at the time Windows Vista, which had insane memory requirements, and compared them to Mac Os (X at the time) which ran pretty good on the cheapest models, and factored in the fact that OS upgrades were free, it ended up being on par if not better proposition. (Assuming you're not trying to run some exclusively Windows software on it or gaming).<p>And with the MacBook Neo. Forget it about it. It's almost, just almost a foregone conclusion for an entry machine that it is a much better proposition.<p>Does Apple have a lot of overpriced products. Yes, yes they do. But they it also doesn't mean you had to buy it either.
They get pretty expensive when you bump the ram and storage... I mean, it's less noticeable in today's market, but it was pretty rough... IIRC my M1 Air cost close to $3k with the extra memory, storage and 3 years of apple care, vs something like $1300 base price iirc. Similar for prior Macbook Pros I've had.<p>If you can get by with a base model, they've been an okay deal.. and as mentioned a lot of the build features, display, touchpad, etc. are top of the line, best in class. But before the Neo, I'd still often pick a Lenovo Ideapad or similar for ~$500 or so first, and still might for more ram/storage.<p>Mac is really good and the ram performance is generally better than slotted ram, so that helps a lot. It doesn't help, however if you want to run a VM/Docker or things that allocate/isolate memory usage away from native apps.<p>I haven't even had a system with less than 16gb ram since before 2009... I've used as much as 70gb of memory with certain workloads on my desktop (though usually not nearly that much), but it's nice to have if/when you do need it without thrashing the storage drive.
MacBooks are only expensive when you need performance upgrades, the base models are really not that bad for what you get.<p>But if you want to add a little more to your spec sheet, you might as well go somewhere else.
Try upgrading your macbook neo..
The 12" footprint is really unique and useful.<p>Anyone who has held or used a 12" Macbook Retina knows this. Right about 2 LB, and very thin. They make amazing second or primary laptops depending on how mobile/flexible you want to be.<p>The piece the Framework 12 and Neo are missing is the weight and thickness, but they will be able to get there. If the Framework 12 had been thin and light, I would likely be holding one
From the screen prints of the display, I like the colors better on the framework. <i>But</i> I would agree that it could be due to some very minor issues with my eyes if more people like the Apple display colors better :)
What's next, in 2027 will they release laptops with 4GB RAM? Are we going backwards?
To be honest, I am currently living with major Schadenfreude regarding ram costs.<p>For literally <i>years</i>, SV companies have had a "ship fast, fuck the users" mentality when it comes to resource usage, as if software is written more often than it's run.<p>Finally having some constrained supply of memory will force people to actually build software that can be reasonably used on 5 year old hardware (which would otherwise be perfectly servicable).<p>Slack from 2015 doesn't meaningfully add anything over Slack from 2025 yet I need 3x the RAM to run it.<p>Teams is worse somehow.
Let's hope software gets enough less bloated to make that workable.
Maybe... While less than perfect, I think even moving to shared browser runtimes like Tauri and similar are a boost over Electron. Not to mention shifting backend work to Rust over JS/TS. There's a lot of performance on the table to gain without even dramatically changing most of the application UI/UX.
Now upgrade both options to 16gb of ram so you can run Docker or a VM. Oops.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>That said, framework’s clearly most competitive piece of hardware is the 13 Pro.
I hate this talk of "justify". Does everybody think they've become an accountant now? Buy your nephew both computers. Or buy the one he prefers. Or buy the one you prefer.<p>People are allowed to own several computers. They are allowed to own several phones. They are allowed to install several web browsers and several text editors.<p>Why are hackers agonizing so much about small and meaningless decisions, which they don't even have to take? You don't have to pick one or the other.
I don't give a shit how fast and cheap the Neo is because I can't install the software I want/need on it or use it how I want.
Such as?<p>Feels like the Neo covers pretty much all the bases:<p>browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and alternatives<p>IDEs like VSCode, IntelliJ, Eclipse<p>open source heavy hitters like QGIS, Blender, Ghostty, even Gimp<p>unix command line tools via HomeBrew, etc<p>commercial suites like MS Office and Adobe
This is, if crude, the correct take. You always choose your applications first, then the operating system best suited for them, then the hardware platform.