I would never bother with Apple's locked down proprietary software / hardware "ecosystem"
For me it's hard justifying buying an Apple Neo ever basically as a contrary article
I have a fw13, best Linux laptop I've ever had, & I've bought System76 in the past
Still, few do the math of upgrading just the motherboard after a couple of years, vs buying a new laptop.
Framework laptops have been retrocompatible for the last 6 years.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Came to bikeshed but the video was more nuanced and fair than this title.
And the reason for that is b/c of Moore's Law approaching its end.
The way to manufacture more efficient compute now is do things like put DRAM closer to the chip and even closer integration between CPU and GPU. The fact that Apple can co-design their silicon such that the CPU and GPU can pull from the same pooled RAM is a major advantage over competitors. There are also latency and bandwidth benefits how they setup their RAM just from pure physics. And chip manufacturing is moving towards chiplets where you have cores manufactured separately and then wired together at nanoscale level on top of a silicon interposer.
The current best-practice unfortunately is closer to Apple's "hemetically sealed appliance" philosophy, and not the "I build my own PC" philosophy.
When you have CPU, GPU, and even DRAM sitting on the same "die" the only things you're going to be swapping out on your Framework laptop are going to be relatively trivial.
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.
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.
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 not upgrading it.
If these are both addressing the same market then yes of course the Neo wins.
But I think actually one of these is for linux nerds and one is for the masses who barely understand what OS is running on it.
If 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And even if the whole frame had 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.
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 gamepad I think would have been the killer device. Look at how much attention the steam gamepad gets. Sure, I have two gamepads already and I use them to play games on a dedicated (framework) computer hooked up to the living room TV. But guess what doesn't work? Turning the computer/TV on with the gamepad. It's so small, but so frustrating, also anytime the screens go off or sleep. So I have to keep a little $10 wireless keyboard there to turn the TV on / wake the computer.
My understanding is this is what holds it (and all other gamepads) back: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/SoftwareFirmwareIssueTr...
Steam is going to get there by having both the gamepad + the computer which then makes it possible to workout the various TV implementations.
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.
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/its-hard-to-justify-f...
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%.
> there's one performance-related area where the Framework pulls ahead—a little
Is it DRAM, NAND flash storage, SoC cost, simply scale?
What I surprisingly really miss, is my macbook air 11".
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.
'Twas ever thus. I really wish we had a better baseline default without having to reach for NVidia/AMD.
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.
Unfortunately for Framework, people who think this way make poor customers - can't justify buying Framework while my Lenovo X230 is working fine.
The Neo is an example of how this tradeoff should 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.
(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. https://www.ifixit.com/News/116152/macbook-neo-is-the-most-r... )
(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)
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).
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.
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.
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....
DHH showed the Framework laptops with latest Intel Panther Lake SoCs having similar battery life to AS Macs (~14 hours) under Omarchy linux while gaming benchmarks put their iGPUs in line or better than AMD's Ryzne SoCs at gaming.
The era of long battery life being the USP feature exclusive to Macbooks is slowly going away, especially if AMD pulls a similar move and heats up the competition.
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.
X86_amd64 + Linux let's goooo!
Same here. It isn't hard to justify buying something like the Framework 12 in principle.
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 vision that the Framework folks seem to have.
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.
I also run an operating system that is publicly developed and available.
You won't see these things on a spec sheet or influencer demo.
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.
But if you want to run linux and game then that Lenovo would be a good deal.
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.
There's something for everyone.
I would imagine the Mac Neo is a sealed unit that you use as-is until it's e-waste.
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)
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.
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.
Just last weekend I bought 8gb ram thinkpad t14 for an elderly relative. 240 EUR.
It replaces his thinkpad x220 where the fan and ssd slowly dies.
I doubt it becomes an issue, and if it does then I can upgrade it later.
I think you mean the second gen Air (SSD-only, c2010), which was an incredible combination of price, performance, and usability.
Someone else is doing that: https://www.crowdsupply.com/open-tools/open-printer
Framework 13 has a very good display while 12 has a crappy display.
If I was buying a new laptop the Framework 12 seems like a really nice portable form factor but the crappy screen of the 12 would hold me back.
He does explicitly make that point.
> The biggest win is the modular ports.
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.
Component sourcing is the most obvious thing - Apple is known to buy up inventory years in advance for example and at insane quantities. TSMC's last new node? Apple paid billions to be the initial and, most importantly, exclusive customer. With hundreds of billions of dollars in cash and liquid assets, Apple can afford to sit on "dead money" for years - a small shop like Framework can't.
As for the Neo specifically, this thing shouldn't even exist, but Apple found themselves sitting on a stash of half defective iPhone SoCs. But instead of trashing them, they effectively recreated the netbook market segment...
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.
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.
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.
The MacBook Neo will happily last you the 4 years of highschool and maybe your bachelor.
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.
The Framework 12 in the story costs $799, a $300 premium over the $499 MacBook Neo.
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.
That's a 60% premium to have the ability to upgrade a slower laptop.
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.
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.
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.
$799 versus $499 is a 60% premium.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
My newest MacBook reeks of strong adhesive from the vents.
Googling revealed hundreds of similar complaints, it's allegedly a solvent they use, perhaps flux. I thought it was the battery.
Unfortunately many claim "they all smell like that". Some (insane) people like the smell, I assume they sniffed glue as kids.
Unfortunately it's the last one I buy. I won't tolerate a smelly laptop.
[1] https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/unpleasant-solvent-like...
Its not just older architecture we are losing out on.
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.
This is the point of the Framework laptops. They are just unfortunately stuck with non-Apple parts and thus are slow / inefficient.
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?
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?
I think you need to complete with Apple with the right equivalents.
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. 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.
But I want to give the bulk of my financial support to a vendor that 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.
[1] https://shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-reform-rcore-rk3588-proc...
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?
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.
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.
No it isn't. We are going more parallel and the transistor counts will continue to rise.
What sort of physics? Dedicated GPUs achieve massive memory bandwidth without needing to put all of their memory on-die.
It can 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.
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.
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?
Feels like the Neo covers pretty much all bases:
browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and alternatives open source heavy hitters like QGIS, blender, VSCode, Ghostty, even Gimp unix command line apps via HomeBrew, etc commercial suites like MS Office and Adobe
For literally years, 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.
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).
Slack from 2015 doesn't meaningfully add anything over Slack from 2025 yet I need 3x the RAM to run it.
Teams is worse somehow.
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.
If anyone knows wtf this is, me and everyone else are dying to know.
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.
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.
Most common software that typical buyers use is available on Mac or Windows: Web browsers, office software, maybe an e-mail client.
This is why Chromebooks are a viable option, too.
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.
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.
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
But if you want to add a little more to your spec sheet, you might as well go somewhere else.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
so now her top two laptops of all time are:
- that shitty 10" Acer chromebook, still, because it was 10" and matte and about $60
- the FW13, which she's since added about 2 pounds of stickers to and also upgraded the hinge and battery on herself
most people are buying the idea, yeah. we have to, in order to show other people what the idea means in practice
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.
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.
Anyway, I don't want one for style points. I want one so I can keep it even longer than the Thinkpads and Dells of yore.
Something worth considering with the present RAM-market madness.
I've had smartphones and/or tablets for approaching 20 years now, and they've always struck me as very frustrating compromises. Mostly Android, but some use of iOS as well, and yes, the OS (in both cases) is fundamental to the limitations.
I've also used MacOS heavily (I'm on it now), and I don't like it, relative to Linux.
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.
Paired with a limited-feature phone and possibly a few dedicated devices for specific uses (camera, audio recorder), I'm good.
And the 12 should provide an easy decade of service.
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.
For a lot of people, learning a new OS is an ordeal.
It's an acceptable approach for iPad-level stuff, but for professional workstations and desktops it's not competitive.
You understand the demand for them. It’s you.
https://www.ifixit.com/News/116152/macbook-neo-is-the-most-r...
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.
This is a young person with a long life ahead, we shouldn’t buy disposable ewaste with a short life.
And I'm not saying that as a negative - my Framework 13 is my favorite laptop by a fairly wide margin, but it's clearly not at the hardware level of my work issued mac.
Apple produces fantastic hardware. It's a shame I can't stand them as a company, and that they cripple that hardware with their OS.
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.
macOS is really good at memory management, including the compression and offloading to the fast SSD.
It's literally recycling Apple's garbage.
Now pretend you want to bump up to 16gb of ram so you can run a VM.
> "Hey can you remove MDM from this Macbook so I can install Linux?"
No.
> "Hey can I get a linux laptop for a hardware refresh?"
Sure.
Asahi on an M2 Macbook Pro supports almost everything https://asahilinux.org/fedora/#device-support
May 29, 2026
My nephew just graduated high school, and wants a laptop. When he decides what computer to buy, price (or more precisely, value) is the most important attribute.
Apple's MacBook Neo upended the 'value laptop' equation—Apple's not supposed to be both the cheapest option and the best value... but it seems like that's squarely where the Neo landed for the good-but-cheap laptop category.

My nephew is also my godson, and to kick off his computing journey, I thought I'd let him choose from a Framework 12 I bought to test, or the MacBook Neo I bought a couple months ago to use around the studio.
I had already put both laptops through my benchmark gauntlet, which revealed one theme: the Mac is faster (in most cases), more efficient, quieter, built better, has a much nicer display, and costs much less.
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 upgradeable1.

The problem is, for an overall worse experience, are you willing to pay 20-40% more? Because that's the difference for the low-end Framework, which starts at $749 for a DIY edition (accounting for a used 8GB stick of RAM and a 256GB SSD), or $799 for a pre-built.
For students like my nephew, Apple offers up the base model Neo for $499.
I posted a video covering my experience with the laptop, and my nephew's decision to pick the Neo, over on YouTube:
I won't get into the full depth of my benchmarks here—for that, check out these issues:
But I will cover a few of the most telling results.
First, Geekbench 6 is terrible for larger systems, but is a decent proxy for real-world performance for systems with less than 16 cores. And the result shows how much faster Apple's low-end CPU cores are than Intel's:

The Neo is also silent throughout (owing to its lack of a fan), and for all tasks I tested, almost twice as efficient:

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

Both reduce clock speed pretty quickly after the initial burst of work, but the Neo has to reduce its clock speed further since there's no fan to move heat away faster.
The Framework 12's fan will quickly ramp up to 100%, and at that level, it produces about 40-45 dBa of sound measured near the computer (versus nothing discernible over the 33 dBa noise floor of my studio). And even with the fan, it's not a big delta between the two.
The GPU fares poorly on Intel's side:

GravityMark is the best benchmark I've found to give raw GPU performance, but general UI responsiveness and things like 4K video playback weren't noticeably different between the two systems. It's only in gaming or GPU-accelerated compute tasks where you'd notice.
The build quality of the MacBook Neo is far above its price class—that's Apple's scale working in their favor. But it's obvious the Framework had to cut costs and compromise to hit their price and size targets:

I think Framework's in a hard place with the Framework 12. Because it's an odd dimension, and because they wanted a full 360° hinge for tablet mode, they had to compromise on the display.
They could've compensated by making the touchscreen and stylus functionality that much better, but they're using older stylus tech, resulting in a worse tablet/drawing mode than what you'd expect on a modern iPad or Surface display.
My nephew chose the MacBook Neo, which I was using around the studio. It'll be interesting to see how well I adjust to using the Framework as my 'utility laptop'. I thought the tablet mode would be more useful, but after trying it that way, I realized a laptop-as-a-tablet is quite cumbersome.
As I mention in my video, the Framework 12 isn't a bad laptop, it's just a bad value, especially in comparison to the Neo.
Some of that is due to factors out of Framework's control2. For now, I think Framework's 13" lineup is more compelling if you favor repairability/upgradeability and top-tier Linux support. (Lenovo seems to have a good option too, now.)
While the Neo is probably one of the easiest Mac laptops to repair in recent memory, the Framework 12 allows you to upgrade components including a DDR5 SODIMM, 2230-sized NVMe SSD, WiFi card, and even four modular ports around the sides. I outfitted mine with 2x USB-C, 1x USB-A, and 1x full-size HDMI. ↩︎
For example, because of their scale, Apple can convince a manufacturer to build a nice display exactly to their specification. Framework has to find an off-the-shelf component to fit their needs. This usually results in some compromise. ↩︎
Direct price comparisons get tricky because different buyers care about different details. I really like the Thinkpad's Trackpoint, for example, but I also like the Framework's 3:2 aspect ratio. I'd have a hard time choosing.
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.
Indeed. That makes two of us.
…and still blows the doors off anything in its market.
That's pretty much almost always been the case with Mac laptops though. Last Intel gen(s) aside for heat at the top end.
I find that Apple's overall build quality, display and touchpads have pretty much always been second to none... I like the keyboards on most Thinkpads, especially historically, more than Apple's though. That said, 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.
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.
Okay it's $599 vs $799 now. 33% premium.
> and actually want the extended warranty/applecare
The Framework warranty is only 1 year, same as the MacBook Neo.
If you add AppleCare+ to the MacBook Neo you could get a 3-year warranty laptop for $739 that performs better than the $799 Framework 12
> Now pretend you want to bump up to 16gb of ram so you can run a VM.
I don't think the students shopping for a MacBook Neo are going to be heavy VM users on their little laptop, but if I do this on their website the price bumps to $1049
$1049 is within $50 of a MacBook Air with 16GB of RAM and much better CPU, display, build quality, and battery life.
So I still don't see the value, sorry.
Does "slower than an iPhone chip from a couple of years ago" meet that bar?
I'm not saying don't buy a Neo... I'm just saying there are objective reasons why you might not want to... for me, it's that I would prefer to run a Linux distro on whatever I buy. I might just go for a Lenovo IdeaPad and save a little over the Framework and the Neo at that point... they aren't the only two options on the market.
Everything else just works. What is the problem?
I think that's a Rosy take. I remember the macs from before the intel generation, and they were hardware garbage (there's a reason they finally gave up and went to intel)
Then the intel macs were nice looking exteriors with very lackluster internals.
So for a long time it genuinely was an overpriced laptop from a performance point of view.
I'd say it really wasn't until the M1 that Apple has been at the top on both sides of the hardware equation.
But they are there now. I'm waiting to see if we get some real competition opening up in that space (hopefully).
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.
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.
A significant portion of windows laptop market share comes from corporate purchases.