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.

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.

Yes.

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 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.

1: https://static.frame.work/8pbsbvkvt7p9nayyn32gzyg84spa

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.

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

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.