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.
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.
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...
the art of idle software and efficient energy consumption is not landed in windows and Linux takes too much work..
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.
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.
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....
I don't have one but would consider a Ryzen AI based one instead of a MBP. The Intel based ones have upgradable RAM and Mac-competetive battery life on Linux. The shared RAM on the Ryzen is useful for local AI though.
Wish Asahi to be more successful.
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!
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.
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.
> When you have CPU, GPU, and even DRAM sitting on the same "die
Apple has been really successful convincing people they've done something special here. Given how many people are so horribly misinformed about this I'd go so far as to call it false advertising.
No, the DRAM is not on the same die. It's on package. They're literally standard SK Hynix memory chips.
Yes technically there's a latency advantage, but comparing M1 to DDR5 desktop chips Apple actually has worse overall memory latency.
Every integrated graphics chip from Intel and AMD has had unified memory for the last 10+ years.
Compute itself is also not what makes the Apple chips get long battery life. Looking at tests under full load the M1 is significantly worse than the latest Intel or AMD, yet it still gets better battery life under normal usage. The efficiency does not come from compute but from a whole host of idle consumption optimisations Apple brought over from their phone chips.
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.
Notice that high end PC GPUs are significantly faster than any of Apple's integrated GPUs, and that's why.
> There are also latency and bandwidth benefits how they setup their RAM just from pure physics.
Soldering RAM has a modest latency advantage over SODIMMs at the most extreme timings and CAMM turns even that into basically nothing.
> 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.
You're describing a move to less 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.
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.
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 sort of physics? Dedicated GPUs achieve massive memory bandwidth without needing to put all of their memory on-die.
No it isn't. We are going more parallel and the transistor counts will continue to rise.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Apple throwing their weight around in a pro-consumer way (Rosetta, ask app not to track) is why I use their devices
This is the 3rd time this has happened in roughly 2 decades by the way.
ppc/ppc64 -> x86_64 x86_64 -> x64 only x64 -> arm64
I much prefer Apple just forcing the developers to update their apps. Perhaps it’s just me though.
Of course Apple can make a relatively cheap mass produced device that can outcompete on price / spec -- they've been making iPads for almost two decades now. They just threw a keyboard on one and changed the bootloader to boot OSX. Good for them. 20 years of R&D paid off for one of the largest and most valued and profitable companies in the world.
If I want a relatively cheap machine I can actually run Linux (or for other people, Windows) on, or can upgrade or repair... Apple is not in the running.
Its not just older architecture we are losing out on.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And I VERY much want to encourage this approach. Laptops COULD be as modular as desktops, and they've proven it with a real machine, not a toy, not a gimmick, not a compliance-car. A genuinely useful piece of hardware that I've been daily-driving for almost 2 years now.
I very much believe in putting my money where my mouth is.
Would I go back to another laptop? Well, if someone else starts making motherboards that'll drop into this chassis, I'd consider it...
I would actually rate Neo having higher repairability. It is simply much better design and built even from a repair point of view. Speaker, Keyboard and Battery are the most common thing for repairing. It is only RAM and SSD that is better, but that is a different set of trade offs with performance and battery usage compromise.
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.
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.
Do you mean a 6/10? The only score I saw for the neo on iFixIt is here: https://www.ifixit.com/News/116152/macbook-neo-is-the-most-r...
I checked the "Laptop repairability scores" page and the Neo doesn't appear to be listed. https://www.ifixit.com/repairability/laptop-repairability-sc...
Well, I have a Framework 13 also, running Linux, and despite the hardware being from 2022, it's all current software. And it will continue to be, practically as long as I wish it.
So, yes, if we want to talk about value (like the author of the article), where is the value when some capricious corporation decides when you are done with your computer?
Until recently they've been almost as second-class-Linux-to-Windows as say Dell, but perhaps you just meant 'non-macOS'?
(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.)
Does this happen on MacOS? I don’t think I’ve experienced this.
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.
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?
And M5 and M5 Pro are kicking the hell out of comparable ARM processors, and even their own predecessors for that matter.
And high quality software in modern computing and options only exist on the macOS platform. Windows is full of junk, otherwise it would have had some chance there. But the entire platform is far too mismanaged and it is very predatory that using the platform, the OS itself, feels like a fucking pain in the ass. I would put Linux above Windows, and while it is very complete and has a billion options and customizability, there are some pain points for me in terms of upgrades and also available software tools that I use from day to day. Many of them just don't exist for this platform.
And I am not even talking about the privacy aspect here. Obviously, macOS is more friendly in that sense, and that gives them another vote on top of these existing votes already.
https://www.theverge.com/tech/926675/apple-education-discoun...
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 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.
A grouping that has substantially expanded recently. Me included.
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
It looked great. Quality was great. Grunt was not.
Since the Intel era they have been fantastic, on the whole.
- slower (in most cases) : I care about this. Blender needs to render.
- louder (its fan ramps up quite often) : I care about this, it needs to be silent.
- has a pretty poor display : I care about this, I don't want poor screen quality, poor color quality, poor text rendering.
- but it is a touchscreen: could care less about this.
- has a 360° hinge : care even less about this.
- 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.
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.)
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.
Whether most people want to keep the old beat up chassis/keyboard/trackpad/battery when they're ready to upgrade is another question.
But they have lived to their promises, despite your claim that they wouldn't.
Or maybe this is just a totally different product?
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?
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
Is it DRAM, NAND flash storage, SoC cost, simply scale?
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...
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.
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.
He does explicitly make that point.
> The biggest win is the modular ports.
I would imagine the Mac Neo is a sealed unit that you use as-is until it's e-waste.
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.
>linux nerds
Is unfortunately not enough to carry a product
Framework (and windows flavour laptops) will need to respond to the neo. Something along qualcomm's snapdragon is probably the best bet
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.
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.
https://videocardz.com/newz/dell-unveils-xps-13-its-lightest...
https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/18169809?baseli...
This is sort of the brilliance of Apple's supply chain moves here, they get to use binned iphone chips to sell higher performance computers in the lower cost bracket at margins impossible for the competition, and this is just an A18. When they upgrade it to the A19, it'll have 12GB of memory out of the box, giving it even more of an edge in this category. I don't see how others are going to be able to compete here, outside of just being "not apple", which in the entry level market is not enough.
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)
$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.
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.
Someone else is doing that: https://www.crowdsupply.com/open-tools/open-printer
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.
> 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.
Saying it is bad *value* is off the mark completely. There is, unless you are willing to use MacOS (which is a knock-out criteria for me: I love Apple hardware, but I cannot stand the OS and its artificial restrictions it imposes on the user).
I own a FW12 and for me the main driver was a light laptop with good battery life[1], that I can install my own Linux on it, and the drivers all work from day one on a new laptop. The last bit is not taken for granted, I have been bitten many times by this (as I'm sure many of you did). On top of that, I decided I will not have any more android devices if I can choose otherwise[2] - and the FW12 is a good tablet replacement. It's great to watch videos with (tent mode).
So for me, personally, it is great value, and the Neo would just become a secondary device I would very rarely use. Low utility means for me low value, YMMV.
[1] The battery itself is great. I get real 10-12 hours of work on it regularly! But obviously intel CPU cannot rival Apple on power consumption, as you can see in the benchmarks in the article. [2] Android or iPhone are unfortunately a requirement for modern life. That's just so sad and I wish it would be legislated that apps that are needed (banking, civil services, etc.) *must* work on an alternate OS without the user hostility (I'd mention here: https://keepandroidopen.org/)
The real problem is that “value” is an ambiguous word, so everyone is right and wrong while talking about the same thing entirely differently. Yeesh.
Even now on 17 inches, I still use it exlusively on the dock with screens!
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.
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.
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)
A device that has ads and/or behavioral pushes to subscription services and costs $500 doesn’t really cost $500.
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.
To be clear: These two are based on completely different system architectures. Ofcourse performance is different, and probably in favor of Apple. Especially because everything running on top of Apple Silicon is heavily optimized from the get-go to do so (due to hardcore system level optimization by the build chain and kernel engineering groups at Apple).
If you want a excellent quasi open and self repairable/modifiable laptop running Linux there's probably nothing better on the market than a Framework laptop. But I might be a little bit biased because my main system is a Framework 16 running Gentoo with OpenRC.
I can do everything I want with it including local AI, since the 6.x kernel series - including AMD NPU support - was released to stable, and AMD creating a excellent runtime to serve local AI models through AMD NPUs and GPUs called Lemonade (https://lemonade-server.ai/) a little while back.
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
Peep my one-wire desk setup, and that awesome tablet mode: https://ibb.co/album/1YGRfh
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
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.
For daily / home/office this is where the competition is. And it’s not against the Framework.
In raw experience even with latest Swift Air, Apple has a great device benefiting from their optimized and existing production line.
We’re 5-6 years now from Apple silicon and yet the industry didn’t catch up completely.
Battery life, heat, performance and even arm64 isn’t yet a first class citizen on Linux* or Windows.
(* Linux is mostly power management assuming mobility experience is needed)
Framework doesn't mean anything to game developers.
I couldn’t get hibernation or sleep to work reliably. And about once a week I’d get a random freeze or crash that required me to reboot and lose all the windows I had open. I spent dozens of hours with Claude chasing things down, disabling various power management features, trying different kernels.
I really appreciate how much Apple computers just work. I’ve since invested heavily in Karabiner, Aerospace, Superkey, and a few other utilities to get close to the level of customization I had in hyprland. I still miss the polish I used to have, but I can close my laptop lid, walk out the door, and 100% trust I’ll open the lid and resume work. That counts for a lot.
I’m keeping an eye on Omarchy and Framework to see if they eventually solve all issues. Maybe in a couple years I’ll try again…
In my experience, Arch and the AUR are not very reliable for identifying and respecting your system config. I've got a number of laptops that handle Arch very poorly but sing on Fedora or NixOS.
The processor inside it is approaching 4 years old and wasn't a good processor at launch.
I like how it looks, but I won't spend that much money on so little computer.
Seems a bit weird that framework went with a 360 hinge w/ sub-par display & sub-par stylus. I wonder if there's any demand for that and what's the use case?
'Twas ever thus. I really wish we had a better baseline default without having to reach for NVidia/AMD.
That being said, for retro gaming or even playing games from the mid 2010's, the iGPU in a modern intel chip should do well enough.
I think you mean the second gen Air (SSD-only, c2010), which was an incredible combination of price, performance, and usability.
Their advantage is that they have long running, very tight contracts with their suppliers, and extremely high vertical integration. They don't have to share a part of the profit margin with Intel or Microsoft. Also, they have a simple product range with comparatively few SKUs, and produce an extremely high volume of units, taking advantage of the economies of scale.
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.
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.
You could buy a monitor, but monitors aren't free and you cannot take it with you when travel (to the couch).
They tend to use the most expensive CPUs which do not have the best cost/performance ratio. Mid-range, mid-low CPUs are better.
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.
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.
Also there is no need to customize color, it is waste of money
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.
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.
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.
Unfortunately for Framework, people who think this way make poor customers - can't justify buying Framework while my Lenovo X230 is working fine.
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.
But people always argued that I used a subpar Mac device as slow as Macbook Air 11. So you didn't have the full experience. blah blah blah. Guess what? I use a M3 Macbook Air with 24GB now. It is still is as bad as it was back then. And after the glass update, I has become abysmal. So no. I'll just get another Linux computer. Not a Mac. The only time I will voluntarily choose MacOs is if I had to choose between Windows and Mac. Then I will choose Mac 100% of the time. Or if I had to ever develop for Apple ecosystem as well.
I have a fw13, best Linux laptop I've ever had, & I've bought System76 in the past
What's the point of making 3 different modular laptops where most of the pieces are specific to the model? You can't move the mobo or any component really from one to the other except for the USB pieces.
What they really should have done is make all the models take the same mobo, batteries, keyboard, etc..., and then made a specific screen/hinge to turn the 13 into a tablet.
Instead they fractured their own ecosystem and only the 13 (now 13 pro) feels like a polished product.
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.
I picked up a Nimo N155 for $570 back in September 2025. Today it's $700 due to RAM prices. Its specs are:
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.
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 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
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.
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.
And yes sure, Apple is going to do way better than probably lots of manufacturers out there.
From an OS standpoint is also a comparison that cannot be done. We are comparing MacOS with a Linux/Windows machine, which are all completely different beasts.
One last and not minor point. By choosing Apple you're choosing not only to be locked down at the OS level but also on the hardware, which at least for me is a huge "no".
People are seeing big gains in sustained performance on MacBook Neo with a simple thermal pad mod. The disadvantage is the underside of the Neo can get hot, but that's not an issue if it's sitting on a desk instead of your lap.
I had the first gen framework but had to return it to my old employer so I never went through an upgrade cycle.
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.
A new macbook pro can get expensive, but its a thing that will last you for 5 years at least (people still use their M1 with touchbars and have no problem in doing so) meanwhile im not even sure a new windows laptop will survive 2 years without getting outdated or broken
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.
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
Same goes for a Fairphone
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
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 hope they can come back with some update with newer chipset, either from Intel or Qualcomm. They were picking the worst Intel generation and I think it was mostly bad luck.
Oh no, that didn't matter to anyone[1], who would've thought!
Meanwhile AAPL goes brrr ...
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.
1: Ok, 0.01% of consumers is not exactly "anyone" but close.
That's the reason Framework is one of the only laptops I'll ever recommend to parents who ask about devices for children under the age of 15-16. No Internet-connected computing device before that age with an integrated, un-removable webcam. Sorry... You either know people who've been hurt by online manipulation or you don't, and the harm it's possible to do is much worse when a webcam is involved.
Especially when parents aren't particularly computer savvy, kids should either have a mobile device without a camera or a desktop computer placed in a public part of the home. I know why most manufacturers don't make devices without integrated webcams anymore, but it really shouldn't be an auto-add feature to a mobile computer.
We all have different needs, to me any Macintosh is just as hard to justify.
Corvette is a much better performer than a Toyota pickup because it is has better performance and weighs 100 lbs less.
on the other hand, how much would a macbook neo with 48gb of memory and 2tb of ssd work out?
It's hard to justify the price unless you put value to Framework's gimmicks and mission.
There's no illusion that I'm not paying extra to vote with my wallet for sustainability. And I'm on with that.
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.
I really wanted to like it, but alas, the quality was too bad and I won't buy another one.
Why not AMD-based something like Thinkpad E- or L-series? It has solid linux support and no shitty Intel inside.
Better comparison would be the new 13 compared to a current MacBook Air.
Budget laptops are less than half the price of the MacBook Neo.
Some people don't want macos.
I can install Windows or Linux on Framework.
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.
1. For why would everyone want to use their laptop longer than MacBook lifespan? I'm typing this on a 5+ year old MacBook, which I expect will work for 3 more years. At this lifespan, it will be outdated by all means. I can replace it with a new one at the cost of $1-1.5k. If I had a Framework, I would gradually replace this with new parts? Well, only the mainboard takes a huge portion, or even more, of that. Screens became outdated too, by the way!
2. Repairability. Apple has bad repairability, in terms it glues the laptop from three parts. That means you can't do anything by yourself, but you can get a repair in a day or two in any point of the world. Can you fix your Framework in Tbilisi, Georgia? Last time I replaced the screen on a Mac, it cost me $300 including human work, the same as a Framework display costs.
3. MacBooks are just better in terms of performance and battery life per buck. They also tend to have the best screens, sound, and input. All of these are quite important for a laptop.
I like the Framework premise; I would like to own a Framework as a Linux machine. But we should remember that these are hobbyist laptops with a product/cost ratio, and gimmicky features.
All this discussion, amplified by voices of Apple-quarreled people like DHH, is stupid and kind of harmful – unexperienced people are ending up with expensive enthusiast devices (...or worse, with Dell XPS, you know).
P.S. Please don't bring "computer ideology" into this – there is no walled garden on MacBooks like on other Apple devices. There are no services actively sold to you. I don't know where this argument is coming from. It is just a Unix-based computer, with good hardware and a nice-looking GUI.
That said, I would definitely like to see comments of peope who actually used a MacBook and switched to Framework.
If you want to run OS X, buy the mac. If not buy absolutely anything else. It is that simple.
Though with 8GB of ram both of these machines are lemons.
If you are on the fence, do not buy the mac. Because by god why would you want to trap yourself in that ecosystem.
In fact, we should also highly encourage students to use Linux phones. It is important to get the next generation ready to get out of all these locked in extractive ecosystems.
[1] A standardized commodified market place of parts, available to assemble as new or as replacements for long term repair. There is no compelling reason modern machines (phones/laptops/desktops) can't have second and third lives. Remember how much Apple fights against repairability laws.
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.
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.
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.
That said, framework’s clearly most competitive piece of hardware is the 13 Pro.
With the Framework 12, sure, you're paying $750 up-front, but if you actually buy into the repairability/upgradeability angle (and if you don't, you maybe shouldn't be buying Framework), then in 3-4 years you might spend $200 or $300 on upgrades, and then in another 3-4 years another $200 or $300, and so on.
Meanwhile, with the Neo, you might be buying a whole new one at $600 every 3-4 years.
(Yes, I know how everyone says they've been using their Mac laptop for 15 years and it's still going strong, but if you're that person, then you don't care about upgradeability, so, again, you're probably not in Framework's target market. I also know lots of people who get a new Mac laptop every 3-4 years. And even a few who get one every 2 years, and that makes me sad.)
Apple is so far ahead right now in hardware.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
