4 ms·

Honestly this is exactly what I want (quality, repairable, upgradable), but I'm not all in yet. I feel like this space is extremely hard to break into, and I'm

Honestly this is exactly what I want (quality, repairable, upgradable), but I'm not all in yet. I feel like this space is extremely hard to break into, and I'm worried about their ability to pull it off. Is there massive capital in this corp? Will the price be really high? I'd pay a premium for this kind of thing, but if they start crowd funding it's gonna seem like a red flag.

nrp 6y ago
We have the funding we need to bring the product to market (an odd downstream benefit of Oculus getting bought by Facebook), but we will be taking pre-orders with a deposit prior to shipping to make sure our SKU mix and production rates are matched to actual demand. We won't be asking consumers to pay a premium for longevity, but it's nice to hear that you'd be willing to!
- ihsw 6y ago
  Do you have plans for a Ryzen (Zen 3) CPU?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- conqrr 6y ago
  Will it be cheaper than a mac? If yes, you have my money as I can see it being used for the next 20 years (with upgrades).
- deadmutex 6y ago
  How often will you be pushing out new releases? every 18 months? 24? etc. Personally, I am waiting until av1 hardware decoders are more common, and BT 5 LE Audio (so they can stream to wireless headsets easily) is out as well.
- samatman 6y ago
  Drive by suggestion here. I think you should offer a first-class Linux experience with this laptop. It's a genuinely underserved market, with a lot of overlap for people who care about the repairability and upgradability which are core to your offering. A market with premium mind share, as well. When I say first class, I mean something specific: you should spend some of your engineering budget making a really good driver Linux driver for your touchpad, and open source it. That would be huge. I'm sure your hardware is up to snuff, but your control over how good that feels in Windows is very limited. There are a bunch of developers who have stuck with the Mac for essentially one reason, the touchpad. Windows is dominant in laptops, but with distinct verticals, and I struggle to figure out which one this would fit into. Cheap semi-disposable laptop for a broke college student? Clearly this will cost more than that. Gaming? No way you'll have enough power and battery with that form factor. Excel ninjas who get it from work? Why would they care about expansion and repairability? But "I'd rather be using Linux if the experience just sucked a little bit less" is underserved. Obviously you can't offer just Linux, and maybe licensing shenanigans with Microsoft mean you can't even consider this (although I really hope that's not a factor anymore). Anyway. Good luck, it's a cool idea.
  - Finn1sher 6y ago
    Totally agree! I think there's a real market for laptops with Linux preinstalled - if they offered 2 or 3 distros, (Pop, Manjaro, Fedora for example) all with excellent touchpad drivers, I would snap it up.
  - bscphil 6y ago
    > you should spend some of your engineering budget making a really good driver Linux driver for your touchpad, and open source it It's funny how completely random this suggestion feels (I figured you were going to suggest a customized distro based on Ubuntu or something), and yet I completely agree. Most everything uses libinput these days, and a whole lot of the "feel" is baked into the driver at compile time. Getting it right yourself (or even just making it more configurable for users) would be an enormous step forward.
  - someperson 6y ago
    Relevant to this conversation is Bill Harding's project to fund a better touchpad driver [1] [2]. It's well worth reading his blog posts and seeing his related GitHub project. Definitely worth understanding his understand motivations, then considering collaborating and/or funding him. [1] https://bill.harding.blog/2018/04/12/linux-touchpad-like-a-macbook-goal-worth-pursuing/ https://bill.harding.blog/2018/04/12/linux-touchpad-like-a-m... [2] https://bill.harding.blog/2020/04/26/linux-touchpad-like-a-macbook-pro-may-2020-update/ https://bill.harding.blog/2020/04/26/linux-touchpad-like-a-m...
  - fsflover 6y ago
    > There are a bunch of developers who have stuck with the Mac for essentially one reason, the touchpad. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24700537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24700537 > Obviously you can't offer just Linux Yes, you can: https://puri.sm/products/librem-14 https://puri.sm/products/librem-14 https://system76.com/laptops https://system76.com/laptops
    - spijdar 6y ago
      Purism is a good example, but System76 is not -- they're not actually designing or building hardware specifically for Linux, but tailoring existing hardware for Linux. The distinction is they're not trying to develop a new computer that only runs or officially supports Linux. Instead they're leveraging the sales volumes of these OEM/ODMs which do offer Windows in order to keep prices in line with similarly specced laptops. Compare this to Purism, whose offerings are much more expensive compared to similarly specced laptops, and because of this unlikely to gain mass market appeal. An initiative like Framework needs some amount of mass market appeal to make the repairability aspect really make sense, else it'll just be expensive and resource intensive to manufacture small quantities of these systems.

nrp 6y ago

We have the funding we need to bring the product to market (an odd downstream benefit of Oculus getting bought by Facebook), but we will be taking pre-orders with a deposit prior to shipping to make sure our SKU mix and production rates are matched to actual demand. We won't be asking consumers to pay a premium for longevity, but it's nice to hear that you'd be willing to!

ihsw 6y ago
Do you have plans for a Ryzen (Zen 3) CPU?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
conqrr 6y ago
Will it be cheaper than a mac? If yes, you have my money as I can see it being used for the next 20 years (with upgrades).
deadmutex 6y ago
How often will you be pushing out new releases? every 18 months? 24? etc. Personally, I am waiting until av1 hardware decoders are more common, and BT 5 LE Audio (so they can stream to wireless headsets easily) is out as well.
samatman 6y ago
Drive by suggestion here. I think you should offer a first-class Linux experience with this laptop. It's a genuinely underserved market, with a lot of overlap for people who care about the repairability and upgradability which are core to your offering. A market with premium mind share, as well. When I say first class, I mean something specific: you should spend some of your engineering budget making a really good driver Linux driver for your touchpad, and open source it. That would be huge. I'm sure your hardware is up to snuff, but your control over how good that feels in Windows is very limited. There are a bunch of developers who have stuck with the Mac for essentially one reason, the touchpad. Windows is dominant in laptops, but with distinct verticals, and I struggle to figure out which one this would fit into. Cheap semi-disposable laptop for a broke college student? Clearly this will cost more than that. Gaming? No way you'll have enough power and battery with that form factor. Excel ninjas who get it from work? Why would they care about expansion and repairability? But "I'd rather be using Linux if the experience just sucked a little bit less" is underserved. Obviously you can't offer just Linux, and maybe licensing shenanigans with Microsoft mean you can't even consider this (although I really hope that's not a factor anymore). Anyway. Good luck, it's a cool idea.
- Finn1sher 6y ago
  Totally agree! I think there's a real market for laptops with Linux preinstalled - if they offered 2 or 3 distros, (Pop, Manjaro, Fedora for example) all with excellent touchpad drivers, I would snap it up.
- bscphil 6y ago
  > you should spend some of your engineering budget making a really good driver Linux driver for your touchpad, and open source it It's funny how completely random this suggestion feels (I figured you were going to suggest a customized distro based on Ubuntu or something), and yet I completely agree. Most everything uses libinput these days, and a whole lot of the "feel" is baked into the driver at compile time. Getting it right yourself (or even just making it more configurable for users) would be an enormous step forward.
- someperson 6y ago
  Relevant to this conversation is Bill Harding's project to fund a better touchpad driver [1] [2]. It's well worth reading his blog posts and seeing his related GitHub project. Definitely worth understanding his understand motivations, then considering collaborating and/or funding him. [1] https://bill.harding.blog/2018/04/12/linux-touchpad-like-a-macbook-goal-worth-pursuing/ https://bill.harding.blog/2018/04/12/linux-touchpad-like-a-m... [2] https://bill.harding.blog/2020/04/26/linux-touchpad-like-a-macbook-pro-may-2020-update/ https://bill.harding.blog/2020/04/26/linux-touchpad-like-a-m...
- fsflover 6y ago
  > There are a bunch of developers who have stuck with the Mac for essentially one reason, the touchpad. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24700537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24700537 > Obviously you can't offer just Linux Yes, you can: https://puri.sm/products/librem-14 https://puri.sm/products/librem-14 https://system76.com/laptops https://system76.com/laptops
  - spijdar 6y ago
    Purism is a good example, but System76 is not -- they're not actually designing or building hardware specifically for Linux, but tailoring existing hardware for Linux. The distinction is they're not trying to develop a new computer that only runs or officially supports Linux. Instead they're leveraging the sales volumes of these OEM/ODMs which do offer Windows in order to keep prices in line with similarly specced laptops. Compare this to Purism, whose offerings are much more expensive compared to similarly specced laptops, and because of this unlikely to gain mass market appeal. An initiative like Framework needs some amount of mass market appeal to make the repairability aspect really make sense, else it'll just be expensive and resource intensive to manufacture small quantities of these systems.