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People supporting this are missing the point. When you look at the demographic responsible for purchasing the majority of these types of product, they have enou

People supporting this are missing the point. When you look at the demographic responsible for purchasing the majority of these types of product, they have enough expendable income to buy a replacement every 5 years at least. The minority intent on making their product last forever through disassembly and endless repair, don't have enough purchasing leverage to change policy. Further after 5 years most people prefer to upgrade and those who don't simply need a new battery in >80% of the cases. I can see demand for the return of a replaceable battery in phones and laptops, but the rest is futile resistance against a natural progression. Repair simply isn't worth it.

paxys 5y ago
According to this logic the entire desktop computing segment shouldn't exist, yet it is a thriving ecosystem made up of thousands of vendors, millions of buyers and components at every possible price point. Meanwhile no one is buying a Mac Pro tower. Turns out people like choice and customizability. If I have the disposable income I'd rather replace my CPU/GPU every year and RAM every other year rather than the entire laptop every 5 years.
- faeriechangling 5y ago
  Desktop PC sales are in freefall and were stagnant years before that. Laptops nowadays are about ~2 years behind mainstream desktop platforms and are now capable of serving the needs of most gamers, video editors, and programmers. Consumers, prosumers, and businesses are increasingly are asking themselves why they should give up the flexibility of a laptop and dedicate valuable space to a traditional desktop setup. From the business perspective, laptops are also logistically easier to deploy. The biggest ways I've seen upgradability used is to deal with HDD failures, which are several times less likely than they were ten years prior. To deal with running oom, which is far less of an issue because swapping to SSD isn't as profound of a performance hit. To deal with running out of disk, which you can compensate for with cloud storage. To deal with running out of compute, which can be dealt with using cloud compute. It should also be said that an alternative to upgrading a component is to just sell the entire machine and get a new one, even if this might be less efficient, it's still an option. One might say "but aha - doesn't an upgradable laptop give you the best of both worlds?" but being honest a framework is not a better value or better performer for most users than a 8gb MBA even if you can slap in 32gb of memory and a 1tb drive into a framework for cheap. The integration of the MBA offers unique benefits when it comes to battery life and performance, and just the fact that TSMC n5 is only available on an integrated laptop is really a huge if artificial competitive edge for integrated laptops. I don't really see repairability coming back if I'm going to be honest, I see the laptop of the future being harder to repair not easier.
forgotmypw17 5y ago
I think you under-estimate how many people want to reduce their contribution to landfill with old products and ecological demolition with new products.
- nottaylorswift 5y ago
  I think you overestimate - wildly - how much people care about the environment. Further the idea that recycling as policy offsets pollution is a delusion. That issue needs to be solved by materials science before even the design phase, not after the fact do good mitigation. It's a type of indoctrination; that's the purpose of recycling laws. If you follow them you're affirming voluntary compliance with government policy and that precedent makes you more agreeable to their continuing agenda. Doesn't make a bit of difference to the environment. It's a mind game. I've seen cargo ships pour metric tons of waste into the ocean as routine waste from industrial zones. The sheer size of the waste is almost unbelievable. Don't worry about the aluminum in your laptop and soda cans.
  - forgotmypw17 5y ago
    This isn't about recycling, but REUSE, and extending the life of a computer instead of pulling another one out of the supply chain and all of the consequences which follow.
  - throwaway946513 5y ago
    Sorry to jump in wildly here - but this reminds me of a similar attack on the idea where we shouldn't use "air cleaners" to reduce carbon emission already in our atmosphere. I get it, it's not a the only solution to a problem, but again - why not use this technology if the job it is designed to do helps, even enough to mitigate some other issues. Just because a solution does not address all 10 parts of a problem, doesn't mean that you can't use that solution for 1/10 of the problem.
    - nottaylorswift 5y ago
      Because it's not 1/10th of the problem being addressed, it's more like 1/10,000th. What I'm suggesting needs to be appreciated visually. Only then is the meaning of the scale of the issue apparent. I'm against recycling because it's a form of denial. We need to be searching for new materials and industrial process. Also, we need to switch to next generation nuclear energy at the very first opportunity. IMO
adriancr 5y ago
You are missing: - the customization. I for one would like to be able to change laptop at will. (try out oled, quantum dot, change color, put in weird components when available) - Other purposes for components - I could take the motherboard+cpu+ram, put it in another enclosure and make a router out of it, or robots or other hobbies. Take one or more displays, put it behind windows and have smart windows, etc... Only thing for me is size, too small display, but I'll likely compromise and get it for christmas.
technofiend 5y ago
I disagree that the only two buckets of consumers are people who can afford a new laptop anyway and those who want their laptops to live forever. There's a broad spectrum of people who simply want options. IMHO they want the option to repair, replace, upgrade or some combination of the three and they want it on their terms, not the manufacturers'. Warranties and extended purchase plans are profit centers. So as one example you can either pay $199+ on a warranty, gambling that the issuer agrees to honor it in case of failure, or instead pocket the money and use it on a repair or upgrade when the laptop fails. I know which I prefer and it's not tacking on $200 to the cost of a laptop for a Microcenter warranty or Applecare.
- nottaylorswift 5y ago
  Most electronics fail from manufacturing defects within 6 months of use. After that, it will probably last as long as you want to use it, or until you pour coffee on it. Excluding the battery. Just because something might fail doesn't mean it's going to. Much of the equipment you use will function longer than you will. And there's another side to this right to repair movement. There's now less incentive to make the individual components reliable. Since the penalty is no longer a full logic board replacement, the components can have a lower MTBF - that lowers cost and promotes the product at the same time by convincing the customer of the need for repairability. Many of the customers are really just laymen hobbyists looking for a project that seems technical. Kind of like the gamers who wire up a series of unnecessary fans and RGB LEDs and pretend they invented the microprocessor. They have no buying leverage.
  - jaywalk 5y ago
    I know you're not Taylor Swift, but are you Tim Cook? My goodness, I've never seen a regular person so against allowing people to repair/upgrade stuff they own.
    - nottaylorswift 5y ago
      If I gave the impression I'm against it, I'm not. It's nice to have repairability, a bonus feature, but not a competitive or innovative incentive to purchase over the, and at this point everyone has to admit, very well designed Apple line of product. I do believe we are well into the era of disposable electronics, and both assembly, disassembly, recycling and repair will be fully automated in the near future. Because, in order to make products more compact and continuing the SoC trend moving components to silicon, there's no longer a place for the human technician.
heavyset_go 5y ago
On the other hand, every college student ever needs a computer in order to do their school work. College students and new grads with a ton of student debt are not exactly demographics that can afford to drop several thousands of dollars on new laptops each time they break or become too slow.
- zepto 5y ago
  I’m using a 7 year old Mac for software development and it’s not ‘too slow’. Cheap computers are readily available on the used market.
  - felistoria 5y ago
    Yeah, I daily drive a 6 year old Macbook Pro and it feels just as fast as when I first got it. I'm sure you can pick one up on eBay for a few hundred bucks.
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    Software development, in general, doesn't require much resources. You're just editing text most of the time. Most of my development is done remotely via a Raspberry Pi. But that also depends on the development you're doing. There's a night and day difference between compiling Rust projects on my 2015 MBP versus the Ryzen desktop I just built. Same thing goes for development that requires VMs or modern IDEs. Sure, I can run a single VM on an old MBP, but I can't run much else. I can run a modern IDE, but it will be slow and I won't be able to open more than one browser tab at the same time. Students in certain fields also rely on heavy applications to do CAD, special effects, 3D modeling/rendering, graphic design, video and photo editing, etc. It would be a shame for them to have to buy additional machines because the ones they already own have 4/8GB of soldered memory and they need 2 to 4 times that, or because their processors are too slow or don't have enough cores. The Framework laptop would allow them to upgrade their memory and CPU without having to buy a whole other machine.
    - zepto 5y ago
      Ok so there are a narrow range of students who require a high end machine, and for them a framework laptop might be a good choice, assuming they can’t get a similar benefit by simply selling their existing laptop and buying a new one.

paxys 5y ago

According to this logic the entire desktop computing segment shouldn't exist, yet it is a thriving ecosystem made up of thousands of vendors, millions of buyers and components at every possible price point. Meanwhile no one is buying a Mac Pro tower. Turns out people like choice and customizability. If I have the disposable income I'd rather replace my CPU/GPU every year and RAM every other year rather than the entire laptop every 5 years.

faeriechangling 5y ago
Desktop PC sales are in freefall and were stagnant years before that. Laptops nowadays are about ~2 years behind mainstream desktop platforms and are now capable of serving the needs of most gamers, video editors, and programmers. Consumers, prosumers, and businesses are increasingly are asking themselves why they should give up the flexibility of a laptop and dedicate valuable space to a traditional desktop setup. From the business perspective, laptops are also logistically easier to deploy. The biggest ways I've seen upgradability used is to deal with HDD failures, which are several times less likely than they were ten years prior. To deal with running oom, which is far less of an issue because swapping to SSD isn't as profound of a performance hit. To deal with running out of disk, which you can compensate for with cloud storage. To deal with running out of compute, which can be dealt with using cloud compute. It should also be said that an alternative to upgrading a component is to just sell the entire machine and get a new one, even if this might be less efficient, it's still an option. One might say "but aha - doesn't an upgradable laptop give you the best of both worlds?" but being honest a framework is not a better value or better performer for most users than a 8gb MBA even if you can slap in 32gb of memory and a 1tb drive into a framework for cheap. The integration of the MBA offers unique benefits when it comes to battery life and performance, and just the fact that TSMC n5 is only available on an integrated laptop is really a huge if artificial competitive edge for integrated laptops. I don't really see repairability coming back if I'm going to be honest, I see the laptop of the future being harder to repair not easier.

forgotmypw17 5y ago

I think you under-estimate how many people want to reduce their contribution to landfill with old products and ecological demolition with new products.

nottaylorswift 5y ago
I think you overestimate - wildly - how much people care about the environment. Further the idea that recycling as policy offsets pollution is a delusion. That issue needs to be solved by materials science before even the design phase, not after the fact do good mitigation. It's a type of indoctrination; that's the purpose of recycling laws. If you follow them you're affirming voluntary compliance with government policy and that precedent makes you more agreeable to their continuing agenda. Doesn't make a bit of difference to the environment. It's a mind game. I've seen cargo ships pour metric tons of waste into the ocean as routine waste from industrial zones. The sheer size of the waste is almost unbelievable. Don't worry about the aluminum in your laptop and soda cans.
- forgotmypw17 5y ago
  This isn't about recycling, but REUSE, and extending the life of a computer instead of pulling another one out of the supply chain and all of the consequences which follow.
- throwaway946513 5y ago
  Sorry to jump in wildly here - but this reminds me of a similar attack on the idea where we shouldn't use "air cleaners" to reduce carbon emission already in our atmosphere. I get it, it's not a the only solution to a problem, but again - why not use this technology if the job it is designed to do helps, even enough to mitigate some other issues. Just because a solution does not address all 10 parts of a problem, doesn't mean that you can't use that solution for 1/10 of the problem.
  - nottaylorswift 5y ago
    Because it's not 1/10th of the problem being addressed, it's more like 1/10,000th. What I'm suggesting needs to be appreciated visually. Only then is the meaning of the scale of the issue apparent. I'm against recycling because it's a form of denial. We need to be searching for new materials and industrial process. Also, we need to switch to next generation nuclear energy at the very first opportunity. IMO

adriancr 5y ago

You are missing: - the customization. I for one would like to be able to change laptop at will. (try out oled, quantum dot, change color, put in weird components when available) - Other purposes for components - I could take the motherboard+cpu+ram, put it in another enclosure and make a router out of it, or robots or other hobbies. Take one or more displays, put it behind windows and have smart windows, etc... Only thing for me is size, too small display, but I'll likely compromise and get it for christmas.

technofiend 5y ago

I disagree that the only two buckets of consumers are people who can afford a new laptop anyway and those who want their laptops to live forever. There's a broad spectrum of people who simply want options. IMHO they want the option to repair, replace, upgrade or some combination of the three and they want it on their terms, not the manufacturers'. Warranties and extended purchase plans are profit centers. So as one example you can either pay $199+ on a warranty, gambling that the issuer agrees to honor it in case of failure, or instead pocket the money and use it on a repair or upgrade when the laptop fails. I know which I prefer and it's not tacking on $200 to the cost of a laptop for a Microcenter warranty or Applecare.

nottaylorswift 5y ago
Most electronics fail from manufacturing defects within 6 months of use. After that, it will probably last as long as you want to use it, or until you pour coffee on it. Excluding the battery. Just because something might fail doesn't mean it's going to. Much of the equipment you use will function longer than you will. And there's another side to this right to repair movement. There's now less incentive to make the individual components reliable. Since the penalty is no longer a full logic board replacement, the components can have a lower MTBF - that lowers cost and promotes the product at the same time by convincing the customer of the need for repairability. Many of the customers are really just laymen hobbyists looking for a project that seems technical. Kind of like the gamers who wire up a series of unnecessary fans and RGB LEDs and pretend they invented the microprocessor. They have no buying leverage.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  I know you're not Taylor Swift, but are you Tim Cook? My goodness, I've never seen a regular person so against allowing people to repair/upgrade stuff they own.
  - nottaylorswift 5y ago
    If I gave the impression I'm against it, I'm not. It's nice to have repairability, a bonus feature, but not a competitive or innovative incentive to purchase over the, and at this point everyone has to admit, very well designed Apple line of product. I do believe we are well into the era of disposable electronics, and both assembly, disassembly, recycling and repair will be fully automated in the near future. Because, in order to make products more compact and continuing the SoC trend moving components to silicon, there's no longer a place for the human technician.

heavyset_go 5y ago

On the other hand, every college student ever needs a computer in order to do their school work. College students and new grads with a ton of student debt are not exactly demographics that can afford to drop several thousands of dollars on new laptops each time they break or become too slow.

zepto 5y ago
I’m using a 7 year old Mac for software development and it’s not ‘too slow’. Cheap computers are readily available on the used market.
- felistoria 5y ago
  Yeah, I daily drive a 6 year old Macbook Pro and it feels just as fast as when I first got it. I'm sure you can pick one up on eBay for a few hundred bucks.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  Software development, in general, doesn't require much resources. You're just editing text most of the time. Most of my development is done remotely via a Raspberry Pi. But that also depends on the development you're doing. There's a night and day difference between compiling Rust projects on my 2015 MBP versus the Ryzen desktop I just built. Same thing goes for development that requires VMs or modern IDEs. Sure, I can run a single VM on an old MBP, but I can't run much else. I can run a modern IDE, but it will be slow and I won't be able to open more than one browser tab at the same time. Students in certain fields also rely on heavy applications to do CAD, special effects, 3D modeling/rendering, graphic design, video and photo editing, etc. It would be a shame for them to have to buy additional machines because the ones they already own have 4/8GB of soldered memory and they need 2 to 4 times that, or because their processors are too slow or don't have enough cores. The Framework laptop would allow them to upgrade their memory and CPU without having to buy a whole other machine.
  - zepto 5y ago
    Ok so there are a narrow range of students who require a high end machine, and for them a framework laptop might be a good choice, assuming they can’t get a similar benefit by simply selling their existing laptop and buying a new one.