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Is it unreasonable to think Framework should be able to make a laptop competitive with the 5 years old MacBook Air M1? I get that Framework focuses on making re

Is it unreasonable to think Framework should be able to make a laptop competitive with the 5 years old MacBook Air M1? I get that Framework focuses on making repairable machines, but does that prevent them from making a fanless, hi dpi, good performing, long battery life machine? I wouldn’t expect parity with an M4 machine, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to think they should be competitive with the much older M1. I have the same complaint with Lenovo (I usually buy ThinkPads). Where are the fast, fanless, hidpi, long battery life laptops?

femiagbabiaka 1y ago
Competitive along which lines? Performance, yes, impossible. Battery life? Yes, impossible. Anything else? Definitely!
- lukan 1y ago
  Hm, aside from it working reliable, performance and battery are my top priority, though.
  - femiagbabiaka 1y ago
    IMO the Desktop is their real "killer app." Apple comes nowhere close to competing with it on a price/performance perspective.
mhitza 1y ago
> Is it unreasonable to think Framework should be able to make a laptop competitive with the 5 years old MacBook Air M1? Kind of unreasonable. I mean which Intel or AMD cpu can be run fanless and perform well? On the topic of displays, my understanding is that they "kind of use what they can get". That's how there can be a 13 display with rounded corners in a straight edge case. What you're asking are the things I'm looking for, though still every time I go into their forum I see enough thermal, fan noise issues and AMD firmware bugs, that I'm still on the fence on buying one. I wish them luck with the 12, for me sounds like a model for "true believers" because it doesn't seem to compete well enough with run of the mill chromebooks (or an Air) that are more established in the students segment.
- fweimer 1y ago
  Intel's T variants in the Core series can be passively cooled. They have pretty good burst performance in case you need it. I don't know if there are laptops using them (I only have fanless desktop systems with these CPUs).
  - nextos 1y ago
    Besides, at least in Linux, lots of kernel options can tweak Intel/AMD CPUs to make them mostly silent. The problem is that manufacturers don't put much thought into building good cooling systems. Lenovo, for instance, has so many SKUs that it's really random. A few are great, but some sound like a hairdyer or rev up too aggressively. Apple gets this. By having a small product line, they usually polish all those details.
- criddell 1y ago
  > I mean which Intel or AMD cpu can be run fanless and perform well? I don't follow CPU news and have no idea what lake they're at now, but I'd be surprised if Intel and AMD didn't have a chip competitive with an M1 by now. When I google "fanless amd intel laptop cpu" I find this old thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31142209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31142209 which does suggest some fanless machines exist. That's from 3 years ago so surely there are even more options today, no?
  - eloisant 1y ago
    To put it simply, I don't think we'll get anything closer to the M1 on the x86 architecture. You'll have to wait for Framework to offer a Snapdragon instead of Intel/AMD but they haven't announced anything yet.
    - miguel_martin 1y ago
      The first-generation Intel Ultra lineup is comparable to the M1 and M1 Max. See: https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/intel-core-ultra-7-165h-vs-apple-m1-max https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/intel-core-ultra-7-165... Intel's integrated graphics aren't as good, but they are similar in terms of power consumption & CPU performance. Compared to M4, well, that's a different beast entirely. I'm not sure what's the latest there.
hu3 1y ago
I'm confused. The article shows a few charts where a Framework laptop is faster than M4 Air both in single and multicore CPU benchmarks. Their office suite benchmarks puts it at almost 10 hour battery. See Framework 13 Ryzen AI 9 HX 370. To me, being able to run native Linux alone is worth its weight in gold, even if it was slower.
- femiagbabiaka 1y ago
  They didn't describe the full specs of their test rigs (that I saw) but a similarly spec'd Macbook Air is going to get better battery life than the equivalent Framework 12 or 13 based on the 10 hours they quoted for the 12. (The 13 gets even less). And saying that the best possible CPU framework offers in a 13 inch format beats the consumer line of Macbooks.. sometimes.. you would really need to like/need Linux. At which point, get the cheapest Macbook Air M4 you can and then just use the money you save to get a decent NUC.
  - hu3 1y ago
    Why would I get Air M4 if I want to use Linux?
    - femiagbabiaka 1y ago
      There are many different methods through which one can develop against/on Linux. For example, I have a pretty low spec'd Macbook Air and several different test machines at home that I do remote development against. I prefer a low-heat, high battery life, good performing machine like the Air over a power hungry, loud, and constantly overheating workstation. But, those are my preferences -- some people want to have a single interface through which they do all their work, and the most powerful Linux laptop money can buy. If that's the case, Framework is great!
- coder543 1y ago
  > The article shows a few charts where a Framework laptop is faster than M4 Air both in single and multicore CPU benchmarks. Every single chart in the article showed the M4 MacBook Air beating the Framework 12 by a large margin. I don't know what charts you were looking at.
deleted 1y ago
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perching_aix 1y ago
> but does that prevent them from making a (...) hi dpi (...) machine? It pretty much has that though? 1920x1200 at 12.2" is 185.59 PPI. Standard DPI (PPI) is 96. HiDPI to my knowledge isn't properly defined, but the usual convention is either double that or just more than that - the latter criteria this display definitely clears, and the former (192 PPI) is super super close, to the extent that I'd call it cleared for sure. It's pretty hard to not clear at least the latter criteria on a laptop anyways. You'd see that on 720p and 768p units from like a decade or two ago.
- chrismorgan 1y ago
  The baseline of 96ppi is nominal only. Form factor and intended distance from screen matters a lot. In the laptop form factor, you’re aiming for more like 110–125 as 1×. Apple laptops range from 221–254ppi as 2×. 186ppi is designed for 1.5×, an uncomfortable space that makes perfection difficult-to-impossible, yet seems to have become unreasonably popular, given how poorly everything but Windows tends to handle it. (Microsoft have always had real fractional scaling; Apple doesn’t support it at all, downsampling; X11 is a total mess; Wayland is finally getting decent fractional scaling.)
  - perching_aix 1y ago
    There's PPI and then there's PPD. If they want more PPD (which is what's field of view and thus viewing distance and display size dependent), that's fine, but then it's not PPI they should be complaining about. This might sound like a nitpick but I really don't mean it to be. These are proper well defined concepts and terms, so let's use them.
    - criddell 1y ago
      I wasn't thinking about the difference between PPI and PPD, so thanks for the clarification. The bottom line is that I work with text (source code) all day long and I would rather read from a display with laser printer quality than one where I can see the pixels like an old dot matrix printer. Some displays are getting close to 300 DPI which is like a laser printer from 35 years ago.
dale_huevo 1y ago
Yes. "Repairable" is a bit of a fool's errand. It really hinges on availability of spare parts, supply chain, etc. They will never sell enough of this niche product to nerds to make that a long-term reality. An old MBP is far more repairable because so many were made there will never be a shortage of parts on eBay. While an emphasis on repairability is noble, the false prophet of brick-like pluggable USB modules ain't it. The newest Apple laptops all have easily replaceable ports that do not require replacing the logic board, so that novelty is even more useless.
- stavros 1y ago
  I'm far more likely to buy a RAM stick off the shelf and install it in a Framework than I am to desolder the RAM from a Macbook. Similarly, if I spill orange juice on a Framework, I can just buy a new keyboard and install it in a minute. If it were a Macbook, I'd probably throw away the whole thing, since I'd have to disassemble all of it to get to the keyboard, and it would take me hours, if I even managed to not break something. So, "Macbooks are more repairable than Frameworks" is quite the take.
  - dale_huevo 1y ago
    But are you really going to repair it? Or, upon spilling the juice, realize you can get a Surface Go on sale at Walmart (which this seems to be a clone of) for a bit more than a replacement keyboard and your time (which is way more than a minute) and toss it in the trash anyway.
    - eloisant 1y ago
      The kind of people who buy Framework laptops would repair them, yes.
      - stavros 1y ago
        Yep, I definitely 100% would, immediately.
    - 1y ago
throwaway63467 1y ago
Lenovo X9 Aura is pretty great. 80 Wh battery which gives you 6-10 hours of usage, 15’’ 120 Hz 3k OLED screen, new 3 nm Intel CPUs. Only half as fast as my M4 but less than one third the price, with an upgradable SSD and a customer-replaceable battery. My only gripes are the soldered 32 GB of RAM and that they only put one USB C connector on each side, otherwise a tremendously good machine for that price. I think it has a fan, haven’t noticed it yet though.
- square_usual 1y ago
  What? You can get an M4 MacBook Air with 32 GB of RAM for $1400, and from googling the X9 Aura is the same price. How is that "less than one third the price"?
  - throwaway63467 1y ago
    I have the MBP M4 Max with 48 GB and 2 TB drive, which is around 5.500 € here. That’s what I compare it to, it has around 40.000 points on Geekbench, the X9 around 20.000 and it was around 2.000 €. Not sure how the other M4 compare. And sure the MBP or the Air is of course the better machine if you want to run MacOS, for a Linux laptop the Aura is the best option now though.
- MBCook 1y ago
  6-10 hours? That’s considered good in the PC world?
  - throwaway63467 1y ago
    I guess. MBP is in the same ball park, it uses around 5-8 W when idle with the screen on, it’s just that the 16’’ model has a 100 Wh battery so naturally it lasts longer. On Windows the Lenovo apparently lasts as long as a MacBook but I use it on Linux where power management isn’t as well optimized, it idles at around 9 W. I don’t get these comments in general, sure the MacBook is much better, and I use one as well. I still prefer native Linux on my machine sometimes and the Aura is probably the best Linux laptop I ever owned.
codethief 1y ago
> Where are the fast, fanless, hidpi, long battery life laptops? Does the Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition not meet these requirements? (It does have a fan but runs fairly cool according to reviews.)
benoau 1y ago
They don't make the CPU or the hardware. And M1 laptops are what about three years from the vintage list? They'll be e-waste at the end of this decade even while other laptops fail to match it.
- j_w 1y ago
  How is a device that is still functional e-waste? I have an M1 which I got near launch and don't see myself throwing it out by the end of the decade.
  - benoau 1y ago
    It's lifespan is practically defined by how long it gets security updates after Apple obsoletes it, and your ability to install other operating systems when that ends - there is only Asahi Linux, and Asahi is still figuring out M1 support.
- MBCook 1y ago
  But that’s not really the point is it. If PC vendors can’t match some important specs from multiple years ago on an Apple laptop, isn’t that kind of a problem? Sure you can get a faster laptop than an M1. But can you get one that’s faster and silent at all times? You can get a bigger battery. Or screen or whatever. But all those trade off some other desirable quality. Has anyone matched the full package? Speed + size + weight + battery life + noise + specs? Shouldn’t framework be able to match that, especially if you’re willing to give some on the weight or cost? If not, why?
  - benoau 1y ago
    The only way Framework is going to match that is if they take charge of the operating system and probably the CPU design too so they can eke out every bit of performance - which is certainly possible these days, a lot of companies are doing exactly that - but I believe it requires billions in investment!
f1shy 1y ago
Exactly that is what I think, and I do think it is just not possible. I’m searching for a new laptop, I want unix, so either linux or macos. I was looking at framework, system76, tuxedo and slimbooks, and mac air. I want an ANSI keyboard, which seems an oddity in Europe (there is English iso, which viscerally hate) If you want thunderbolt ports, and some good specs, mac air is cheaper. And I’ve heard with arm processors you can tun linux at almost native speeds… I’m almost decided for Mac Air… If somebody wants to add something to make me change my mind, you are more than welcome. BTW I’m replacing a 2016 Macbook pro, which was buggy as hell, and I learned to really hate it. Also I’m not a fan of MacOs… but !4$ I cannot beat it.
- mmcnl 1y ago
  In The Netherlands ANSI is the most common keyboard layout, so you might want to look there if you really want/need ANSI. Only Apple and Logitech are outliers and insist on ISO.
  - f1shy 1y ago
    Doesn’t NL have a Keyboard like Germany, Span, Italy or France? So you all use Ansi? That is my place in the world!!! Thanks. I will search in that direction.
    - mmcnl 1y ago
      Yes we all use ANSI. Only difference with US keyboards are Alt Gr key instead of right Alt, and a € sign on the "5" key. I think both are not really dealbreakers.
      - f1shy 1y ago
        Thank you! I'm now searching to buy online a laptop and get it delivered!
- VHRanger 1y ago
  I bought an asus OLED zenbook 14 with the ryzen chip, slapped pop OS onto it and it ran with no issues since. In a lot of ways it's better than the M2 max macbook pro I had before (better screen for one). It was also, uh, 1/6th the price.
leptons 1y ago
The Apple M-series laptops get a performance boost by putting the RAM inside the CPU, which makes it completely impossible to upgrade RAM. That is the antithesis of what Framework is doing. Apple are the kings of disposable hardware that costs way more than the competition for no good reason. You want 32GB? You're going to pay a lot for it. Oh, now you need 64GB? Too bad, throw out that old laptop and get a new one.
- kcb 1y ago
  RAM is on the package not inside the CPU. Maybe possibly some performance boost from that but the benefit is mainly improved packaging.
  - leptons 1y ago
    The fact is that the CPU and the RAM are in the same package. Yes, essentially the RAM is on the CPU for the purpose of this conversation about upgradeability. You cannot upgrade the RAM in any M-series Apple computer, not even desktops.
- eddythompson80 1y ago
  There is a lot you can fault Apple for, but we're literally talking about a 4 year old CPU that is still unmatched by their competition. People often argue "how much is Apple ahead of the competition" if at all, right? Guessing you're in the "not at all, it's all PR bullshit" camp, which is fine. This is the one undisputed example though where we can put a definitive number on it. So far Apple is 4 years ahead of their competition on this very particular metric (High performance, low energy, fanless CPU)
  - leptons 1y ago
    >a 4 year old CPU that is still unmatched by their competition It isn't all that high performance compared to other laptops, but sure.. fanless and low power it has. I just would rather plug in a laptop to get my workload done in 1/2 of the time it would take on an M1 laptop. The Dell laptop we got runs at 55W (Intel Core i9-13900HX) and is faster than the M1 Ultra 20-core at 60 Watts, which you can't even get in a laptop format. The benchmarks don't lie. That intel CPU is as fast as the fastest M4 16-core CPU, and the M4 runs at 90W (so far as I can tell from a google search). >Guessing you're in the "not at all, it's all PR bullshit" camp, which is fine. I'm guessing you're in the "reality distortion field" camp. Nevermind, I know you are.
qq66 1y ago
There isn't any CPU that is competitive with the Apple M series. Maybe regulators will force Apple to sell the M series chips to competitors, if not, it is what it is.
deleted 1y ago
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tobi_bsf 1y ago
Good point. They don’t really seem to care about actual user needs — their products feel more like they’re built around what’s easy to implement. I would’ve loved to see a Snapdragon motherboard focused on battery life and quiet operation too.

femiagbabiaka 1y ago

Competitive along which lines? Performance, yes, impossible. Battery life? Yes, impossible. Anything else? Definitely!

lukan 1y ago
Hm, aside from it working reliable, performance and battery are my top priority, though.
- femiagbabiaka 1y ago
  IMO the Desktop is their real "killer app." Apple comes nowhere close to competing with it on a price/performance perspective.

mhitza 1y ago

> Is it unreasonable to think Framework should be able to make a laptop competitive with the 5 years old MacBook Air M1? Kind of unreasonable. I mean which Intel or AMD cpu can be run fanless and perform well? On the topic of displays, my understanding is that they "kind of use what they can get". That's how there can be a 13 display with rounded corners in a straight edge case. What you're asking are the things I'm looking for, though still every time I go into their forum I see enough thermal, fan noise issues and AMD firmware bugs, that I'm still on the fence on buying one. I wish them luck with the 12, for me sounds like a model for "true believers" because it doesn't seem to compete well enough with run of the mill chromebooks (or an Air) that are more established in the students segment.

fweimer 1y ago
Intel's T variants in the Core series can be passively cooled. They have pretty good burst performance in case you need it. I don't know if there are laptops using them (I only have fanless desktop systems with these CPUs).
- nextos 1y ago
  Besides, at least in Linux, lots of kernel options can tweak Intel/AMD CPUs to make them mostly silent. The problem is that manufacturers don't put much thought into building good cooling systems. Lenovo, for instance, has so many SKUs that it's really random. A few are great, but some sound like a hairdyer or rev up too aggressively. Apple gets this. By having a small product line, they usually polish all those details.
criddell 1y ago
> I mean which Intel or AMD cpu can be run fanless and perform well? I don't follow CPU news and have no idea what lake they're at now, but I'd be surprised if Intel and AMD didn't have a chip competitive with an M1 by now. When I google "fanless amd intel laptop cpu" I find this old thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31142209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31142209 which does suggest some fanless machines exist. That's from 3 years ago so surely there are even more options today, no?
- eloisant 1y ago
  To put it simply, I don't think we'll get anything closer to the M1 on the x86 architecture. You'll have to wait for Framework to offer a Snapdragon instead of Intel/AMD but they haven't announced anything yet.
  - miguel_martin 1y ago
    The first-generation Intel Ultra lineup is comparable to the M1 and M1 Max. See: https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/intel-core-ultra-7-165h-vs-apple-m1-max https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/intel-core-ultra-7-165... Intel's integrated graphics aren't as good, but they are similar in terms of power consumption & CPU performance. Compared to M4, well, that's a different beast entirely. I'm not sure what's the latest there.

hu3 1y ago

I'm confused. The article shows a few charts where a Framework laptop is faster than M4 Air both in single and multicore CPU benchmarks. Their office suite benchmarks puts it at almost 10 hour battery. See Framework 13 Ryzen AI 9 HX 370. To me, being able to run native Linux alone is worth its weight in gold, even if it was slower.

femiagbabiaka 1y ago
They didn't describe the full specs of their test rigs (that I saw) but a similarly spec'd Macbook Air is going to get better battery life than the equivalent Framework 12 or 13 based on the 10 hours they quoted for the 12. (The 13 gets even less). And saying that the best possible CPU framework offers in a 13 inch format beats the consumer line of Macbooks.. sometimes.. you would really need to like/need Linux. At which point, get the cheapest Macbook Air M4 you can and then just use the money you save to get a decent NUC.
- hu3 1y ago
  Why would I get Air M4 if I want to use Linux?
  - femiagbabiaka 1y ago
    There are many different methods through which one can develop against/on Linux. For example, I have a pretty low spec'd Macbook Air and several different test machines at home that I do remote development against. I prefer a low-heat, high battery life, good performing machine like the Air over a power hungry, loud, and constantly overheating workstation. But, those are my preferences -- some people want to have a single interface through which they do all their work, and the most powerful Linux laptop money can buy. If that's the case, Framework is great!
coder543 1y ago
> The article shows a few charts where a Framework laptop is faster than M4 Air both in single and multicore CPU benchmarks. Every single chart in the article showed the M4 MacBook Air beating the Framework 12 by a large margin. I don't know what charts you were looking at.

deleted 1y ago

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perching_aix 1y ago

> but does that prevent them from making a (...) hi dpi (...) machine? It pretty much has that though? 1920x1200 at 12.2" is 185.59 PPI. Standard DPI (PPI) is 96. HiDPI to my knowledge isn't properly defined, but the usual convention is either double that or just more than that - the latter criteria this display definitely clears, and the former (192 PPI) is super super close, to the extent that I'd call it cleared for sure. It's pretty hard to not clear at least the latter criteria on a laptop anyways. You'd see that on 720p and 768p units from like a decade or two ago.

chrismorgan 1y ago
The baseline of 96ppi is nominal only. Form factor and intended distance from screen matters a lot. In the laptop form factor, you’re aiming for more like 110–125 as 1×. Apple laptops range from 221–254ppi as 2×. 186ppi is designed for 1.5×, an uncomfortable space that makes perfection difficult-to-impossible, yet seems to have become unreasonably popular, given how poorly everything but Windows tends to handle it. (Microsoft have always had real fractional scaling; Apple doesn’t support it at all, downsampling; X11 is a total mess; Wayland is finally getting decent fractional scaling.)
- perching_aix 1y ago
  There's PPI and then there's PPD. If they want more PPD (which is what's field of view and thus viewing distance and display size dependent), that's fine, but then it's not PPI they should be complaining about. This might sound like a nitpick but I really don't mean it to be. These are proper well defined concepts and terms, so let's use them.
  - criddell 1y ago
    I wasn't thinking about the difference between PPI and PPD, so thanks for the clarification. The bottom line is that I work with text (source code) all day long and I would rather read from a display with laser printer quality than one where I can see the pixels like an old dot matrix printer. Some displays are getting close to 300 DPI which is like a laser printer from 35 years ago.

dale_huevo 1y ago

Yes. "Repairable" is a bit of a fool's errand. It really hinges on availability of spare parts, supply chain, etc. They will never sell enough of this niche product to nerds to make that a long-term reality. An old MBP is far more repairable because so many were made there will never be a shortage of parts on eBay. While an emphasis on repairability is noble, the false prophet of brick-like pluggable USB modules ain't it. The newest Apple laptops all have easily replaceable ports that do not require replacing the logic board, so that novelty is even more useless.

stavros 1y ago
I'm far more likely to buy a RAM stick off the shelf and install it in a Framework than I am to desolder the RAM from a Macbook. Similarly, if I spill orange juice on a Framework, I can just buy a new keyboard and install it in a minute. If it were a Macbook, I'd probably throw away the whole thing, since I'd have to disassemble all of it to get to the keyboard, and it would take me hours, if I even managed to not break something. So, "Macbooks are more repairable than Frameworks" is quite the take.
- dale_huevo 1y ago
  But are you really going to repair it? Or, upon spilling the juice, realize you can get a Surface Go on sale at Walmart (which this seems to be a clone of) for a bit more than a replacement keyboard and your time (which is way more than a minute) and toss it in the trash anyway.
  - eloisant 1y ago
    The kind of people who buy Framework laptops would repair them, yes.
    - stavros 1y ago
      Yep, I definitely 100% would, immediately.
  - 1y ago

throwaway63467 1y ago

Lenovo X9 Aura is pretty great. 80 Wh battery which gives you 6-10 hours of usage, 15’’ 120 Hz 3k OLED screen, new 3 nm Intel CPUs. Only half as fast as my M4 but less than one third the price, with an upgradable SSD and a customer-replaceable battery. My only gripes are the soldered 32 GB of RAM and that they only put one USB C connector on each side, otherwise a tremendously good machine for that price. I think it has a fan, haven’t noticed it yet though.

square_usual 1y ago
What? You can get an M4 MacBook Air with 32 GB of RAM for $1400, and from googling the X9 Aura is the same price. How is that "less than one third the price"?
- throwaway63467 1y ago
  I have the MBP M4 Max with 48 GB and 2 TB drive, which is around 5.500 € here. That’s what I compare it to, it has around 40.000 points on Geekbench, the X9 around 20.000 and it was around 2.000 €. Not sure how the other M4 compare. And sure the MBP or the Air is of course the better machine if you want to run MacOS, for a Linux laptop the Aura is the best option now though.
MBCook 1y ago
6-10 hours? That’s considered good in the PC world?
- throwaway63467 1y ago
  I guess. MBP is in the same ball park, it uses around 5-8 W when idle with the screen on, it’s just that the 16’’ model has a 100 Wh battery so naturally it lasts longer. On Windows the Lenovo apparently lasts as long as a MacBook but I use it on Linux where power management isn’t as well optimized, it idles at around 9 W. I don’t get these comments in general, sure the MacBook is much better, and I use one as well. I still prefer native Linux on my machine sometimes and the Aura is probably the best Linux laptop I ever owned.

codethief 1y ago

> Where are the fast, fanless, hidpi, long battery life laptops? Does the Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition not meet these requirements? (It does have a fan but runs fairly cool according to reviews.)

benoau 1y ago

They don't make the CPU or the hardware. And M1 laptops are what about three years from the vintage list? They'll be e-waste at the end of this decade even while other laptops fail to match it.

j_w 1y ago
How is a device that is still functional e-waste? I have an M1 which I got near launch and don't see myself throwing it out by the end of the decade.
- benoau 1y ago
  It's lifespan is practically defined by how long it gets security updates after Apple obsoletes it, and your ability to install other operating systems when that ends - there is only Asahi Linux, and Asahi is still figuring out M1 support.
MBCook 1y ago
But that’s not really the point is it. If PC vendors can’t match some important specs from multiple years ago on an Apple laptop, isn’t that kind of a problem? Sure you can get a faster laptop than an M1. But can you get one that’s faster and silent at all times? You can get a bigger battery. Or screen or whatever. But all those trade off some other desirable quality. Has anyone matched the full package? Speed + size + weight + battery life + noise + specs? Shouldn’t framework be able to match that, especially if you’re willing to give some on the weight or cost? If not, why?
- benoau 1y ago
  The only way Framework is going to match that is if they take charge of the operating system and probably the CPU design too so they can eke out every bit of performance - which is certainly possible these days, a lot of companies are doing exactly that - but I believe it requires billions in investment!

f1shy 1y ago

Exactly that is what I think, and I do think it is just not possible. I’m searching for a new laptop, I want unix, so either linux or macos. I was looking at framework, system76, tuxedo and slimbooks, and mac air. I want an ANSI keyboard, which seems an oddity in Europe (there is English iso, which viscerally hate) If you want thunderbolt ports, and some good specs, mac air is cheaper. And I’ve heard with arm processors you can tun linux at almost native speeds… I’m almost decided for Mac Air… If somebody wants to add something to make me change my mind, you are more than welcome. BTW I’m replacing a 2016 Macbook pro, which was buggy as hell, and I learned to really hate it. Also I’m not a fan of MacOs… but !4$ I cannot beat it.

mmcnl 1y ago
In The Netherlands ANSI is the most common keyboard layout, so you might want to look there if you really want/need ANSI. Only Apple and Logitech are outliers and insist on ISO.
- f1shy 1y ago
  Doesn’t NL have a Keyboard like Germany, Span, Italy or France? So you all use Ansi? That is my place in the world!!! Thanks. I will search in that direction.
  - mmcnl 1y ago
    Yes we all use ANSI. Only difference with US keyboards are Alt Gr key instead of right Alt, and a € sign on the "5" key. I think both are not really dealbreakers.
    - f1shy 1y ago
      Thank you! I'm now searching to buy online a laptop and get it delivered!
VHRanger 1y ago
I bought an asus OLED zenbook 14 with the ryzen chip, slapped pop OS onto it and it ran with no issues since. In a lot of ways it's better than the M2 max macbook pro I had before (better screen for one). It was also, uh, 1/6th the price.

leptons 1y ago

The Apple M-series laptops get a performance boost by putting the RAM inside the CPU, which makes it completely impossible to upgrade RAM. That is the antithesis of what Framework is doing. Apple are the kings of disposable hardware that costs way more than the competition for no good reason. You want 32GB? You're going to pay a lot for it. Oh, now you need 64GB? Too bad, throw out that old laptop and get a new one.

kcb 1y ago
RAM is on the package not inside the CPU. Maybe possibly some performance boost from that but the benefit is mainly improved packaging.
- leptons 1y ago
  The fact is that the CPU and the RAM are in the same package. Yes, essentially the RAM is on the CPU for the purpose of this conversation about upgradeability. You cannot upgrade the RAM in any M-series Apple computer, not even desktops.
eddythompson80 1y ago
There is a lot you can fault Apple for, but we're literally talking about a 4 year old CPU that is still unmatched by their competition. People often argue "how much is Apple ahead of the competition" if at all, right? Guessing you're in the "not at all, it's all PR bullshit" camp, which is fine. This is the one undisputed example though where we can put a definitive number on it. So far Apple is 4 years ahead of their competition on this very particular metric (High performance, low energy, fanless CPU)
- leptons 1y ago
  >a 4 year old CPU that is still unmatched by their competition It isn't all that high performance compared to other laptops, but sure.. fanless and low power it has. I just would rather plug in a laptop to get my workload done in 1/2 of the time it would take on an M1 laptop. The Dell laptop we got runs at 55W (Intel Core i9-13900HX) and is faster than the M1 Ultra 20-core at 60 Watts, which you can't even get in a laptop format. The benchmarks don't lie. That intel CPU is as fast as the fastest M4 16-core CPU, and the M4 runs at 90W (so far as I can tell from a google search). >Guessing you're in the "not at all, it's all PR bullshit" camp, which is fine. I'm guessing you're in the "reality distortion field" camp. Nevermind, I know you are.

qq66 1y ago

There isn't any CPU that is competitive with the Apple M series. Maybe regulators will force Apple to sell the M series chips to competitors, if not, it is what it is.

deleted 1y ago

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tobi_bsf 1y ago

Good point. They don’t really seem to care about actual user needs — their products feel more like they’re built around what’s easy to implement. I would’ve loved to see a Snapdragon motherboard focused on battery life and quiet operation too.