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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.
Until you need to repair something or change some hardware ... Which is something the author of the article totally neglects, IMHO.
How often does this happen, though? I have a 2013 MBP that still works perfectly. And I'm not even talking about the screen, which is ridiculously better than most new pc laptops. And then, of course, there's the touchpad, which, for some reason, is still unmatched in pc land.
It has 512 GB of SSD and 16 of RAM. This is basically what the new "upgraded" PCs people get at my office. In 2026, 13 years later.
Yeah, I'd use my decade-old mac any day rather than the crappy HPs at work.
> 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.
> While the Neo is probably one of the easiest Mac laptops to repair in recent memory, the Framework 12 allows you to upgrade components including a DDR5 SODIMM, 2230-sized NVMe SSD, WiFi card, and even four modular ports around the sides. I outfitted mine with 2x USB-C, 1x USB-A, and 1x full-size HDMI.
The overwhelming majority of people would just go buy a new one. The downtime for ordering parts and waiting repairs has a price tag, likely greater than the laptop's price. Maybe that will change with how the prices of everything have been soaring lately.
The only real issue I’ve had was when I dropped one and destroyed the screen. It was covered by AppleCare, and Apple replaced it.
I usually get a new laptop every 3 to 4 years and pass the old one to family members. My dad is still using one that’s about 10 years old and it works fine for what he needs. No issues.
So the repair argument is a bit hard for me to relate to. I understand things break. But I also think taking reasonable care of your stuff goes a long way. “A stitch in time saves nine,” right?
I guess I’ve replaced the feet on a few of them but that’s a $5 dollar kit from Amazon and a screwdriver and a little bit of glue…
And for normal wear and tear, like battery life, Apple laptops can get a battery replacement through the Apple Store for a pretty reasonable cost.
Anyway, Apple makes good product products that don’t really break from me or my family. I’ve been really happy with all their stuff.
I had way worse luck, for example, building a PC to game on. Two or three years and I had to replace the power supply and I think four years and I had to replace the SSD. Like those things were annoying. I’ve never had hardware from Apple go bad on me.
(Not since I had a Performa 5200 and they had to send somebody out to fix the logic board.)
I'm considering going this way on my M1 MBP. Is there anything you miss wrt. hardware compatibility?
For some reason, Apple's ideal desktop experience is tailored around focusing on one application at a time. Which is certainly true for some workflows, but that's not me.
OTOH, switching users on Gnome or KDE login managers is flawless.
Are there actually a lot of such people? Linux-on-desktop users are certainly loud, but also extremely uncommon.
Strictly speaking, I'm not yet ready to move off x86 either, but it's getting harder to find high quality hardware in the PC world.
The funny thing is, I'm using macOS for ~20 years now, and there are "still" things which are way better on Linux. As a result, macOS is a laptop-only secondary OS for me.
I have a couple of Desktop computers both for work and personal use, and they run Linux exclusively, for 20+ years.
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.
I’ve literally never heard this from anyone before, and I have to admit, I’m curious enough to try it for myself.
The last time I tried FreeBSD was 2001.
maybe my linux had a big or wrong setup u know, but it was running very lean. Freebsd runs about as lean tho.
cannot be bothered ofc to go back and measure it is some hp-elitebook withh a ryzen and iGPU in there.
If i run things like Claude it sucks my battery. But if i just run my editors code all day myself its all gd..use firefox as browser on both. other then that its x,i3,hx,rg,fd,fzf. thats about all i use..(so u see i hate it when any laptop empties soon.... i hardly use anything of it). usually i dont even open x/i3.
Wish Asahi to be more successful.
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.
Again, I love the ambition of the Asahi project and what they've done. They're impressive hackers, and thousands of people will doubtless get years of happy Linux life out of their work— maybe including me! I have no complaints for them, and no wishlist I want to bring to them. In fact, I think maybe I should send them a donation or a kind email or both upon their next release.
But I want to give the bulk of my financial support to a computer vendor who offers me first-class, day-1 support for software environments that make me feel happy and respected. The Asahi team can't turn Apple into that by themselves.
Given that you can score a used M1 Air for half the price of a new Macbook Neo (and have Linux be supported), it's an even better value compared to the Framework, for those who prefer Linux.
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....
With that said, I'd probably prefer a Windows laptop over a MacBook too, their hardware is great, but the software is just so awful. But whatever you do, don't get Microsoft's hardware, I got a Surface Pro 8 some years ago and throughout my ~25 years of computing I've never had a worse laptop, and just 2-3 weeks after the warranty went out, the entire machine bricked itself during an update and it no longer boots at all, basically threw 1500 EUR into the sea with nothing to show for it.
No sound, no webcam, no USB-C(iirc) and no video hardware acceleration.
It was a Thinkpad T14s with Snapdragon Elite X-2 if it matters.
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!
AMD actually got access to TSMC 2nm before Apple: https://www.amd.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-4-14-amd...
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.
Them not having to support 30+ year old software means that they can be more nimble and make better hardware choices.
Look at the mess that Microsoft has made for itself by setting the requirement that software made in the 90s must still run on modern OSs and hardware. It's bonkers and is slowly killing the company.
Forcing people to create a MS account to log in their Windows computer, that's because of backward compatibility?
Pushing Copilot absolutely everywhere, that's because of backward compatibility?
GitHub being down almost daily, that's because of backward compatibility?
It will be very surprising if we see any benefits from cutting Rosetta 2, especially worth gutting all the games and software this has empowered via Steam/WINE/CrossOver.
Windows still owns the corporate drone desktop, but, oddly enough, that’s now being served as a VDI through a Linux thin client.
And that's also entirely orthogonal to hardware - the hardware battle between ARM Mac and ARM PC is really a battle between Apple and Qualcomm (Apple won).
In hindsight, rather than relying on Snapdragon, Microsoft should have started designing their own high-efficiency ARM SoCs 15 years ago like Apple did. But I mean, everything is clear in hindsight isn't it.
The screen blows apple out completely. It's clearly, obviously better. The fan noise and battery life are worse than Apple. The keyboard feels better to type on, the trackpad is slightly worse, but not enough to annoy me.
The new Pop OS cosmic is a very fun OS concept for laptops with the autotiling workspaces as a fundamental primitive.
From my research on Macbook alternatives only the Zenbooks looked like almost-an-even-match to me. Curious what's your experience with day-to-day fan noise and heat.
Screen brightness is not something I will compromise on after having a taste of greatness.
I personally wouldn't mind spending 30-40% more for a Linux laptop with similar qualities + repairability. But I will not settle for something much more expensive and worst in some aspects.
There are also arguments agains repairability in Framework's laptop. I did the calculations and for the Framework 16, it would be cheaper to buy a gaming Asus laptop and throw it out in a couple years to replace it versus buying a framework and upgrading it. Utter insanity.
That's the main issue for me. I am on M1 Max 32GB RAM. Except for local LLMs, there is absolutely nothing that gets even close to the performance limits of this device. As a result, all the work I do is performed in perfect silence. Very occasionally the device would get warm, never hot. Based on my usage, I could probably go for an Air model, except for how many external screens it supports.
Zero-noise is non-negotiable for me. It's lamentable how absolutely no-one comes even close.
Isn't that the whole reason why Apple is the company it is? Steve Jobs wanted to control the software AND the hardware. That hasn't changed, they're still the only one really. That does get you some benefits
Why does it matter to _you_ in particular that the base model is good ?
For a decade buying macs I never got the base model, I switched to the Asus ROG series and a Surface Pro, and again I'mm not on the base model of either.
I get that MacBooks are very good volume purchases and excellent value for those right in the target, but IMHO that's not the people writing in this thread.
I'm also not a fan of the "winner takes it all" view, customers should care about their very specific needs and do their research, it shouldn't matter that some product matches 80% of other people's needs if it doesn't fit them.
As a remote work terminal / casual computing system, the compromises are IMHO almost entirely psychological.
The only complain is bad battery life. With several VMs running mostly idle it doesn’t lasts even two hours. But then I used beefy MacBook M2 at my previous work and with VMs it lasted only 4 hours.
Apple's phones and laptop are 100 % the best in the market, but Apple is a terrible evil company - the walled garden stuff, the "you don't really own your device" stuff, the normalization of enshittification (removing headphone jack, nonreplaceable glued batteries, not giving charger with $1000 laptop, ...) that other manufacturers followed, the gold statue Cook gave Trump as a bribe.
But not just Apple. Teslas are the best electric cars on the market - but Musk got Trump elected, literally killed millions of people with his DOGE and did Sieg Heil on stage (twice, so we don't miss it). Or Garmin - objectively the best sport and adventure watches on the market, but evil anti-consumer planned obsolescence policies. You could go on.
I guess the choice is, am I willing to "suffer" (as much as using inferior product is suffering anyway) to not support these people? Or is my comfort mire important than doing the right thing?
And I'm not just being preachy - I have aging M1 macbook, aging Garmin watch and an aging ICE car and I spend few last months pondering. It's easy to prioritize comfort. Or I'm just being a whiny bitch.
(Funnily enough, for phones the dilemma really isn't there - you have just choice of Apple or Google having all your data and no matter how bad Apple is, Google is orders of magnitude worse.)
Apple hardware is only perfect when looked at through rose tinted glasses. The whole butterfly keyboard issue should be enough to indight them from being seen as perfect with hardware. There's a reason Applecare exists, and it's not just because of accidental spills.
It’s been 6 years. If anything hasn’t been updated by now, it’s either been abandoned or the developer needs a hard deadline. There are various programs out there where I question if it’s been abandoned. Periodic exercises like this help make it clear.
Far too many companies aren't willing to embrace newer paradigms/toolchains/software on the principle - if it works don't touch it or inventing some wild workarounds. I think in the end it's for good
Apple throwing their weight around in a pro-consumer way (Rosetta, ask app not to track) is why I use their devices
2. Consumers losing the choice to use apps they bought or downloaded is not pro-consumer (if they want to continue getting OS security patches etc). As you said, it's a conscious choice by Apple to cause customers to lose access to software they'd bought etc, as Microsoft’s approach allows us to still use software from multiple decades ago.
(I’d gotten a piece of paid software from the iOS + iPad app store in 2011. I lost access a few years later during another Apple change.)
3. However, I think you're right that we will see more and more companies cause customers to lose access to existing software, features, etc that customers had bought, but similarly frame it as a good thing, forcing ‘modernization’, etc.
I’m not arguing that software needs to be updated every 2 weeks, as is the trend now. However, 6 years, when there have been major architectural changes and UI changes. At some point the software should be deemed abandoned and it’s time to find something new.
Even a simple update to support the M-series chips means the dev is still around and can release updates, even if there have been no other feature updates in 6 years as its finished software. The occasional sign of life on finished projects is helpful.
This would result in people losing access to a bunch of software just so Apple could shrug and shift the blame elsewhere. Because in the mind of an Apple fan, nothing is ever Apple’s fault.
I don't understand how you can say that Apple is more pro-consumer than Microsoft here, considering that Microsoft guarantees that no matter whether the vendor is unwilling, out of business, dead, or otherwise unavailable, you can still run your software. Apple says you need to go find someone to put tens to hundreds of man-hours into updating software from god-knows-when, and if you can't do that, you can just go fuck yourself.
You say yourself, Microsoft is willing to put in the work to ensure that their customers will be able to run their binaries forever. Apple spits in your face and you thank them for it.
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.
When people who care about it can carry on the torch.
Dropping support wouldn't matter if anyone outside of Apple could keep it alive instead, or if Rosetta 2 users could stay on the last supported OS and keep their devices secured through community patches etc.
I think it's hilarious that Apple managed to get criticised for being both too early AND too late with USB-C.
Yes.
* https://www.zdnet.com/article/good-bye-386-linux-to-drop-sup...
and more recently, 486:
* https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/linux-devs-start...
and here we are expecting support for completely different CPU classes. :)
Define "consumer devices"? I am holding on to my AMD Ryzen machines until they literally fall dead. I have no complaints from them. Maybe some modern or even next-gen ARM CPUs will be even better on Linux but I don't think we are quite there yet.
x86_64 is here to stay for a long time still.
But maybe you literally meant x86 as in the 32-bit CPU arch? If so, I'd mostly agree but not quite; they could be used in low-power micro-PCs for a long time still as well.
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.
All of which are famously nightmarish repairs on Macbooks, and line-replacable on Frameworks.
I think you're alone in this regard, I'd trust the Framework 8 days out of the week.
Not for Neo. Which is why Neo is a much bigger deal in its design, but most are focusing on its pricing.
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?
Are you serious? I literally have piles of 15+ year old x86 and PowerPC laptops that have perfectly functional hardware but no software support.
> Well, I have a Framework 13 also, running Linux, and despite the hardware being from 2022
Please be sure to add a comment in 2036 on how your Framework/Linux experience worked out.
edit: and has the same amount of ram as the mac neo.
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.
This happened to me. I was able to notice it from network activity lights and stop it by disconnecting the network. Other people I know weren't so lucky.
I guess current version matters.
They opt you in to it. Possibly repeatedly. But you’re never fully forced.
I realize that’s far from ideal, but as a home user you do have control still.
Staying updated is part of “the Apple way”. If you don’t like it, you’re in for a fight until your hardware loses update support.
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.
I've literally never seen an advert outside of a 3rd party app or website on any Apple device I've owned (many).
If I didn’t cancel it it would charge me.
There was no way to turn off auto-renew without forfeiting the remaining trial period, which is a dark pattern to encourage accidental payments.
Mac devices also encourage things like documents in iCloud directly in settings which encourage migration to paid services.
By default, Apple apps like Music have notifications for subscriptions.
It’s not at the level of Windows 11 but it’s there when you’re really looking for it. Notifications in the system settings are not always critical update type of stuff, they are often semi-promotional.
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?
Most common software that typical buyers use is available on Mac or Windows: Web browsers, office software, maybe an e-mail client.
This is why Chromebooks are a viable option, too.
Even my software development workflows are mostly cross-platform when I think about it. I can run all of my IDEs and text editors on my Mac, Windows, and Linux computers.
That's not how most people think. Most non-techies are either fluent with "how to use a Mac" or "how to use Windows" and they will just stick with that inertia.
For a lot of people, learning a new OS is an ordeal.
It’s 2026 and what people don’t do in an app, they mostly do in a browser. An entire generation of “digital native” people are now adults who don’t even understand what a file system is, don’t understand folder structures, and don’t care what OS they run.
That said, having a computer that seamlessly integrates with their mobile device is a huge feature. So the MacBook neo not only being so affordable but fitting into the Apple ecosystem is a slam dunk for normal people
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.
I doubt it will ever drop. At least not for a long long time.
You understand the demand for them. It’s you.
https://www.theverge.com/tech/926675/apple-education-discoun...
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.
The benefits of modularity begin to get outweighed by the costs when 85% of the cost of the machine needs to be swapped out with each upgrade. For consumers, why would they not simply opt to spend the rest of the 15% to get a whole new computer?
- NVMe drive (or two)
- Bright, wide gamut, high resolution screen
- Aluminum case
- Great keyboard
- Wifi/ports
- Battery
I can see why the manufacturer would want this. As a user though why would you? If the rest of the body is familiar and works well, why toss it?
Maybe the sentiment springs from the general culture of consumerism and new-is-better thinking, and historically that's been warranted in the consumer electronics space. Most things aren't really like that though. Humans have long built tools, clothing, furniture, and infrastructure designed to last a long time. You commit resources up front to make sure the thing is of high quality and then benefit for anywhere between decades to centuries. Replacement carries the risk of downgrading. Again, rapid technological advancement has blown this way of doing things away, but at some point parts of the tech plateau and this will need to be rediscovered. For things like keyboards, trackpads, and laptop cases, I don't see how "new" will beat "good" from this point on. Even displays are starting to reach limits. This seems like the right time to be working on "here is your reliable human interface device, drop in whatever crazy magic chip fabs have cooked up every X years to keep it capable."
From a humanist perspective there's another reason to move this way. People like to grow attached to objects and tools. Something has been lost in the shuffle of swapping out our most personal objects every few years.
[1] https://shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-reform-rcore-rk3588-proc...
> 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.
The high end AI inference chips use HBM and cost tens of thousands of dollars. HBM uses 1024 data pins instead of 64, which is crazy expensive, which means that to the extent that consumer devices get it at all, it would be in addition to rather than instead of ordinary DRAM, e.g. you might have 12GB of HBM on the CPU package but then 64GB of less expensive DRAM. Increasing the number of cache hierarchy levels is a long-term trend. HBM as L4 cache is pretty plausible for high end CPUs as a supplement rather than replacement for DRAM.
There are already servers that work like this, e.g. Xeon Max has 64GB of HBM but then further supports up to 4TB of DDR5.
Moreover, the AI inference hardware integrates the CPU into the GPU because it's really just a giant GPU. They're not getting some major advantage from that, they just know nobody is going to want to swap out the CPU on a system where the CPU is mostly irrelevant. If you wanted that level of inference performance on a normal PC which is used for other purposes where the CPU actually matters then you would drop the AI accelerator with the HBM or GDDR into a PCIe slot.
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.
What sort of physics? Dedicated GPUs achieve massive memory bandwidth without needing to put all of their memory on-die.
But even there, the fastest AI accelerator GPUs are putting memory on die, and using chiplet designs, to get the memory closer and closer to the cores.
Ideally, RAM and compute should be combined. That's kind of what our brains do. We'll probably need more mature memristor technology to achieve that one day.
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.
No it isn't. We are going more parallel and the transistor counts will continue to rise.
There's still significant gains to be had, but the exponential growth is really petering out.
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.
Apple still lives in its walled garden and defends it vociferously, but I would argue they have made the correct design tradeoffs for their business.
The issue is that this in no way requires soldered memory. CAMM2 supports speeds up to 9600 MT/s. You can get over 300 GB/s from two CAMM2 sockets.
It's an acceptable approach for iPad-level stuff, but for professional workstations and desktops it's not competitive.
I would imagine the Mac Neo is a sealed unit that you use as-is until it's e-waste.
https://www.ifixit.com/News/116152/macbook-neo-is-the-most-r...
For reference, the latest Thinkpad T series is 10/10, so a better build is clearly possible.
It is actually bad. Not as bad as previous models, but still bad.
I'd also say that Linux support basically from day 1 is their hidden killer feature. Literally zero fuss. That's mattering to a lot more people these days even if they don't daily drive Linux, it's a good plan B in case Windows manages to get even worse.
she had a day job that required her to use an older Mac and it was a relative pain in her ass that put her off Macs at home. I had a pile of retired laptops and kept trying to find one that would sway her off google.
she expressed interest in drawing functions so I started with a Lenovo Yoga. Windows wasn't an issue as soon as she figured out that she could sign into Chrome and just stay in it like a chromebook. but it was too big, too heavy, too glossy, and crashed too often. she also ended up cracking the screen in 2 months, and while the display was replaceable, the stylus digitizer part never worked again, which eliminated the one compelling feature.
next one we tried was an M1 MBA, which had all the things she hated about her work laptop. she also destroyed one of its USBC ports after 3 days, despite getting a protective cover for it, and it never consistently charged again after that. got donated in the end.
during this time I decided to upgrade my FW13 mainboard and instead picked up another full DIY kit to get the updated hinge, screen, and bottom chassis. The old Ryzen mainboard got the SSD and 2 x 8GB RAM pulled from the Yoga, and I offered it to her as an interim until she found something she liked.
she was mixed on it, but it stood up to her. what sold her on it was that when she dropped it on a concrete floor and bent the bottom chassis near the expansion ports, I just bought her a new bottom chassis and linked her to the replacement video. She had it swapped out in an hour and a half, her first solo computer repair.
so now her top two laptops of all time are:
- that shitty 10" Acer chromebook, still, because it was 10" and matte and about $60
- the FW13, which she's since added about 2 pounds of stickers to and also upgraded the hinge and battery on herself
most people are buying the idea, yeah. we have to, in order to show other people what the idea means in practice
Every single one of them has seen repairs like screen replacement and hinge improvement. Every single one has had upgrades to storage, RAM, and CPU -- and at least one battery replacement. Ye olde Thinkpad is presently one hairy-looking BIOS flash away from a wifi upgrade.
I usually buy these machines inexpensively on the used market. And I'd love to buy an inexpensive Framework. Except... The supply/demand ratio seems to be in favor of the seller, as they seem to hold their value surprisingly well compared to many other machines.
Anyway, I don't want one for style points. I want one so I can keep it even longer than the Thinkpads and Dells of yore.
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
Framework doesn't even sell in half markets Apple is in (They only manage 40 or so countries [0]), they can't afford to fight race to the bottom battles.
The Neo exists because Apple has crazy economy of scale and a stranglehold on chip supply, smaller makers should be fighting on other grounds.
[0] https://knowledgebase.frame.work/what-countries-and-regions-...
Direct price comparisons get tricky because different buyers care about different details. I really like the Thinkpad's Trackpoint, for example, but I also like the Framework's 3:2 aspect ratio. I'd have a hard time choosing.
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.
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.
Different strokes.
It annoys me that these are such a draw. There are a dozen other viable messaging and video call apps, but there's always someone who feels like spending two minutes to install and activate one is a major imposition.
But for me you’re right. More than anything, I’m not giving up Mac OS. Despite Tahoe, which I do severely dislike, I’m still far happier using it daily than Windows or Linux.
Until that changes, or the hardware gets bad enough (it’s going in the other direction), I’m not leaving. I don’t even look at other options for my real computers.
“Toy” computers that I want to throw Linux or BSD or something on just to play with, yeah of course. But not what I want to use all day every day.
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...
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.
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.
This is a young person with a long life ahead, we shouldn’t buy disposable ewaste with a short life.
Indeed. That makes two of us.
macOS is really good at memory management, including the compression and offloading to the fast SSD.
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.
The principle I was trying to express is that a Framework (and Linux, for that matter) is a tool more like a mill or an older 3d printer from the RepRap era. You will get the most out of it if you spend time customizing it, altering it, upgrading it, understanding it, etc. A MacBook Neo is a tool more like a screwdriver or a power drill. It is immediately fit for its purpose, even if that purpose isn't quite as wide ranging.
It feels a bit odd to compare them directly across categories. The MacBook Neo feels like it should be compared to a Chromebook or a cheap Windows laptop, not a high-end Linux-first upgradable machine. That's like comparing a Dewalt power drill to a 1930s drill press. They can both drill a hole... but they're just not the same tool, and I (personally) wouldn't expect to use them in the same way.
Framework's hero image when you build the laptop is someone removing the keyboard to tinker with the machine.[1] If you don't intend to do that, then yeah, it's probably not the choice for you. If you are indifferent between macOS and Linux, then it's probably not the choice for you.
1: https://static.frame.work/8pbsbvkvt7p9nayyn32gzyg84spa
I appreciate that Framework has not only brought that back but expanded on it further, but they've done it at a very different time in the market. Now that maintainability and customizability does come at a compromise to at least one of cost, bulk, or performance. That's not only the case when compared to the Neo, as far as I know it's also the case at the high end compared to a MacBook Pro.
They've set out to do something that would be difficult in any case, but they're also doing it against Apple's advantages of vertical integration and economy of scale. I'm sure I'm not the only person that can deeply respect that while still not feeling any interest in buying any of their available products.
And I'm not saying that as a negative - my Framework 13 is my favorite laptop by a fairly wide margin, but it's clearly not at the hardware level of my work issued mac.
Apple produces fantastic hardware. It's a shame I can't stand them as a company, and that they cripple that hardware with their OS.
Prior to framework, I'd be buying something along the lines of a Dell XPS (developer edition for linux compatibility) because a mac is just a non-starter for me. But a mac hands-down the best hardware you can get for a personal laptop right now. Turns out that's not the main driver of what laptop I want.
That's pretty much almost always been the case with Mac laptops though. Last Intel gen(s) aside for heat at the top end.
I find that Apple's overall build quality, display and touchpads have pretty much always been second to none... I like the keyboards on most Thinkpads, especially historically, more than Apple's though. That said, being able to run Linux proper has become a higher priority... I plan to continue using my M1 air until it dies or I can't stand it anymore... but I bought it with 16gb ram and a bigger drive, so it does what I need and then some.
I don't "work" on it, so that isn't a big deal and I can remote edit in VS Code to my desktop via wireguard+ssh wherever I am with internet access. That could be a differentiator, but my vision is so bad, I probably won't be able to get away with the maxed out display on any laptop eventually.
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.
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.
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.
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.
For now the audience of disgruntled former Apple customers or just repairability enthusiasts appears to be enough.
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
> 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.
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.
Framework 12 screen is only 66% which is pretty terrible color reproduction. You edit something and it ends up looking like something else on the gold standard consumer devices.
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
You can see the frustration in this LinusTechTips DIY build your own steam machine video: https://youtu.be/2psXxetNpoo?t=1250
You can see he's actually using a 8bitDo controller like you shared, but it doesn't have the firmware to talk directly to his computer, which then needs to have the correct CEC codes for HDMI to tell the different TVs to turn on/wake up/turn off.
So to make it a media center / steam machine you need to manufacture + firmware both the controller and the PC, which is the GH ticket above (i think!). But since they didn't make the controller, it would then be on users for each third party to figure out how to connect to whatever Framework exposes. Overall, just much better to make and ship the controllers & computer together, which is why Steam is going to do so well.
edit: Half that was directed towards the person who shared the controller, ;)
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.
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".
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.
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)
I have a fw13, best Linux laptop I've ever had, & I've bought System76 in the past
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?
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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panther_Lake_(microprocessor)
Something worth considering with the present RAM-market madness.
We all have different needs, to me any Macintosh is just as hard to justify.
- 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
Even now on 17 inches, I still use it exlusively on the dock with screens!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
'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.
Some people don't want macos.
I can install Windows or Linux on Framework.
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?
Is it DRAM, NAND flash storage, SoC cost, simply scale?
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.
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...
It's literally recycling Apple's garbage.
…and still blows the doors off anything in its market.
Why not AMD-based something like Thinkpad E- or L-series? It has solid linux support and no shitty Intel inside.
I think you mean the second gen Air (SSD-only, c2010), which was an incredible combination of price, performance, and usability.
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.
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.
I do not think so. Many languages have more than 26 letters but Framework doesn't seem to provide the keyboards with extra keys. They use the same keyboards as PCs, and for languages that have many letters PCs just use punctuation keys for extra letters, and move punctuation to inconvenient places. Some languages like Czech have so many extra letters that they have to use keys with digits for extra letters and type digits with Shift. And the root of the problem is that manufacturers try to fit all these letters into standard US keyboard instead of adding extra keys and adapting the keyboard for foreign languages.
Also, there are twenty-three different keyboard layouts available (IN ADDITION TO the 24-key macropad).
I think there are legitimate arguments against Framework, but this one clearly isn't cogent.
He does explicitly make that point.
> The biggest win is the modular ports.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
Apple is so far ahead right now in hardware.
Same goes for a Fairphone
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.
Now pretend you want to bump up to 16gb of ram so you can run a VM.
Okay it's $599 vs $799 now. 33% premium.
> and actually want the extended warranty/applecare
The Framework warranty is only 1 year, same as the MacBook Neo.
If you add AppleCare+ to the MacBook Neo you could get a 3-year warranty laptop for $739 that performs better than the $799 Framework 12
> Now pretend you want to bump up to 16gb of ram so you can run a VM.
I don't think the students shopping for a MacBook Neo are going to be heavy VM users on their little laptop, but if I do this on their website the price bumps to $1049
$1049 is within $50 of a MacBook Air with 16GB of RAM and much better CPU, display, build quality, and battery life.
So I still don't see the value, sorry.
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.
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.
The 13 also targets people buying it for themselves and who value ownership. The 12 targets the education market and how many 14 year olds are sensitive to ownership, repairability and e-waste? If they are they would probably get something better second hand. You'd have to have a parent that is sensitive to this issue and is also willing to force down this bad laptop onto their children instead of whatever they prefer.
I love Framework, and the bet to try to win over the education market was worth making but the execution is so poor that I don't think it works out.
The MacBook Neo will happily last you the 4 years of highschool and maybe your bachelor.
I've had smartphones and/or tablets for approaching 20 years now, and they've always struck me as very frustrating compromises. Mostly Android, but some use of iOS as well, and yes, the OS (in both cases) is fundamental to the limitations.
I've also used MacOS heavily (I'm on it now), and I don't like it, relative to Linux.
The Framework Laptop 12 is smaller than my most recent tablet (a 13.3" e-ink), though somewhat more massive. It frees myself from a plethora of Android limitations, crapware, inconsistencies, and the non-repairability of the hardware itself (presently an issue). It gives a real-computer experience, with some compromises for size, but I'm pretty sure that's a net win.
Paired with a limited-feature phone and possibly a few dedicated devices for specific uses (camera, audio recorder), I'm good.
And the 12 should provide an easy decade of service.
The Framework 12 in the story costs $799, a $300 premium over the $499 MacBook Neo.
So you're paying an extra $300 up front for the option of spending more to upgrade it in the future, and getting a slower computer during that time.
That's a 60% premium to have the ability to upgrade a slower laptop.
Alternatively, they could sell the MacBook Neo for $200 in a couple years and buy a next-gen MacBook Neo and they'd still come out ahead.
Some people value upgradeability to an extreme, but I can't see a justification for spending a 60% premium to buy a worse product just to be able to maybe upgrade it in a few years. This is a starter laptop.
I think Jeff is correct when he says, "for an overall worse experience, are you willing to pay 20-40% more?". That's a tough sell. I think the only reason for me to take the Framework 12 over the Neo would be because I want to advocate for a world where upgradability and repairability are common things.
Does "slower than an iPhone chip from a couple of years ago" meet that bar?
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.
If you can get by with a base model, they've been an okay deal.. and as mentioned a lot of the build features, display, touchpad, etc. are top of the line, best in class. But before the Neo, I'd still often pick a Lenovo Ideapad or similar for ~$500 or so first, and still might for more ram/storage.
Mac is really good and the ram performance is generally better than slotted ram, so that helps a lot. It doesn't help, however if you want to run a VM/Docker or things that allocate/isolate memory usage away from native apps.
I haven't even had a system with less than 16gb ram since before 2009... I've used as much as 70gb of memory with certain workloads on my desktop (though usually not nearly that much), but it's nice to have if/when you do need it without thrashing the storage drive.
But if you want to add a little more to your spec sheet, you might as well go somewhere else.
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.
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
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.
https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri/issues/5889
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.
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.
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.
Feels like the Neo covers pretty much all the bases:
browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and alternatives
IDEs like VSCode, IntelliJ, Eclipse
open source heavy hitters like QGIS, Blender, Ghostty, even Gimp
unix command line tools via HomeBrew, etc
commercial suites like MS Office and Adobe