Ah I forgot this is a complete paradigm shift that 23 years of owning a variety of laptops has not prepared me for.

Breaking News: Apple stalks 1.5 Billion people on 3/24/2023! And also every other day!

Technically the second and third upgrade. The Laptop 13 launched with 11th Gen Intel, then got 12th Gen, and now 13th Gen and AMD.

Mmmhm.. I've been tricked by the Grail shaped beacon once before..

Eh by this cynical logic there'd be no companies selling hardwood furniture that lasts decades, or DE razors that you buy once and never replace, or Moka Pots whose only maintenance is a cheap rubber seal.

And yet all those things exist.

Are they niche? Maybe. But--and I know this is blasphemy to say in the tech industry--not every business needs to be a monopolizing decacorn.

>I would want a permanent MagSafe style charging port on there, not a module. I feel like they are trying to create something around these modules but they are really just USB-C dongles that fit into the case.

Everyone who says that doesn't own a framework, and everyone who gets one realizes they were wrong.

The bigger benefit is making them easily repairable. This HAS been done, older thinkpads stayed in service way way longer than most of their comparable laptops simply because they were so serviceable.

One thing the framework does right is their charger setup- you are likely to break and wear out the charging port on a modern laptop- and when that happens on a framework you simply swap out the module and keep going. This is a much bigger deal than replaceable / upgradable motherboards, but keeping it all compatible makes parts easier to source for those repairing, not upgrading. (I’ve seen plenty of laptops discarded for a bad charging port, making it repairable without even opening up the laptop is AMAZING. I no longer have a modern thinkpad because they went to a delicate usb-c directly soldered to the motherboard instead of the old wired in charging port that you could repair by unplugging the broken one)

Or, since nobody really needs a low power desktop, it can be shipped to Africa for an impoverished child to strip the gold plating from.

This is a solution that's been tried many times, it never works, but each time evangelists pop up to explain why this time it will definitely work!

I'm with you. Toss this on the pile of all the other "upgradable" laptops that got one video card and then nada...

>Seriously, though - the keyboard modules are fantastic. That'd save me a day of pulling fused plastic pips off the plate on the back of the motherboard on a laptop, to get another keyboard replacement in. Why not sell the laptop on that? "No need to replace your entire laptop if the spacebar breaks".

What brand are you working on? Maybe I'm spoiled, but all mine are on a tray, you just pop the tray, replace the tray.

The fact that they weren't using MXM in the past, even just offering the OPTION, was a huge source of complaints against their design. Yes it adds complexity, but MXM has been a standard upgrade option in various workstation and gaming laptops since 2006. When Framework ignored it entirely from the start it was incredibly confusing. Also no the size of the machine does not inherently limit their ability to use MXM cards, there's both MXM-A and MXM-B size modules, and MXM-A is small enough to fit into a 14" chassis. Dell/Alienware has done it over the years, ACER did it over a decade ago on some Aspire and TravelMate machines, HP has done it on smaller EliteBook and ProBook models.

Once you start working with electrons in the GigaHertz lane, you have more problems in your hand than just speed.

You have to think about signal timing, tracing lengths, parasitic capacitances, noise getting inducted into open terminals, signal integrity, de-phased signals due to a misaligned connection, different clocks due to even one bad transistor in the capacitor, and more and more we can go on about.

Like I am excited about this laptop, and I will buy one once my old and trusty legion 5 gives out. But I will hold back my expectations. I also once thought that "why can't they just do x? Just add y." but once you get into the intricacies of these magic rocks that even graduate engineers have no idea about, you start to be more conservative.

I also stopped complaining about bugs in apps and games once I got to experience my own deployment. It's easy to blame others when you are ignorant, bit things get different once you know what is happening.

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Oh of course, I lament that Apple decided to go the direction they did. I was perfectly happy upgrading the SSD on my older model MBP. I gave their Touchbar MBP a go but it broke quite a few times and I resented the fixed drive capacity, so much so I have switched back to a desktop PC running Windows. I am looking at an eventual replacement laptop but nothing has really caught my interest and expectations on the PC side.

I really like what FrameWork are trying to do. I think the brand identity is quite nice just think the execution is lacking in the industrial design IMO but the potential is certainly there. I might be critical but I am definitely rooting for them because if they succeed it could force competitors to adjust their approach and we all win then.

Misplaced in a pill press inside a package?

I mean, the cost_original_item+cost_upgrade_module is always going to be greater than the cost_new_item right?

You just KNOW Linus had a video of this queued up and ready to go today...

Tough scene.

I agree. It can be done, its not that technically difficult. But the single reason no one is doing it, is, money.

Please don't mistake me for a hater. Don't know if this helps or hurts, but I have about 10,000 3.5" floppy disks and was born before we landed on the Moon

It’s cheaper than buying two whole laptops… and the 11th gen original motherboard can theoretically still be used as a low power desktop or something.

Ok I understand they were going for everything but the kitchen sink but why would you need storage modules when the SSD is upgradable? USB-C style ports seem to be staying around for a long time as USB 4.0 v2 will be using the same connector.

I would want a permanent MagSafe style charging port on there, not a module. I feel like they are trying to create something around these modules but they are really just USB-C dongles that fit into the case. They could still do these things if they had one or even two ExpressCard* style slot/s in there, there is no need to go full on Michael Bay with this design. People just want a repairable and upgradable device.

*I mean it as a descriptor but their own take on it with modern speeds and design.

> Why not sell the laptop on that?

They already did that when they first launched as the "modular, repairable laptop". I don't think it's a bad thing they're branching out into areas like performance/gaming.

Oculink seems to do better than Thunderbolt for reasons that are unclear in my zero research so far

Taper is there to help the speakers project themselves. MBA has speakers projecting through the hinge, and the speaker cavity is much smaller.

User replaceable stuff doesn't help at all with user upgradability. You can't do wacky stuff like add in storage or DP on a cartridge without fundamentally altering the chassis holes. Or even fabricate your own modules like magsafe.

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