Because it is
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Is the 3.0b safe for all to use? I’m having the same issue, but this BIOS isn’t on the official BIOS release page.
I don’t want to install something that’s an engineering release and not meant for wide release.
On Ars, I responded to nrp’s comment, about how the 12th gen update was just released, “so its ok now” post, with a few examples of what makes it seem, like Framework had no time to even read this thread and apply things they were notified here about their own post / release notes before they made it an actual release.
That the release happened silently last weak, just really gives me the impression, that the only reason the release happened was PR. And they rushed everything, not even reading what they were posting. And nobody has been monitoring this thread at all, as we all could have guessed already. And if somebody had reported a critical issue with the updater, they might not even have realized it, in their hurry.
All of the things in my response are tiny things, that they could easily fix within minutes, just by editing the text, if they just care to. And things I have said here before and should have been fixed in this thread long before that release.
I am very curious how long it takes them to “fix” the release page for 12th gen now. And if they will acknowledge it.
And if Ars cares to be negative, they can maybe show that this specific “release” happened only as a reaction to them. Because the author of the article was not even told it was or was going to be released. But FW responded publicly with “it was already released last week”.
Stuff like that, and that they have been very cagey, like announcing “having a contract” for more support, when they knew the contract would not even start for over 3 months and not effective until just now (supposedly), is what makes me not trust them, when they now say the problems are almost fixed.
There have been way too many “soons” that turned into half a year and more with Framework trying not to acknowledge it. And completely their fault for not just being straight-forward about this and trying to weasel through it without acknowledging their mistakes (not having support staff) and how long it took them to negotiate and procure the fixes that will hopefully be coming.
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I am the last person to defend the BIOS situation…but statements like these are not helpful. If you have ever worked in operations particularly in a situation with rapidly changing conditions and priorities you would realize that your intentions, and stated goals don’t always match up with what actually happens, when it happens, and why it happened. I don’t see any malicious or untrustworthy behavior here. I just see typical operational issues, that you learn from, and move on.
As to cagey behavior…once again have you ever owned or worked for a small business? A small business that is making waves in a very big market? Essentially Framework is a minnow trying to survive in a sea full of predators, and natural disasters that could kill it. So yeah when anything I say could be used against me in litigation, litigation that could kill the business, yeah I would be really careful about how, where, when, and why I said anything.
That all being said they really should find a better way to communicate to the user base, or at least keep the user base in the loop. They don’t need to do this, but one of the things Framework benefits from immensely is a very engaged and often very knowledgeable user base, so they probably should try to keep it engaged, and engaged in a positive way. I bought my laptop with a 3-4 year upgrade cycle in mind, and with a 5 year target from inception of the company to have these kinds of things figured out. So far they are on target, so I will continue to support them.
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That is perfectly fine. If you are behind, and therefore want to show progress by making an announcement, but also cannot or do not want to speak on specifics or want to commit to a specific timeline you may not be able to keep, the consequence should then be updates on the status, as they become available. That is sth. that can be promised in one sentence in the announcement. But best is to just show it:
So with that example, they admitted to Ars, that the hiring process for the team only started at the end of last year. So that would have been a milestone to report to everybody you already announced to having the contract in the first place. Just a quick: “progress update on firmware support team: hiring has now started”. And a further update at the time when they feel confident that the team is now up and running. That would have still shown that there is progress.
You’ll note that my posts on this forum pretty much guess that exactly that is what is happening back when they announced the contract. Simple things. Just a few sentences, showing follow-through. But that did not happen. Same with the 3.06 update. Where every 3 months we got the PR response “we have not forgotten, we are still working on it”. And then nothing, clearly showing that either they are skipping over larger amounts of critical details. Or are barely dedicating any actual time to actually working on the problem (as has now been confirmed).
And I have not been as loud as I am now, hoping for / anticipating such believable progress reports.
Since January we know, the 3.06 update was cancelled long ago. They worked on 3.07, but it did not pass internal testing. And they may have started work on 3.08 end of last year. All waypoints that could be communicated with a single sentence, showing at least progress and also being honest about stuff like: “in the past 6 months we did not have much time to dedicate to testing version x, so that is why it took us until now to advance to the next version”.
And how was any of this helped, by not talking about it, but making it obvious that they did not care to devote time to 12th gen (or 11th gen, 13 th gen). Now they have admitted to it. Doing this peacemeal would have shown the same original problem of not having enough support resources, but would not have lost my trust.
Of course, for the companies PR, it would have been better if nobody asks questions and they do never have to admit to making a mistake. But nobody interested in a long-lasting product or company should be interested in that and I do not believe that they could not see this problem brewing.
If they would have announced problems preventing them from supporting the older models early last year, but having solved those problems for the newer variants (with enough details to be believable) I would have trusted them and upgraded to a newer board (because I was on an early board. My willingnes for that reduces every generation). If all I see is being stalled again and again without any actual, believable progress reported, how am I to believe there is a sincere effort to make up for mistakes that clearly happened already. How am I to believe that they solved the problem that caused that mistake if they choose to not admit the mistake. PR Hype answers like “team of rockstars” only make the company seem less sincere.
Yeah. And that is why, if when they announced having the contract, they would have talked about it being a part of the reason it took so long, I would have forgiven that, because it makes sense to me, that talking about the negotiation you are currently in publicly could very well undermine your negotiating position.
Like I said, I am open to much. If one cannot explain things to me to convince me, one needs to convince me with actions. Repeated actions, so it does not just seem like a one-off. I hold no grudge. But they lost my trust. And winning it back trough actions takes a lot longer than explaining enough for me to believe that the course they are on will lead to success. And I am just reacting to their choices. And I am making that known. Because there would have been opportunities to get an upgraded board or not advise friends and family against a purchase in the meantime and I have no good alternative to Framework, if I cannot trust them with my money (for things that have firmware that needs to be maintained).
Edit:
@nadb And to make this clear, I do not consider any of this solved, especially because of the way they seemed to override any process and made more mistakes in rushing this to release, seemingly purely for PR reasons but STILL unwilling to devote even 1hour of a developers time to actually working feedback in this thread into their release notes for the “final” release that we know is broken, because they released the version that claims my notebook is not 12th gen, that they provided a fixed installer for back in January.
That is the really catastrophic thing to me. That they are still only going by a PR playbook, making and showing more unnecessary mistakes in the process instead of finally learning from it. That just makes me think that they are either incompetent or hiding even more problems than they already admitted to.
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I’ve been very disappointed by the lack of communications regarding this BIOS update and published my thoughts here:
https://community.frame.work/t/my-framework-has-been-abandoned
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I can forgive all the issues with the computers, I know this stuff is hard with a small team. But the killer for me is their communication. It sucks. That kills all the good will with the community.
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Exactly. And do not forget that Nirav talked about precisely this on the hardware side of things in an interview / podcast. Regarding among other things the 11th gen BIOS backup battery. So we know that he knows this as well. At least in principle.
Makes me go to my conspiracy theories, if the situation is not worse then even we expect, because they chose a very different path than with that hardware problem, even after the CEO talked about how it was actually the better choice to be honest & direct in the long run, even if they could not make all customers happy and risked more liability and bad PR doing it.
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“…It builds long-term trust…” Yikes.
Who is reading this wall of text?
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I did
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Me too.
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Communication is not the problem. Leaving vulnerabilities unadressed on a brand new device is the problem. No amount of communication makes it OK to drop support for a $1000+ laptop the day it launches. These laptops were sold as finished products but were supported like dev kits.
The only communication that could have saved this would be if they had clearly sold these laptops as dev kits from the start.
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Finally, some criticism from the industry, I hope FW are embarrassed. Repairable and upgradeable doesn’t mean jack if the heart is abandoned before it hits your doorstep. Powerfully bad showing by FW, and I really regret giving them a single cent, never mind tens of thousands of them.
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How am I supposed to update my BIOS to support the 61Wh battery that I just ordered and protect myself against CVE-2023-22615?
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Chiming in to say I’m having the issue of my 12th gen system not being recognized as 12th gen as well. Although reading through this thread it sounds like that’s probably a blessing in disguise as this update seems to break and trash the system as often as it manages to succeed.
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I disagree, proper communication would have set expectations and reduced the blowback they have gotten for their handling of this. Not communicating is what leads people to believe the platform has been abandoned along with missing communicated goals. Communication is everything here. I criticize but I won’t be hyperbolic in that criticism if I can avoid it.
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To each their own I guess. I’d personally still be just as upset with frequent communication because the upsetting thing to me was simply not having stable securty patches. The only communication that would have made me feel better is pre-sale communication.
My expectations were set when I placed my order, so better comms after that point wouldnt change anything for me personally.
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Somewhere in the middle of this epic thread, they posted an updated windows installer which fixed this! But then they recently posted the original version as the stable release on the support pages, not the fixed version 
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Post #21. So far, their PR machine has not paused to rethink that release before announcing it at ever more places…
And also, the 2nd issue I also reported here was that the ReTimer can still fail to update as it was a Known Issue for the 3.06 beta… So that is also in the “final” release. Although I have no idea how likely that is to happen. Might be caused by specific power supplies or the weather or anything else…