Greetings…
What an exciting concept! But, like many in this thread, I’m left feeling less enthused due to the limited CPU selection. I’m also confused.
The decision making going on behind the scenes strikes me as being a bit outdated. Most of the news coming from Intel has been bad the past few years, especially as it pertains to a project like this. If I were on the Framework team, I’d be very anxious if my dreams were tied to present-day Intel and its abilities as a chip manufacturer.
As AMD has narrowed the single-core performance gap, there’s now less reason than ever to choose Intel parts. The decision to stay with Intel is made all the more confusing when you couple it with the bad press surrounding their inability to scale 10nm parts, being forced to back port their designs to a larger node, and their CEO stepping down.
It’s been mentioned earlier in the thread that the might of Intel is the reason a company like Framework would choose Intel… You’d have to ignore all that’s happened in the last few years to make that stick. As it is, Intel is making itself a case study in what not to do once you’ve dominated a market.
In all fairness, in the mobile sector, the reviews for the (albeit, limited selection of) AMD laptops have not been great. One has to wonder why the Ryzen platform fails to perform as well once it is watered down a bit for this form factor. Is it because the laptop manufacturers aren’t trying as hard (because their profit margins may be lower), or is there some genuine flaw in the designs?
Sadly, as much as I’d love to support this company and their mission, I’d be hard pressed to invest in an Intel based computer (in any form factor). The only vote we have in any of this is where we spend our money. Businesses only change when their survival depends on it or when it is advantageous to do so. If enough people buy the Intel version, the Framework team won’t be as motivated to build an AMD variant.
Framework team, I wish you the best with this and truly hope you are able to expand your offerings somewhere down the line. I’d love to pickup an ARM unit to run Chrome OS and an AMD unit for Linux / Windows. What you’re doing is admirable and I hope you succeed. As someone who has spent a significant amount of time helping friends and family repair their computers, I don’t think what you have so far will be appealing to most people. They just don’t care enough. Your first customers will likely be those who are already comfortable tearing down a traditional laptop, so it would be better to make your initial build more appealing to that segment of the market. It would seem to me there is more enthusiasm behind AMD at the moment, but I sincerely hope this “safe bet” you’ve made works out. I look forward to your newsletters