What’s your opinion guys? I have never liked Apple’s way of doing business with their closed ecosystem, but I gotta admit, these new performance levels and display, speakers, etc… Windows machines need to really pick up their game… a lot in this case.
No user reviews yet, but based on the graphs I think Intel and AMD are sweating right now.
I was waiting for these to release before I pulled the trigger on Framework (knowing that there will be regret). And I was right. These are very tempting. I have used a mac for 10 years now. I also envy the performance and battery life/thermals. The higher end M1 Max has performance exceeding Core i7 + RTX 3080 at a fraction of the thermal output and power usage. The competing laptops have battery life in the 4-6 hours while they are boasting 17 hours. It is in another league altogether.
I am comfortable with the linux terminal but not with the desktop experience and I don’t want to go back to Windows. If daily driving linux turns out to be too much of a pain, I will return to macOS and get one of the new 14’’ MBPs. Hopefully these high performance ARM CPUs come to other laptops as well some day. Maybe Framework will grow big enough some day to design their own silicon.
I’m not a fan of Apple, but even I will admit that the 14-21 hours of battery life and the Apple silicon performance are super enticing.
However, then I remind myself that the battery takes up like 60% of the body since the motherboard has all of its components soldered onto it. Additionally, the chip’s performance is stupidly impressive, but part of how they achieve that is by having the RAM baked right onto it.
Yes, the performance and efficiency are absolutely mind boggling, but knowing what corners are cut to achieve them, I remain happy with my Framework laptop that I can confidently upgrade and repair for years to come.
Yep. The performance is very impressive.
But then knowing that if ANYTHING stops working, you need to buy another machine. If you are in the Apple ecosystem by then, fork out another 2 grand or more to them. I bet the charging cables etc will be 10x higher cost than any non-Apple device.
That is the ridiculous part why I have never even considered owning any of their products. It’s simply milking every drop of money however possible.
The products from this company are all designed to make you pay more and more over long period of time.
Also, MacOS is something I have very little experience with (which I didn’t like given the restrictions and whatnot I tried to do).
The upcoming M1s were definitely on my list but that was when I thought they were going to be at least somewhat similar in price to the Windows competitors. 2600+ USD for a future-proof-specced model is absurd for me, considering my Framework was less than half of that price. Plus the performance is quite overkill for my needs.
I do love the m1, magsafe, miniled, and return of ports. The notch was a bit of an unexpected curveball though lol.
The thing that I keep coming back to is do I actually need that much performance. And in reality, I really don’t. I seriously doubt the majority of mac users even do. Sure, some will - the odd video editor, music producer etc and maybe a gamer or two. But I suspect most macs are used in the same way most PCs are - internet browsing and occasional desktop publishing with some app use in between.
I’d rather have something that has really good performance, but not as good, but that will last years upon years longer.
Plus, I have never really got on with OS X despite being tempted many times! Apple is great if you have Apple Care +, but would I rather have a computer I can maintain and upgrade myself well beyond the 3 years or so most laptops start to die within? I think so…
I feel we are fortunate in that we are at a point in terms of computer performance that pretty much ANY x86_64 CPU will be able to do 95% of what people need a computer for.
There will be people with a REAL need for this kind of performance and not just a want for it. They will be ok with the tradeoffs, and they will use it.
However, as much as I find this all extremely compelling the walled garden of Apple and the inability to talk about longevity and reparability with it are just too big of a tradeoff. Given that what Framework offers handles 100% of my needs, and thunderbolt gives me all I need in the way of expandability externally this is especially true.
Plus with the Framework you aren’t just buying the current iteration you are buying into the eco-system. Eventually there will be a new mainboard with new architectures and features, and you’ll be able to upgrade to that for a fraction of the cost of a whole Framework laptop.
So great achievement from Apple. It couldn’t have happened for a worse company though. They will horde this tech until long after all of us are dead.
My daily driver is still a MBP from 2015. It hasn’t shown any sign of dying yet. When It does I will get a Framework (or maybe sooner, if I can justify it), but I will be seriously impressed if the Framework feels as nice and works as well in 2027 as the MBP does today. I hope it will.
You probably own one of the last generation of Macs that has that level of longevity built into it. Later ones seem to have much lesser longevity in their build… I don’t own one so I don’t know, but I see all around that there is huge demand for older MacBooks because the new ones just aren’t as good.
Maybe the M1 Macs will be better, who knows!
At least with Framework, we can change, upgrade and switch out components to keep it going as long as we want to. Assuming Framework still exist then of course.
Very possible, I haven’t been keeping up with the Mac scene since. I know it was the last MBP where one could upgrade the storage (with an M2 adapter), which I did last year.
At least with Framework, we can change, upgrade and switch out components to keep it going as long as we want to. Assuming Framework still exist then of course.
Fingers crossed it does 
Those machines are certainly impressive from a technical perspective, but here in Europe they start at 2300€ for measly 512gb ssd and 16 Gb of RAM. A reasonable config will run you 3000€ for the 14 inch. Even if I could justify plonking down that kind of money on a computer, which I could not, I still would not heed that siren call, because they are essencially disposable computers, a fact all the more outrageous because of their price point. Probably the only thing you can replace at a justifiable cost in them is the battery, the rest is a gamble, cause Apple will be happy to milk you for a few thousand more two-three years down the line, and you’ll probably be happy to pay it for a new one, cause the M-whatever promaxultra chip will have even more unicorns and rainbows than what they’re selling now.
I was worried about having some buyer’s remorse when these came out, but I’m actually feeling better now about my decision not to wait for one. I already knew that the M1 Pro/Max would be the fastest chips around, but I was not expecting them to start at $2000 which is WAY too much to spend on a laptop for what I need one for. The CPU power and battery life are awesome, but not worth the trade-off to be locked into macOS and to be permanently unable to upgrade ever.
I’ll plonk down ~$1200 on a Framework, and maybe in 2 or 3 years when Intel/AMD catch up, I can pop in a new motherboard with a super-fast chip that keeps up with Apple’s latest 
I don’t think that selling very expensive computers is per se a sin, as it’s necessary to have players at the cutting edge of tech. Apple could make laptops that are cutting edge, expensive and fully repairable. They don’t make them repairable not only because of greed, but because their ideal customer base is something akin to the elite of the Hunger Games: wasteful, vain, and out-of-touch. These are the times we’re living in.
I also was waiting for this apple announcement before ordering my Framework.
I wanted to hear “Macbook Air with upgraded M1 chip and 15+ hours of battery for $1500.”
Instead I got “More Notch for more money. 64MB RAM for $400.”
These laptops are designed as status symbols for the out-of-touch.
My work Macbooks get replaced by the IT department when they get too dusty.
Framework, you earned 2 years of my brand loyalty. Lets go.
The performance gains possible with ARM (and probably also RISC-V) show where Framework’s development needs to be headed.
I understand that Qualcomm have stated an intent to launch their own PC level ARM SoCs in a year or so. They have even acquired some former senior Apple silicon designers. Despite, as an Apple follower having understood Qualcom to be a legal firm specialising in intellectual property cases, who also happen to make microchips, I look forward to seeing what they come up with.
It is also why I have made some pithy responses to the AMD thread. Henry Ford is famously said to have said “If I asked the people what they wanted they would say faster horses”. Rather than wasting precious engineering resources on a faster x86 horse from AMD’s stable, let’s see what Qualcomm and SiFive (the premier RISC-V design house) come up with and be front of the queue for their products.
Framework’s next few motherboards would be great if they were ARM/RISC-V to take advantage of this amazing tech (that even Apple has tempted me a little bit at buying for my GPU-heavy needs) but it largely relies on existing chipmakers like Intel and AMD to throw their hat into the ring. Expecting Framework to pull a Google Tensor or an Apple M1 and design a chip in-house is a LOT to ask
I think it’s important to recognize that this isn’t a Windows issue. This is a platform issue: x86 is currently unable to achieve the performance of M1-based ARM processors.
The question is: what can be done about it?
RISC has been around for a long time, and when memory was expensive, RISC was expensive. The tables have turned, and RISC has been offering bang for the buck performance in terms of battery and clock. Apple saw this and seized it.
Microsoft has been trying to make ARM a thing since the original Surface (remember the Surface with Windows RT? It had amazing battery life!). The tragic miscalculation was to lock down the device while giving it a full Windows desktop; when people figured out how to run .net applications at native speed, it actually gave it some niche use.
The Surface X is a nice ARM-based device, but it is again failing to capture market share. It’s also locked down. I think that if Microsoft played ball and the hardware vendors got their act together, we could develop a socketed ARM/RISC V ecosystem that could quickly mature and beat Apple. AMD has the experience, and Intel seems to be waking up to it (again), but so far that doesn’t seem to be happening, and the future of end-user computing is beginning to get hazy, which ultimately threatens the open platform.
That’s not to say that it’s dying.
To be clear, I don’t think that Apple will seriously consider expanding into business space for some time. Indeed, some of the security enhancements in MacOS wind up to be so anti-business that it just becomes more painful to think about the more I try to put my mind to it (seriously Apple, you want to charge me $99/year to repackage apps for MBM/Intune PLUS the cost of MBM itself on top of Azure?) Apple’s issues may also come to a head when it comes to how they manage environmental issues; making perfectly useful hardware useless because of arbitrary requirements like Metal support just doesn’t make sense, and with Big Sur, it’ll only get worse before it gets better.
But winter will come to the companies who fail to take full advantage of the technologies available to them - and that includes using these incredible die shrinks with a platform that can leverage them.
Seems to me like the real mistake Microsoft made was that they released it before they’d perfected x86 emulation.
The fact of the matter is that software developers are not going to switch overnight to making ARM versions of their apps. What made Apple Silicon successful is that somehow - who knows how - Apple managed to emulate x86 almost perfectly with no performance penalty, perfectly integrated into the OS.
Microsoft released Surface Pro X before they even had x64 support in their emulator. Like most great Microsoft products, it was too quick to market.
Apple have a different stronghold on developers than Microsoft - they can basically force developers to do what they want them to, because it’s all a closed ecosystem. Microsoft don’t operate a closed ecosystem, so they need to create an OS that gets market penetration for developers to follow suit. So they really need to perfect that x86 emulation or Windows on ARM will never work.