It’s been over 5 months now since the LTT video showed that the dual M.2 board was in production, and nearly 4 months since this beta bios was posted. What’s going on here? Is this ever going to get released, or were we just teased with something that’s never actually going to appear?
I understand that Framework is a startup however other manufacturers like Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc., churn out BIOS updates for hundreds of models of computers every month; it can’t be that hard.
Um…what? Monthly BIOS updates? Maybe yearly…
Framework is a small company. I think the last number I saw was ~/<50 employees with plans to be ~60 by the end of 2024.
Dell has ~120,000 employees. HP has ~58,000 employees. Lenovo has ~71,000 employees.
Comparisons aren’t exactly equal.
That being said, I agree that Framework needs to do better. Framework did a short PR campaign saying they agreed. Around the same time, they also posted this blog post explaining the changes they made and were planning to improve on. I don’t think they’ve meaningfully kept up with this plan. Given that Framework is currently hiring a firmware/software engineer, I hope the situation improves. I thought they had previously hired someone, and fear that whomever was in that position has either departed/is being replaced, or simply had too much workload (across 4 13" Intel generations, 1 13" AMD generation, and 1 16" AMD generation, with 2 CPU SKUs per generation that’s at least 12 SKUs) and has been stuck ‘in the weeds’ and seemingly unable to release any significant updates.
They need to do better, but comparing them to multi-billion dollar companies isn’t quite the thing to do.
No, I said monthly, I meant monthly. Take for instance the XPS 13 9310, which is over 4 years old mind you, almost as old as Framework itself, has has bios updates recently on:
August 14, 2024
June 19, 2024
March 12, 2024
January 16, 2024
November 21, 2023
September 11, 2023
August 11, 2023
July 10, 2023
May 8 2023
April 11, 2023
March 14, 2023
February 13, 2023
There were also 8 updates in 2022, 9 in 2021, and 3 in 2020.
I understand this, however not all of those employees are software engineers, and not all of those engineers are working on bios updates. If I had to guess, they probably have a small number of engineers working on their bioses.
On top of that, Framework is just purchasing their bios from InsydeH2O just like many other manufacturers and sprinkling their own changes on top of it. As a software engineer myself I can’t imagine needing more than one or two embedded developers to handle fixing issues and releasing updates for what amounts to 6 different board revisions at this point.
This is my point. They need to do better. But they’re not going to know they need to do better if there’s no criticism about how they’re currently operating, hence my post. I’ve purchased many framework laptops and have been very enthusiastic about them, however they’ve seemingly dropped the ball, hard, and is quite frankly turning me off from buying any more hardware from them in the future. They need to get their act together.
Hm. That is quite surprising and after further review, I’d say the truth is somewhere in between. The models I’ve used/am currently using did not receive updates quite that frequently, more like 2 to 4 times a year, so I would not say they are pumping out updates for every model every month.
Nonetheless, I still think your comparison is not fair. Even if Dell has 10 people working on firmware, that may be 10 more than Framework has. The only listing for a firmware engineer on the team page is an open position.
I have the feeling that things must not be going very well. Maybe the money ran out or the sales of framework 16 have not been what they expected.
They said they would improve support and there are still many complaints; There is a huge problem with bios updates; The equipment sent seems to still have quality problems that should have been corrected and user requests such as fan control seem to have been omitted.
These things, if the company is going to work well, should be solved.
I don’t blame the framework team, they have tried but seeing everything so stopped, perhaps things are not going well or the sale is a possibility.
I wish you the best, but I would appreciate a little more transparency.
I did some digging in the internet archive, and that position appears to be at most a month or so old. The most recent snapshot of that page the internet archive has is September 30, which does not list that position, but does list an Electrical Engineer which would have included working on the firmware. That position appeared between May 18th and May 24th of this year. So, they’ve been looking for someone to at least partially work on firmware for nearly 6 months now.
Having an open position for that long tells me that there’s something wrong with that position; either they’re expecting too much, not paying enough, being too picky, etc. For instance, the position is based in Taiwan but “will require some local and international travel to partners and our San Francisco, CA headquarters”. My hunch is that one requirement is a turn off to many engineers who might otherwise qualify for the position and want to work at Framework. I’m not saying that you’re not going to find an engineer that wants to travel, but it’s yet another limiting factor when a lot of engineers still want to work remotely.
Actually I’d say that the Framework 16 was their best selling device so far given how many batches they had to run through before they were able to “catch up” and offer them for sale for immediate shipping. If there was a flop, I’d say it’s the most recent Intel models; there were only a handful of batches that didn’t take that long to get through. Maybe people aren’t liking intel anymore? Or maybe it’s that people are holding out for an update on the 16? Who knows.
But, the problems are piling up, and the excuse of being a startup is getting older and less acceptable as time goes on.
The “BIOS” updates question is a difficult one.
The last release was 3.0.3 on 27th March 2024. 3.0.4 is still beta at the moment.
On the FW16, I think the thing everyone is really wanting is a fix to the USB problems.
The FW16 has lots of different bits of firmware.
The EC is open source, so that is easy, and anyone can improve that. I have looked at the EC source code, and it is not particularly high quality code. But at least it is out there, and software developers can edit it and improve it.
The BIOS is mostly done by a 3rd party and so FW are probably more at their mercy as to when they release updates, security updates etc.
The firmware for the USB PD chips is probably a different 3rd party company, so they are at their mercy to fix that.
It is a shame they cannot open source the USB PD source code, because I think that probably a majority of FW customers are software developers so could very quickly have fixed the bugs in the USB PD code, and got the USB ports working better.
Enthusiasts probably bought framework 16.
We know that there have been returns and that the framework has acted in an honest manner, returning the money, for that we must applaud them.
Right now it is an expensive device, with no early adopters who want to buy (they already did).
Add to that all the quality problems that can be read on the internet, the bad reviews with many problems that have not yet been corrected or the lack of a bios update.
Plus the support complaints, and the high price.
And let’s not forget that they have just announced a modular laptop, much cheaper, and with the Chinese behind it.
Additionally, I have read criticism (but I don’t know the truth about this) that, for example, the dedicated graphics card has a proprietary connector, which would be contrary to the open nature of the platform.
In my opinion, they have tried, they did a great job with the 13 model but the 16 model should not have happened, at least at the current time.
I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think that at least the 16 model has a good future in the market, there are too many problems.
I hope I’m wrong.
Oh? What device is that? If you are talking about the FL13 with the new Intel Ultra processor, my understanding is that it is being manufactured in Taiwan, just like the rest of the Framework range.
The team does not have the same degree of modularity as franework but without a doubt it is competition that can always come in handy and even more so with the Chinese involved.
Personally, I have zero interest in this particular laptop, and honestly many products in similar categories (primarily technology), especially if it’s from a Chinese company.
I think China makes many great things. I don’t agree with the oft spread mentality that Chinese produced stuff is cheap or poorly made. I do think Chinese manufactured goods are often made at the quality that the customer was willing to pay for, and often businesses from everywhere try to skimp on costs anywhere they can, and often that is on manufacturing costs.
My issue with many Chinese companies is eerily similar to my current issues with Framework (though, I hope that Framework proves me wrong). Often, Chinese companies will develop and market a product that is great. They sell that product, and usually it works as advertised, at release. But when it comes to post purchase, long-term support, often (in my experience) things fall flat. Many very nice and functional Chinese products I’ve owned have stopped functioning due to a lack of post-sale support, primarily software support.
DJI is a huge company with deep marketing pockets selling drones and cameras to the masses. But when they release a drone, it often comes with a month or two of bug fixes, maybe a few more, and then they go radio-silent until they release their next product and the cycle repeats. Updates or minor QoL software features discussed for a product often are skipped, and released instead on the follow-up product.
And it’s not just DJI that does this; every single Chinese company I’ve purchased tech products from follows this pattern. Anker, Insta360, Revopoint, etc, all release great products, but fall short with long-term, ongoing software support, instead focusing solely on the newest, latest product.
I hope Framework doesn’t follow this pattern.
And to be clear, many other companies also do this from countries other than China. However, it often seems to vary company to company in each country, whereas it seems (in my experience) that China is in their hyper-growth phase, and long-term support isn’t valued currently culturally.
The same goes for hardware support, at least outside China.
On top of that, I can’t see how a TDP of 90W (CPU) and 140W (GPU) add up to 170W without one of either falling short on power.
The battery has even less capacity than Framework’s one, so it’ll be sucked dry even faster.
I didn’t catch any mention of USB-C PD, so there’s no telling if it’s possible to use powerbanks to counter that issue.
And regarding the prospect of the trade issues on the horizon due to the upcoming Trump presidency, chinese vendors might not be able to obtain CPUs and GPUs made by US companies anymore in the near future.
All in all a nice toy for people with too much money on their hands. Don’t forget though, that part of it is going to end up in the pockets of people threatening Taiwan and therefore indirectly Framework, too.