The current model concept is interesting but a few things that hold me up to getting one.
If below options is available, that would be great as below options is a “must” for me.
Form Factor: 2-in-1 (convertible or detachable) Touch Display: 15’ inch or Higher (3:2 and >400 nit) Processor Options: Intel / AMD (or Arm) Graphics: Integrated Nvidia / AMD Keyboard: Standard with num-pad Camera: 1080p 60fps Battery: min 70Wh (or Higher)
It’s hard to satisfy different users but would hope that Framework can come out more DIY modules for next version in order to let user have more option to DIY their “Dream” laptop.
Just a customer, not an employee. @nrp and the Framework team had to pick a target and design to it. Trying to put every available option in the first iteration would likely have delayed the delivery of anything at all by a considerable amount.
Let this laptop be a base and prove the concept. Then see what can be done with the expansion modules.
Then, start coming up with additional core styles.
Conceptually, it seems like AMD (or ARM, or even RISC-V) should be possible down the road, and hopefully also a screen with a more sensible resolution.
The thing that’s absolutely stopping me getting onboard is the idiotic keyboard layout (which unfortunately seems to be the industry standard at the moment). I have zero desire to give up full-sized arrow keys and separate home/end/etc. on my current machine. But it seems that will require a 14" or 15" form factor , or at least 13" 16:9. (And at 15", I’d really like to see 3840x2560. I do appreciate 3:2 or at least 16:10, but frankly, given the choice between 3:2 or a decent keyboard, the keyboard wins.)
OTOH, I have no particular interest in touch or convertible/detachable and active anti-interest in NVIDIA.
It sounds to me like some of the requests here are things that even “bigname manufacturers” don’t produce and haven’t ever produced. E.g. A 2-in-1 with a dGPU is a big ask. Even a 2-in-1 with an AMD processor is hard to find, last time I checked. In the 2-in-1 form factor, I’m not sure that a device small enough to be manageable, would also be able to cool a a dGPU. I know FW put a lot of effort into making sure it could cool itself properly, which I really appreciate.
On screen resolutions, its a tough call for me. I’ve been coding with two 88-char terminals side-by-side for as long as I can remember on a 1080p display for… a long time. I’ve never felt like I need more resolution than this. But I’ve also never thought about adding height, to a display, but its a neat concept. The 2550x1500 does seem like its in a weird in-between, where fonts are either going to be either too big or too small or poorly scaled, but we’ll see.
I’ll add a +1 on the keyboard layout. My old laptop had distinct home/end/pgup/pgdn, with half-height arrows. my current one has fn-overloads on the half-height arrow keys. It has a half inch of keyboard-bezel on each side, but it looks like the side IO ports take that space. On FW, It looks to me like its a similar tradeoff between physical size and having the slightly larger keyboard. I agree with most of the commenters here that I’d rather have a slightly larger device, but FW team made the decision for the slightly smaller device. (I would add mouse buttons too, and even a trackpoint for those who want it).
Personally, I’d rather see their first iteration get to market before I start tacking on too many requirements.
Can we take minor or niche requests in a long tail market [1] by small or individual manufacturers here utilizing this community on the Framework as a platform?
I think Linux or each Linux distribution’s share on the desktop market is smaller than Windows, Mac. But we can install it on the Framework laptop by the power of the community. So, can we apply it to the minor hardware parts too? Just very rough idea.
I’ve been thinking this over a little bit. From a “business” perspective, the core of FW is sustainability. What it seems you’re suggesting is more along the lines of product diversity.
On the technical side, modularity seems like it fills both of these requirements. Wear parts and upgrade parts can be replaced easily without replacing the whole system. So far, FW seems to be committed to modular parts where there exist industry standard interfaces (memory/SSDs/wireless), and they plan to make some of “next years” parts swappable into prior chassis (so far mainboards, i18n keyboards, and expansion-cards), but they’ve been very hesitant to make promise beyond that (screen resolution/surface/interactivity, trackpoint mice, new expansion-cards).
Thinking about sustainability, I’m not sure that filling niche requests is the right way to go about this. (Not to say I don’t want niche products myself), niche items tend to be harder to produce. I think they’ll probably aim more towards the middle of the market with somewhat more mainstream products.
Perhaps if FW takes off as a platform we’ll see open-hardware and rapid-prototype/3d-printing communities pick up some of this. There’s another (short) thread about making an RPi Compute mainboard for FW, and I believe they’ve already released dimensions for expansion-cards and possibly other parts. I’d be surprised if the community came up with GPU hardware or anything major like that. but we’ll see.
I’ve been thinking this over a little bit. From a “business” perspective, the core of FW is sustainability. What it seems you’re suggesting is more along the lines of product diversity.
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On the technical side, modularity seems like it fills both of these requirements.
@Kimberlee_Model I agree that sustainability is the primary purpose. For the product diversity, I think it’s important to distinguish the sustainability of the FW laptop itself supported by FW, with the product diversity with less sustainability not supported by FW in the area including the FW ecosystem. Thriving ecosystem is also important from a business perspective to make the FW as a platform attractive.
In the case of a gaming machine like XBox, PlayStation or Nintendo device as a platform, the value of the gaming device depends on the games that work on the device.
Thinking about sustainability, I’m not sure that filling niche requests is the right way to go about this. (Not to say I don’t want niche products myself), niche items tend to be harder to produce. I think they’ll probably aim more towards the middle of the market with somewhat more mainstream products.
The 2nd case is the Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The Red Hat supports the Linux kernel and their shipped RPM packages. But the company doesn’t support the 3rd party’s or someone’s open source software on the OS. The 3rd party’s softwre contributes to the ecosystem’s diversity. And an attractive open source software (OSS) survives with sustainability, but some OSS doesn’t. That’s natural.
I think that FW should not support the 3rd party or individual’s product itself. Instead, FW should invest in an environment where 3rd party or individual’s products will thrive. That’s about the standard interface, providing documents, creating a marketplace for monetization, and etc.
The 3rd case is CI (Continuous Integration) service, Travis vs GitHub Actions. I am not sure if you are familiar with this topic. But there is a very good case about what the platform should support.
Travis has the programming language specific feature in their config file. For example in Ruby, here is the Ruby language feature supported by Travis. Travis is supporting the diverse programming languages feature by only themselves. It looks hard.
GitHub Actions also has the programming language feature in their config file. First they supported the Ruby feature by themselves. (See this repo). But now the Ruby project supports the feature instead of GitHub Actions. (See this repo). In my impression the GitHub Actions has more diverse ecosystem by the contributions of the 3rd party’s software, such as this feature - setup-buildx-action by Docker.
We can learn a proper balance about what FW should support from this case.
It would be awesome to have ARMv9, performance RISC-V, or OpenPOWER CPU options. I do realise these aren’t readily available yet, but could be something that the Framework Laptop uses in the future, and can have a role in creating.
, or at least 13" 16:9. (And at 15", I’d really like to see 3840x2560. I do appreciate 3:2 or at least 16:10, but frankly, given the choice between 3:2 or a decent keyboard, the keyboard wins.)