How could Laptop 12's price be reduced (optimally)?

Framework Laptop 12
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I mean, 700 USD for a 12.2” laptop seems a bit overpriced when you can get a refurbished Mac or a laptop like the one I drive with better specs and bigger screen for a 100$ less. The tradeoff is simple, repairability for performance. But for most users of a 12-inch laptop like my cousin who needs a simple laptop for school, how could Framework make the 12-inch cheaper (even if it means at the cost of some features, except for repairability, of course.)?

Discuss below!

Edit: 700USD is the price for NO STORAGE, NO WINDOWS, 8GB RAM, 2 USBA and 2 USBC Expansion Cards, US/CA power adapter, and the Intel i3 1315-U. If you want 500GB of storage and Windows 11 Home, its gonna be another 200 more.

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What’s the cheapest refurbished laptop that Apple sells with more than 16 gigs of RAM?

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Just checked the Apple Store. $849 gets you 16GB/256GB and an M4 MBA. Prebuilt Framework 12 costs $1,049. Alternatively you can spend $879 and get 16GB/512GB with an M2 MBA. For around the same price as a prebuilt FW12 you can get 16GB/512GB M4 MBA. So no matter which way you cut it, it’s not a good deal for Framework. I’d go with the M4 because you keep the headphone jack, the same USB-C ports although you now get TB4 instead of USB 3.1 on FW. 2 fewer USB ports tho on MBA. Only one fewer if you dedicate a port to charging.

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At more than 16gb, the lowest is
1099 for 24gb
1699 for 32gb
2459 for 48gb
3439 for 64gb

That’s looking only at the refurb store, so there may be new models for less.

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$1299 on the EDU storefront for 24GB/512GB MBA. Considering basically everyone can get EDU pricing, that’s what I consider the baseline. Nobody should pay full retail price for Apple products. So $150 gets you a better display, better SOC and 8GB more RAM.

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Thanks, I had just checked the retail refurb store. Apple (and others(, are brutal on memory and storage charges.

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Apart from the discussion of whether the current Laptop 12 price is optimal or not, I think there are some possible ways that you can buy Laptop 12 at a cheaper price.

Buy a used Laptop 12 from someone

You can check the following pages or eBay regularly.

Wait for an outlet Laptop 12

You can check this page regularly.

Wait for a Laptop 12 next generation CPU

Then Framework will discount the current generation CPU version of the Laptop 12, and you can buy the version of Laptop 12 at a cheaper price.

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Thank god Apple ditched 8GB RAM as the intro, that was an insult.

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Problem is…those same options result in cheaper MacBooks, the value proposition doesn’t change.

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I don’t understand why we need to compare the price between Laptop 12 and Mac. These computers’ value propositions are different.

If people want a repairable, upgradable, or Windows/Linux-friendly laptop, they can choose Laptop 12. If people want a cheaper but disposable or MacOS laptop, they can choose a Mac laptop.

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“How could Laptop 12’s price be reduced (optimally)?”

By not designing and producing things that break within the warranty period…at the very least. (Cut down on support cost, replacement cost and shipping cost, have happier customers, spread the brand, get most customers, economy at scale…)

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Because to some portion of user base, all they care is how much it cost for them to do [some task] . They don’t care about brand, don’t care about repairability, don’t care about upgrades, don’t care about OS. Can x $ amount spent over 5 years do y tasks? A computer is an interface to [name the task]. As such, the specialty features of [whatever product] may not even come into the picture for consideration. The [name the task] could be work or some quality of life thing (music, video…entertainment). The OS, to those people, should be as transparent as possible, not get in the way. The computer, don’t care what’s inside if it has a screen, keyboard, touch pad, speakers…of sufficient quality and reliability.

It’s like my countertop oven, do I need bells and whistles…me no, someone else might care. Someelse might want an aga instead. At a commodity level, an oven is an oven, a computer is just a computer, a car with 4 wheels is just a car with 4 wheels. So, yeah, some people can compare macs with PCs. I can compare apples and oranges if I want to. In fact, everyone does, that’s how they arrived at choosing having one over the other. You’ve compared apples with oranges with bananas with water melons…you may just haven’t cognitively recognized that yet.

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I still can’t understand this comparison of Mac with Framework.

It’s another architecture… for me a Mac would not be an option (I used Macs many years, so I know the ecosystem).

I don’t want MacOS.

From the hardware perspective the Macs I had were great! iBook, PowerMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro

Ok in the MacBooks you could not change RAM or HDD. In the PowerMac you could only run Mac-GPUs (which were the same as for the PCs, just much higher price with a slightly other firmware). The battery in the MacBook Pro was glued in, so you don’t want to change it.

Coming from Linux those days I also liked the software. Those days MacOS was relatively good from the standpoint of data privacy. But those days a Mac was horrible expensive.

Now you can get a Mac for a better price, running only MacOS and collecting your data.

So for me, and maybe others, no option. But for me they OS is the platform for all I use. So it’s important to me. Others look more on the processes they need, eg. they need a video editing. That’s totally ok to do. Just not for everyone

I remember how much work it was to my data out of those proprietary Mac software

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…and went on to comparing.

It’s factually and logically ‘required’ that you compare first, in order to weed out / rule in suitability.

Hell, I can compare a stone tablet vs paper-based notebook vs a typewriter vs a laptop / MS Word if I’m a novel writer.

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Hi! OP here.

I wanted to say is that while Macs and other machines like my own Lenovo laptop have better specs for lower price, my main objective for this topic was to see how repairability in electronic devices and right-to-repair shouldn’t cost 500-600$ more. If a change wanted to be brought to the laptop market and we want more laptops which help the environment, it should also be friendly on the pockets of your target audience. Chromebooks in school become hefty pieces of e-waste after school is done, and the way Frameworks are built can change that. But creating e-waste is cheaper than buying a Framework, and for most parents that’s the reason they buy those cheap Chromebooks. It’s more economical to do so.

That’s all I wanted to say. I want Frameworks to be cheaper because that is the only way that e-waste is reduced and people aren’t getting screwed over by buying pieces of circuits and plastic and having to forcefully throw them out after their 2 years of lifetime is over.

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I think that the Framework 12 design team has already done a good job of choosing components which are of excellent quality at the price level of a Framework 12, so there probably isn’t much that can be done to decrease the cost of the Framework 12 without also decreasing the quality, let alone the ease of repair and ease of upgrading them.

However Framework does offer an excellent way to decrease the cost of buying a Framework 12 or any of the other Framework models by buying the DIY version rather than the pre-assembled version.

The best way to reduce the cost of buying a Framework 12 or any other Framework computer is to buy the DIY model instead of the pre-assembled model. This can save you up to $356 or more over the cost of a pre-assembled Framework 12.

It takes only 10 to 20 minutes to assemble a DIY model of a Framework 12 and the only tool you need to assemble it comes with the Framework 12. If you know which way to turn a screwdriver and can follow the simple online videos on the Framework website, you can save yourself $115 or more by buying the Framework 12 DIY model instead of the pre-assembled Framework 12. If you don’t want to assemble a DIY Framework yourself, you probably have a friend or relative who could help you or you could take it to your local computer shop.

In addition to saving money, buying a DIY Framework 12 computer also allows you much more choice in configuring your Framework 12. There are only two configurations of the pre-assembled Framework 12, whereas with the DIY Framework 12, you can have your choice of two different cpus, any amount of RAM, any size of SSD, and a much wider choice of case colors and keyboards.

You can save $80 or more by buying the Framework 12 DIY model and by not buying your RAM and SSD from Framework.

You can reduce the price of a Framework 12 by buying a DIY model and installing the operating system yourself. This can save $130 to $200.

You can save another $30 to $43 by buying a Lenovo Thinkpad 65 watt USB C power supply instead of the Framework 65 watt power supply. The Framework power supply is smaller and I would pay the additional $30 to get it but the Framework 12 or 13 run fine with the Lenovo 65-watt USB C power supplies and that’s another way to reduce the cost of a Framework.

If you want to use Linux, you will save $130 to $200 buy not paying for Windows. That makes the price of a Framework 12 running Linux as little as $693.

If you have to use Windows, you can save $90 to $160 by buying a legal OEM copy of Linux from New Egg or eBay or other online sellers.

If you think you need Windows, buy the DIY Framework without an operating system and try Linux. You may well find, as many people do, that you can do everything you need with Linux and don’t need Windows. If you do decide that you need Windows, you can always install it later.

Every Framework computer that I’ve bought as well as the Framework computers that friends of mine have bought on my recommendation have been the DIY models. They have all been easy to assemble and have brought considerable savings by allowing us to buy the RAM and SSDs for less than what Framework charges for them. In addition, since all of the Framework computers are running Linux, we didn’t have to pay for Windows and saved an appreciable amount of money there. If we had needed Windows, we could have bought OEM versions of Windows for less than the cost of buying the pre-assembled Framework models which come with Windows installed on them.

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I agree that if school districts could realize that it would be much cheaper in the long haul to buy Framework 12 computers instead of Chromebooks, the students, the school systems, and the planet itself would be much better off. I think the cost per year of operating Framework 12 computers over a decade would be less than the cost of replacing Chromebooks and discarding them as ewaste. The initial investment would be higher but the Framework 12 computers would probably last much longer, be much easier to repair and upgrade, provide a significantly better computing experience than Chromebooks or MacBook Air computers, and have a lower cost per year than any of the alternatives. I wish that some school systems could do trials comparing groups of students using Framework 12 computers in comparison to Chromebooks or MacBook Airs.

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The way to lower the price is to sell as many devices as Lenovo, Asus and Apple do.

Price goes with quantity. As long as framework is a niche it is hard to hit the pricing of those major companies. The cost for the development has to be paid with less devices, production is cheaper if building bigger batches, components can be cheaper is bought in bigger batches, …

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I think that Mac computers and Framework computers are designed and built with almost diametrically opposed philosophies.

Macs and most Windows PCs are designed and built for planned obsolescence. They are not designed to be easily repaired and cannot be upgraded. You are expected to throw them away and buy new ones on a regular basis.

Framework computers are designed to be easy to repair and easy to upgrade and designed to have a much longer useful life. Even though Framework computers may be more expensive than some alternatives, they are less expensive over the long run than any other notebook computers and generate much less ewaste.

Apple openly acknowledges that MacBooks have a five to seven year lifespan and are considered “obsolete” after that period. Framework’s goal is to have a much longer lifespan through ease of repair as well as upgrades of all the major components. I think it is quite possible that Framework computers will still be usable for ten to fifteen years or more though upgrades and repairs. The “obsolescence” of Windows 10 computers and Mac computers will have much less impact on Framework computers which can upgrade to the newer cpus that future operating systems will require.

The 13” MacBook Air computers cannot upgrade their RAM nor their SSDs because they are soldered together. You have to buy a whole new computer if your want more RAM or storage space. This is a major advantage of the Framework computers. In addition, the Framework computers can be upgraded with faster cpus or better screens which is impossible with the MacBook Air computers.

The Mac educational discounts don’t appear to be all that significant anyway, only $100 on the 13” MacBook Air.

The only Macs I’ve ever owned have been some very old iMac and iBook computers that friends have passed on to me and I passed on to other people who wanted them.

I have installed Linux for some friends who had older MacBooks which were considered “obsolete” and were no longer supported by Apple. Fortunately Linux made it possible for them to continue to use their “obsolete” MacBooks on the Internet by using the latest Linux operating systems and current web browsers and other software.

New Apple products only seem to go on sale when they have been discontinued and superseded by new versions.

The cheapest 13” MacBook Air is $899 at the Apple educational discount with 16 Gigabytes of RAM and a 256 Gigabytes SSD. Add the $69 per year AppleCare and the 13” MacBook Air now costs $968. That compares to the price of a comparably configured Framework 12 DIY model with 16 Gigabytes of RAM and 512 Gigabytes SSD for $681.

The price of a 13” MacBook Air with 32 Gigabytes of RAM and a 512 Gigabyte SSD with AppleCare is $1468. That compares to the price of a comparably configured Framework 12 DIY model for $734.

The price of a 13” MacBook Air with 32 Gigabytes of RAM and a 1 Terrabyte SSD with AppleCare is $1868. That compares to the price of a Framework 12 DIY model for $757.

AppleCare adds $69 per year to the cost of of buying a MacBook Air. Of course you don’t have to buy the AppleCare insurance but heaven help you if your student spills a drink into the keyboard or drops the MacBook Air and cracks the screen or breaks the keyboard because that will either cost a lot to repair or require the purchase of a new MacBook Air because the cost of repair is too high. AppleCare isn’t cheap, either, for the five to seven year life of a MacBook Air, it costs from $345 to $483 which is almost half the cost of the computer itself.

I don’t think it makes sense to compare the price of a used Mac or used PC with a new Framework 12 or any other Framework computer because the used Mac or used PC has a limited life span and in most cases cannot be economically repaired nor upgraded so they will not have as long a useful life as a Framework will.

After 5 to 7 years, Apple will no longer offer security updates nor MacOS updates, your MacBook will be declared “obsolete” and you will need to buy a new MacBook to safely use it on the Internet. Eventually Apple will no longer offer new batteries, screens, keyboards, or other repair parts for your existing MacBook Air.

If you divide the cost of a 13” MacBook Air, including Apple support ($999 + $69 per year AppleCare for five years for a total cost of $1344), the cost per year of ownership is $269 per year). The total cost of a comparable Framework 12 DIY model is $693, so the cost per year of ownership is $138 per year, almost half the cost of the MacBook Air.

In contrast a Framework computer will probably be supported for ten years or even more. The first Framework computers which are now more than four years old can be upgraded to the cpus, screens, batteries, webcams, WiFi cards, RAM, keyboards, and SSDs of the latest current versions of the Framework computers.

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I don’t even like MacOS and couldn’t even imagine using it daily after being forced to use it as a contractor for Apple. Everything you said is an absolutely terrible take from start to finish. Sure, if MacOS isn’t for you then talking about pricing of MBA is a non-starter but if a computer is merely a tool and interchangeable between brands which is the point @Second_Coming and I are both trying to get across, then pricing is relevant and a MBA destroys the Framework across the board. Better performance, better ports, better display, better battery life, better trackpad, less money when compared to the pre-built. Even compared to DIY it’s competitive. If you go absolute cheapest components on Framework 12, yes you can get it cheaper than a MBA…but your performance will suffer and is it truly more environmentally friendly to need to upgrade in a year or two and shell out a few hundred for a mainboard replacement (and presumably new RAM) to even get close to the performance that the M2/M4 give you out the gate?

Also, adding AppleCare as a cost isn’t a point in FW12 favor. It’s an optional service that FW doesn’t even offer. Alternatively, you could skip AppleCare entirely and file claims with your credit card, renters/homeowners insurance if you have the right policy and those methods work for either laptop.

Consider what the Framework 12 is being marketed as. There aren’t even any prebuilt with more than 16GB of RAM so Framework clearly doesn’t expect a huge market for people stuffing huge amounts of storage or RAM in this thing.

I may not like MacOS nor do I love Apple in all things (seriously, why must all phones be phablets now…) but I’m not about to fanboy and dismiss Apple either when they are competitive.

EDIT: This of course ignores the touchscreen aspect of the FW12. If this is of value to you and you don’t want an external touchpad then every MacBook currently sold has no value and is worthless in a comparison.