I want higher resolution display, use self make keyboard.
Every CPU is soldered when it comes to laptops, socketed CPU’s died a decade ago
They just completed Series A funding last year of $18 million USD…they are flush with cash. They aren’t going anywhere.
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That basically confirms it. A 21" laptop!
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The wording of the following tweet:
makes it sound like a printer is in the works (spool is a term used to refer to a jobs waiting in a printer queue).
Maybe 
Context made it look like a joke, but a printer would certainly be interesting!
Reading some of the suggestions in the original RFC thread and now here, I don’t think most here are grasping the degree of ambition Framework has in regards to disrupting consumer electronics. Have a listen to various interviews with @nrp. He consistently talks about entering new stable but stagnant markets. Making dongles, or a M/B with AMD chip or some other accessory isn’t something they will be hyping up in the only reveal event in their history. Dongles and accessories will likely come but they will get a small mention on a blog post.
My guess is that they will be announcing one very neglected industry (e.g. printers) or multiple.
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…maybe several predictions (wishes?) will come true? Hope they dont stretch themselves TOO thin, I was running a just-from-marketplace Framework for five months with no battery!
If “spooling” is a keyword I think of filament before ink/laser printers. But looking through Framework’s roster again I notice a couple of people with some VR experience (HTC, Oculus, etc). Could this be the return of OSVR DIY/moddable VR headsets?
In a recent interview, @nrp explicitly talked about wanting to wait until a market settles down. VR is still leaping ahead and to sides so I doubt it.
FW introduced the Chrome version for general consumers last fall. But Chrome devices have lost market share in 2022. People are using their phones more for casual browsing etc.
To test FW, I bought a DIY 12th Gen i7-1280P last year or my daughter–added 32Gb RAM and 1 Tb SSD.
I wanted to see what my daughter’s experience was with her FW before I committed: she likes the battery life and I’m guessing gaming performance–she was supposed to use it for heavy computation for school + work but she tells me she has work computers that do that.
I’m waiting to buy a FW for myself (13th Gen?) but it has to be as good or better than the MBP M2 2022: ability to work with multiple programs open at once. I’m not exclusively mac but I would have to switch out from using FCP and Adobe CS6 to CC subscription on a pc.
It seems like it could be a printer. That would be a tad disappointing to me since I would have absolutely zero need to purchase one. But at least others might need one.
Yep me too! But then again, that’s fine and good because
- One day I will need a new one, preferably with an ADF and
- Other people may actually need a new one
- It’s good to shake up the market with new innovation! No more "Prints 2 pages more with one ink that you buy at $70 that is worth $5.
However, however unlikely, I wouldn’t rule out for 2 products to be announced. It doesn’t mean that both will be available in april, but maybe more like We got X and prepared Y if you're up for it.
I am not really sure how useful all these random guesses are, especially given that we are going to know the answer in one week already! (I’m excited)
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@Anachron Yeah, for me personally, I said screw you to the idea of ink that needs replacing all the time and spent an obscene amount of money on a used color laser printer from Xerox meant for small-business use. Yeah it was expensive but toner doesn’t expire like ink does. At most you pull the toner cartridge out and shake it to break up the toner into powder again. Given how little I print, I’m still on the intro toner that came with the printer like 2-3 years ago. I’ll not need a new printer in a long time unless this one breaks in some new and interesting way (which I don’t expect since it’s built stupidly well). Not something everyone can afford to do though. So I’ll support a new printer that disrupts the industry, it’s just not something that’ll I’ll make use of.
A printer is very unlikely, because this would require drivers for several operating systems. This would need senior software developers. The BIOS development does not show that FW has these capabilities. The new product would be something with a need of less software or with open source software, so they don’t need to develop software parts itself. Keep that in mind.
A new motherboard will be released for sure, since this would prove upgradeability. If they stop releasing new parts for the laptop, the whole concept would fail. They need to bring out new stuff constantly for the laptop and the upcoming new product.
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Making a printer end-to-end (hardware, all the way to the driver) is actually fairly straightforward for the most part. Incumbents have made it look difficult and involved. Here’s the basic rundown from the top (you pushing the print button):
- App converts the content to be printed to a format understood by the OS Printing API layer (all OSes support things like PDF, Postscript and bitmaps). No conversion is needed if the content is already in one of those formats.
- The OS Printing API will, depending on the printer, either rasterizes the document into bitmap, coverts it to another vector format (e.g. from PDF to PS) or simply passes the document through. This depends on the printer and its driver definitions.
- Printer receives the document in a format it understands and rasterizes it into pixels appropriate for its hardware spec.
- Bunch of stepper motors controlled by the onboard computer start moving the paper and the print head (in case of an Inkjet) and the nozzles dispense ink at the right locations based on the pixel data.
Making a basic printer prototype from scratch, including the drivers, for someone like @kieran_levin should take no more than two weeks. But here’s the catch: the print head or the toner drum and the laser system that goes with it, is the hard part. You can’t call up HP or Canon and ask them to supply you some. They don’t sell those to others (much like McDonalds doesn’t sell their Big Mac sauce to other restaurants). All the other parts of the printer are commodity parts that anyone can buy for peanuts.
As for software and drivers, with sufficient onboard compute, the printer can trivially accept straight up PDFs, Postscripts, bitmaps from the OS and rasterize them using Ghostscript on the device. That makes the printer driver itself a trivial piece of software (which makes supporting things like Airprint and the like a breeze). How much sufficient compute costs you ask? $15 (Raspberry Pi Zero W — actually way overpowered for a printer, but is pretty flexible and fits well into a repairable ecosystem albeit at a higher cost that a custom designed board). Most likely cheaper in high volumes and it takes care of WiFi and enables a great desktop class UI experience (not the laggy low res crap you get today).
Keep in mind that Framework shipped their first units with a mere 15 people or so on the payroll. That’s system development, firmware, drivers, industrial design, marketing and websites, supply chain management, and many more. That was years ago! Framework has an incredibly capable team that knows how to design for mass manufacturing.
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It’s not as simple as you may think. Have you ever wondered why official printer drivers are 100+ MB? There is a reason, I tell you some secrets. In some countries, the printer has to prevent the printing of local currency, this means the driver needs to detect and erase it before printing. The printer might also need to print some “hidden” marks (usually small dots in non printable area, barely visible for human eyes), so law enforcement can identify the printer that was used. This all does also apply to scanners and foto copiers.
Now you might imagine the effort of developing official printer drivers for each country.
Besides that, the printer business is not about selling you printers. These are cheap and don’t break often. They make their money with selling you overpriced ink. They put enourmous effort into the ink catridges, so you are not able to use 3rd party ink.
Businesses get the printers for free, they usually pay per printed page. So, the printers itself are very very reliable.
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That’s a Windows and Mac bloat and has little to do with printer drivers specifically. My office printer MFC-9330CDW has a 35MB package for Windows (driver only — full package is much bigger) and a <1MB package for Linux. And Linux is officially supported, so whatever feature they’re legally obligated to put into the Windows version, they are obligated to put into the Linux one.
Not a secret 
Fairly well known for at least 20+ years (my 2004 HP printer would cut off a Euro half way through and print a URL to educate me )
Those are implemented inside of the printer firmware so they can’t be trivially bypassed.
There really isn’t such a thing as “printer driver per country”. A quick stroll through your favorite printer brand should make that obvious. Again, if you want to see what a bare bone “legal” printer driver usually is made up of, look at the Linux ones. They don’t ship with all the junk ware that Mac and Windows versions ship with.
That’s “most” printers. There are printers on the market today that have ink tanks you can fill with any ink with no way for the printer to know what brand of ink you’re using. Ecotank is an example.
Business isn’t the focus of Framework (for the time being at least) so they don’t need to worry about the economics of that.
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There are printer drivers for countries. If you want to print Euros, install US drivers. That’s a trick for a market leader I know. But don’t tell it to the criminals
Just caught up with last night’s WAN Show. Linus let drop that he met @nrp for the first time yesterday and was shown some embargoed products. Hopefully, we will be seeing what’s new on Thursday. His comments are here, if you are interested.
There may be a video coming from LTT.
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Came here to say this. Apparently they shot a video while he was there; maybe whatever they’re announcing is going to be featured on LTT after the announcement?
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