Pine64 just released a RISC-V tablet with a big disclaimer: “this tablet does not work due to lack of software”. It’s basically a single-board computer by StarFive (SiFive) strapped to a touch-screen display.
The first ones were shipped a week or two ago and the Pine64 hacking community already has Linux booting and running KDE with nearly all the hardware functional.
If Framework were to release a bare-bones RISC-V mainboard just for RISC-V enthusiasts, I would expect a similar outcome. Framework users would happily do a lot of the work for it ;^)
Yeah! I’m really hoping for a cheap ARM board from some Shanzhai developer in China to release some cheap board, and am honestly surprised it hasn’t happened already considering the cultural is still dominant there!
Most likely hasn’t been released because Framework’s are rather scarce in mainland China!
resistance of switches can be changed (mouse is easy to open, switches inside can easiliy be exchanged (or opened - just bending the contacs in the switces a bit closer together makes every mouse very quiet and easy to click)
1b - alternative: fixed resistance, but very light with very quiet cklicks, including the mouse wheel click button.
can be heated in winter (working with cold hands is always a bit slower)
cable can be changed (e.g. so it can connect to usb-C or -A, or whatever the future holds)
It has a cable (though now that’s just my personal preference)
you can change how many lines it scrolls with some extra mousebuttons on the side (is that possible?)
available as a vertical design(!). not too big though.
very robust and repairable, also so it doesn’t immediately look old and worn out after a couple of years.
still affordable for most people (not a 200 € hightech gaming mouse)
has a little drawer with a screwdriver in it
has a tiny laser pointer.
if theres still space: has a snack drawer.
The comibination of 2. and 6. (heated vertical mouse) would be the ultimate reason to buy for me. Really hard to finde anywhere. And in times of rising heating energy prices it would be great to save by heating the room less and the mouse more : )
Touchscreens for the laptops and even Lenovo-Yoga-like flipping the screen around making it into a thick tablet. Include touch pens and a slot in the laptop to stick it (maybe in the screen would be best). I know the flipping wouldn’t work with a Framework 16 and a large expansion bay (e.g. GPU), but maybe there’s an alternative way to make it work… or just don’t make it flippable on a 16.
Most laptops flip the screen 360, so the keyboard is on the bottom, but there used to be, and probably still are some, that swivel 360 in the bezzel so the screen covers the keyboard, which is much better from a UX standpoint, but much worse when it comes down to parts to break.
A washing machine. Seriously.
One that is user-repairable
washing machines are often repairable, but:
its usually cheaper to replace the machine that to have it repaired more than once (which is a terrible waste)
user-repairability would help with that
→ maybe it would be feasible to make the machine in a way that the most common failures are user-repairable?
in addition it should be easy to clean, all parts of it. Makes it last longer as well.
maybe there are ways to make cheaper repairs posible even for professional repairs?
P.S. the same idea goes for many other household appliances. Water heaters, coffe machines, smoothie makers …
A modular wifi 6/7 router and firewall, with 2 X 1Gbps wan ports , 4…6 x 1Gbps lan ports, each ethernet port should be upgradable to 2.5Gbps maybe 5/10Gbps in the future.
A modular 16/13" laptop, with a low cost video card on board, but having an OCuLink socket.
Separately an OCuLink & USB4 & Thunderbolt4 external docking enclosure able to handle various GPUs in terms of size, power and scope (gaming, CAD/CAM, architecture, video editing etc)
A modular audio video receiver with a lot of swappable digital and analogues inputs.
Now we are stuck with HDMI 2.0 and upgrading to HDMI 2.1 or whatever will be designed in near future is a matter of rip and replace.
Better is not the right word. Will be somehow cheaper.
The main argument, put on table by FW staff, against adding an oculink port is that a GPU is already available.
For near future, FW should add an expansion module able to fully expose PCI express gen4.0 X 16 electrical signals as a proprietary socket.
This could be paired with a requested dock / external enclosure having the same PCI express port. Doing this FW will be immune to USB/Thunderbolt/Oculink specifications changes.
One might research if that PCI express signals cannot be terminated in an optical device, so we can connect external peripherals manufactured by FW with fiber optic patches.
So as someone who does art for semi-living, there are a few things I’d LOVE Framework to tackle.
Lately I haven’t really seen anything that’s modular specifically geared towards artists. Sure there’s been the Wacom MobileStudio, and Huion’s Kamvas Studio 16, but having a tablet PC with a focus of artists in mind would be awesome. Something like a modular tablet PC that gives you the option to swap out the screen to something like pressure / tilt sensitive EMR pen tech. I personally would LOVE to be able to just break out a Framework tablet similar to an iPad, and just pull up Blender / Zbrush and just go ham on it. Or even just partnering up with Huion / Wacom / XP Pen / Whomever with the EMR tech and make an EMR display that we can swap out the regular screen for.
A composable/modular low power desktop.
Should be based on stackable small enclosures, each one doing one task (CPU, memory, storage, IO) and daisy chained by a proprietary PCI express gen4/5 x16 connector.
The desktop equivalent of GigaIO (https://gigaio.com/)
This sort of high performance, desktop machine can be used for: statistics, analytics, machine learning, genomics, computational fluid dynamics, AI, data visualization etc. in laboratories, SMEs, high schools and universities.
