It's hard to justify buying a Framework 12
jeffgeerling.com314 points by watermelon0 21 hours ago
314 points by watermelon0 21 hours ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPVAnwuSjfk
I was seduced by Apple Silicon after experiencing the exceptional battery life and performance. Those things are great, as are the screens and the speakers. But I'm still excited about the Framework 12 because I don't love macOS. I don't need an alternative to beat Apple on every line of the spec sheet. I just need them to align with my values, support Linux well, and cross a certain "good enough" threshold. The latest laptops from Framework meet all of those requirements, and I'm excited to buy one after I've saved up enough money. I've missed Plasma for a long time. At the same time, I wouldn't even consider a MacBook Neo. I'm constantly surprised by just how bad macOS is as a Linux user. I currently have to deal with it sometimes as I run my local LLM server on it and it's painful. That said the hardware is great, I run Asahi on another M1 MBP and Linux makes it the best laptop I've ever used. > That said the hardware is great, I run Asahi on another M1 MBP and Linux makes it the best laptop I've ever used. I'm considering going this way on my M1 MBP. Is there anything you miss wrt. hardware compatibility? > I run Asahi on another M1 MBP and Linux makes it the best laptop I've ever used. Until you need to repair something or change some hardware ... Which is something the author of the article totally neglects, IMHO. > Until you need to repair something or change some hardware How often does this happen, though? I have a 2013 MBP that still works perfectly. And I'm not even talking about the screen, which is ridiculously better than most new pc laptops. And then, of course, there's the touchpad, which, for some reason, is still unmatched in pc land. It has 512 GB of SSD and 16 of RAM. This is basically what the new "upgraded" PCs people get at my office. In 2026, 13 years later. Yeah, I'd use my decade-old mac any day rather than the crappy HPs at work. > Until you need to repair something or change some hardware The overwhelming majority of people would just go buy a new one. The downtime for ordering parts and waiting repairs has a price tag, likely greater than the laptop's price. Maybe that will change with how the prices of everything have been soaring lately. Totally neglects? FTA: > The Framework is more expensive, slower (in most cases), louder (its fan ramps up quite often), has a pretty poor display, but it is a touchscreen, has a 360° hinge, and is more repairable and upgradeable. > While the Neo is probably one of the easiest Mac laptops to repair in recent memory, the Framework 12 allows you to upgrade components including a DDR5 SODIMM, 2230-sized NVMe SSD, WiFi card, and even four modular ports around the sides. I outfitted mine with 2x USB-C, 1x USB-A, and 1x full-size HDMI. I’ve had MacBook Pros for as long as they’ve existed and, honestly, I’ve never needed a repair. The only real issue I’ve had was when I dropped one and destroyed the screen. It was covered by AppleCare, and Apple replaced it. I usually get a new laptop every 3 to 4 years and pass the old one to family members. My dad is still using one that’s about 10 years old and it works fine for what he needs. No issues. So the repair argument is a bit hard for me to relate to. I understand things break. But I also think taking reasonable care of your stuff goes a long way. “A stitch in time saves nine,” right? I guess I’ve replaced the feet on a few of them but that’s a $5 dollar kit from Amazon and a screwdriver and a little bit of glue… And for normal wear and tear, like battery life, Apple laptops can get a battery replacement through the Apple Store for a pretty reasonable cost. Anyway, Apple makes good product products that don’t really break from me or my family. I’ve been really happy with all their stuff. I had way worse luck, for example, building a PC to game on. Two or three years and I had to replace the power supply and I think four years and I had to replace the SSD. Like those things were annoying. I’ve never had hardware from Apple go bad on me. (Not since I had a Performa 5200 and they had to send somebody out to fix the logic board.) Consider that maybe you've just gotten lucky? Laptop components do break. I haven't had Mac laptops in a bunch of years, but just off the top of my head I've had a keyboard key break (MacBook Air), and a mainboard die (MacBook Pro). But if you don't need repairs, you might want upgrades. I have a Framework 13 from 2022 and I expect I won't be buying a full new laptop for many many years. It's great that you've been able to repurpose your old laptops for other family members, but every new laptop manufactured eventually becomes e-waste. The whole selling point of the Framework is easy upgrades, thanks to modularity. It is a laptop that’s designed to be your laptop for at least two or three upgrade cycles, which, for Apple, implies a new laptop. > "It is a laptop that’s designed to be your laptop for at least two or three upgrade cycles, which, for Apple, implies a new laptop." In all fairness, most Apple users are technically illiterate (hardware-wise). And running upgradeable machines to optimum efficiency necessitates running a redundant setup, e. g. the main bird and a compatible support unit, usually an older one, but capable enough to take over relatively seamlessly for a while, enable diagnostics, facilitate maintenance, and so on. Most Apple users have only one computer, with their secondary machine the iPhone, itself a neutered simulacrum of a pocket computer, just good enough to do some basic outsourcing of troubleshooting, and to place an order for the next computer of course. People who gravitate to Frameworks offerings, or similar machines, are just of a completely different mindset than the typical Apple customer. As evidenced by threads like this one. That's also one of the reasons why the F-12 was a misfire. You don't "half-ass" machines built for long-term support. And in this climate, an entry-level LTS machine that's supposed to become popular needed and needs a different approach. Which begins with the form factor. Apple's upgrade cycle (for me) has moved from 4 years to ~6 years. Maybe upgrading the RAM or HD could be useful, but wear and tear on all components is a bigger concern for me than just one. My laptop is a critical part of my life. I can't risk being out of service for a week while parts arrive. Its like buying a car... you can repair and maintain it to 200k miles, but the reliability will go down as more things break. Or you can buy a brand new machine to reclaim your time. I'm in the same category as dbg31415. I've owned mbps since 2007. Never had any serious issues with them. I kept them for about 4 years each, before upgrading. My 2021 m1 has at least another year left in it. Certainly if you're in the 0.01% of Apple purchasers that just have a terrible experience (broken device, out of warranty, etc) and one of your largest purchases doesn't work the way you want it, then that is terrible. but I think the vast majority of Apple users have a stellar experience. Funny it’s the opposite for me. What if I want to switch between desktops of multiple users; easy with fast user switching, not really a thing in Linux (yeah I’m sure it can be hacked up, but bleh). The biggest papercut preventing me from being productive on macOS is it's horrible window management which cannot be traversed with keyboard shortcuts like one does in WMs like bspwm and others on Linux and that absolutely insane ~500 ms delay in setting the focused window when moving between virtual desktops. For some reason, Apple's ideal desktop experience is tailored around focusing on one application at a time. Which is certainly true for some workflows, but that's not me. > For some reason, Apple's ideal desktop experience is tailored around focusing on one application at a time. Which is certainly true for some workflows, but that's not me. This is a very weird-sounding take to someone who has used Macs for three decades and recalls that for most of that time they never even had a full-screen mode. Apple's desktop experience DNA is still, for better or worse, deeply anchored to spatial arrangement of partially-overlapping windows (or non-overlapping, if screen is big enough and window small enough), driven by mouse (Expose hot corners back in 2004 were basically the end-game after which they haven't made any new significant changes to this, and haven't had to). Their full-screen/single-app modes are IMO a weird half-baked Windows-maximize alternative. But yes, it's a very mouse-oriented, single-desktop spatially-organized-and-layered world. >> For some reason, Apple's ideal desktop experience is tailored around focusing on one application at a time. Which is certainly true for some workflows, but that's not me. > This is a very weird-sounding take to someone who has used Macs for three decades and recalls that for most of that time they never even had a full-screen mode. Sorry about that. I should've clarified better. What I meant was that Apple's opinion of an ideal desktop is closely matching a cluttered desk where only the owner knows the position of something and the focus shifts back and forth from one primary task to another task/interruption. Edit: typos Not sure I agree with this considering they have the double whammy of maximising giving you a new desktop, and also their default behaviour of shuffling your desktops to make sure you're disoriented. The ideal desktop is a cluttered desk, where only the desk knows where it has stuck your tasks. Not one window, but one application. Which is, yeah, about the worst of both worlds. It is bizarro. With multi monitor sometimes I click windows and things don’t show. Dragging when more than one dialog is open is unpredictable. The corners are huge, even when maximized. Even the vaunted application bar is so weird - and windows is trying to copy it! Why can’t we use the entire bottom of the screen? Apps don’t show there anyway! You can’t get rid of it and replace it with something else? Just not allowed. Stretch an app across two monitors? Not with that config! Display port? Oh no! Scaling cleanly? Never heard of it. Seriously bad stuff. I’ve thought about writing a book with everything wrong with it. It’s bonkers. >You can’t get rid of it and replace it with something else? You can hide it. I rarely use it as I use a launcher. > The corners are huge, even when maximized. Upgraded to Mac OS 26? > You can hide it. I rarely use it as I use a launcher. Cmd+Space, type first letters of application name, enter. Aerospace is excellent: https://github.com/nikitabobko/AeroSpace Can’t imagine going back. > cannot be traversed with keyboard shortcuts Yes, it can: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/mac-window-tiling-i... You can define additional shortcuts in Keyboard
settings: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/create-keyboard-sho... >> > cannot be traversed with keyboard shortcuts
> Yes, it can: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/mac-window-tiling-i... The first link is about arranging/tiling the windows. There are zero keyboard shortcuts to move the focus from the window on left to the window on right. It looks like someone used the equivalent of monitor codenames for keyboard shortcuts. Some operations don't even have a keyboard shortcut. Additionally, while it does show how tiling is performed on macOS, tiling is not treated as a serious feature of the desktop. When "tiling" is used in context of window managers on Linux and BSDs, it implies that the windows are tiled automatically by the WM. It is done for several purposes, but ones that are important to me are: 1. Determinism (for the lack of a better word) of window placement. When I open n^th window, I know where to move my eyes. At the moment, this is arbitrary-ish on macOS.
2. Not having to tile every window manually. I only do this when I have a specific layout in mind. Default tiling behaviour can be configured by the WM's config file(s). At the moment, on macOS, I need to be explicit in tiling every window.
3. Keyboard oriented traversal between tiled windows. This is an extremely important part of a tiling WM. I can move my window or just the focus anywhere, without ever needing to reach for my mouse. Granted, I'm not a superhuman who can take advantage of this speed but I like control over my navigation of the desktop I am interacting with. None of these are satisfied by macOS natively. Unless some app/plugin is used, which has no guarantee of working in future if Apple wishes to break something. On Linux, this is not the case, the WM is part of the desktop, even more so on Wayland. > You can define additional shortcuts in Keyboard settings: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/create-keyboard-sho... This is about setting keyboard shortcuts for custom actions for applications, not window traversal on the desktop. Something like Ctrl+Left and Ctrl+Right which moves the focus between virtual desktops, but for the current desktop, moving the focus between the windows. I am not aware of this being possible at the moment. You can use Rectangle to get all that what you want in terms of tiling. Moving between windows of the same app is cmd+~. Cmd-tab moves to another app, remaining on the same desktop if that has a window there. The delay in focus can be reduced by turning off animations in “accessibility”. Regardless, I’m with you on that everything is way more snappy on my Linux machine. Even if it’s running a “full” WM/DM like KDE. > This is about setting keyboard shortcuts for custom actions for applications, not window traversal on the desktop. The "All Applications" section lets you define global shortcuts. As long as there is a menu bar item for it (in this case, one from the Window menu) you can define a shortcut for it. I've recently been given a MacBook for work for the first time and this was driving me crazy, thank you! Now I just need to figure out how to make Word stick to these commands and not decide that right half of the screen means the right 3/4 of the screen. I don't see moving a window to another desktop which, for a multi-desktop environment, seems far more basic than setting to the left or right. I've always had to use 3rd party tools to achieve this. Wow, this feature is so broken on macOS (I have a family shared Air M2) since at least a full decade that it's really not what I would have take as an example. OTOH, switching users on Gnome or KDE login managers is flawless. Linux had this well before OS X Does it still or was it another of the things cut in Wayland? The thing about the framework 12 is that they are giving you an open device that is meant to be upgraded. The value of that is different to everyone, but to place it side by side hardware wise and try to compare it as if it is equivalent on the software side to the closed source bullshit Apple has on offer feels at the very least a false equivalency battery life is not only factor of the laptop. having moved from Linux (ran gentoo quite minimal...) to freeBSD default install makes my laptop last about twice or thrice as long. the art of idle software and efficient energy consumption is not landed in windows and Linux takes too much work.. mac does it not too bad + having good batteries, but thats not to say a laptop with a lesser battery should be trashed by a bad OS. mobile operating systems are usually much more tuned to being good with battery life. I suppose Linux and perhaps windows do not seem to have laptops as main target even for 'desktop' distros or versions. > having moved from Linux ... to freeBSD default install makes my laptop last about twice or thrice as long. I’ve literally never heard this from anyone before, and I have to admit, I’m curious enough to try it for myself. The last time I tried FreeBSD was 2001. i am not sure why btw but i read some articles on here about software not being idle on background properly a lot of times (fancy terminals etc.). for me tho 'it just happens' because im unsure how to measure it precisely.. maybe my linux had a big or wrong setup u know, but it was running very lean. Freebsd runs about as lean tho. cannot be bothered ofc to go back and measure
it is some hp-elitebook withh a ryzen and iGPU in there. If i run things like Claude it sucks my battery. But if i just run my editors code all day myself its all gd..use firefox as browser on both. other then that its x,i3,hx,rg,fd,fzf. thats about all i use..(so u see i hate it when any laptop empties soon.... i hardly use anything of it). usually i dont even open x/i3. I run openbsd on an old latitude and that tracks. I mostly have only application active at a time. The others are idling. I believe on Linux, especially with DE, there’s always some polling or scanning going on. I think the Framework 13 is something that completes reasonably with a MacBook Pro. I don't have one but would consider a Ryzen AI based one instead of a MBP. The Intel based ones have upgradable RAM and Mac-competetive battery life on Linux. The shared RAM on the Ryzen is useful for local AI though. Is it feasible to run Linux on the Apple hardware? Seems like that could meet your requirements, except possibly "align with my values." I saw https://asahilinux.org/ but don't know how usable it is, or whether the long battery life and hardware support is preserved. I love the Asahi project and I'll probably keep my oldest M-series Mac around to continue to play with Asahi. But even for the oldest Macs it supports, the feature list is not quite complete. The way Apple does a lot of things is bespoke and involves a different division of labor between firmware and operating system than conventional UEFI systems. It's hard to support. I don't want to be required to wait years for features like full support for Thunderbolt docks, and I also want to give my money to a company that proactively supports Linux (e.g., sending hardware to kernel developers, FreeDesktop graphics driver developers, DE maintainers, and distro maintainers in advance of the release of new products) rather than always buying used or giving my money to a company that merely tolerates Linux support. Again, I love the ambition of the Asahi project and what they've done. They're impressive hackers, and thousands of people will doubtless get years of happy Linux life out of their work— maybe including me! I have no complaints for them, and no wishlist I want to bring to them. In fact, I think maybe I should send them a donation or a kind email or both upon their next release. But I want to give the bulk of my financial support to a computer vendor who offers me first-class, day-1 support for software environments that make me feel happy and respected. The Asahi team can't turn Apple into that by themselves. Every generation of Mac has its own requirements that Asahi has to support through a painstaking process of reverse-engineering, so it lags behind quite a bit. Realistically it will probably be 2030 before you can use it on any current-generation Mac. The current leadership team at Asahi decided to prioritize upstreaming their existing work over reverse engineering on newer systems. Given that you can score a used M1 Air for half the price of a new Macbook Neo (and have Linux be supported), it's an even better value compared to the Framework, for those who prefer Linux. It's irritating to see it constantly recommended as a real option. I think it's a feasible option I just can't use it for work because here's how that goes: > "Hey can you remove MDM from this Macbook so I can install Linux?" No. > "Hey can I get a linux laptop for a hardware refresh?" Sure. Asahi on an M2 Macbook Pro supports almost everything https://asahilinux.org/fedora/#device-support "Hey can you remove MDM from this Macbook so I can install Linux?" Is there no MDM for Linux clients? How do the big tech companies with Linux developer machines (Google, Facebook, etc) manage their inventory? Do they roll their own MDM? IT departments can mandate tools like ninjaone and kolide, which let them run queries across the fleet of devices, and (as I understand it) basically gives them root-level remote code execution. The corporate VPN (or equivalent) can then perform 'posture checking' requiring that the tools be installed and working before connecting to the corporate network. Obviously, 99% of Linux users have root on their device so nothing stops them wiping it and installing something new from scratch. But then they'll fail the posture checks until the device is returned to the approved setup. Kolide admin provides a web UI for osquery so you can query things. It allows remote osquery queries but not remote code execution. You generally pair it with CrowdStrike Falcon. Kolide does a spot check like "is falcon sensor running" but if the user logs in, has the session token created, and then disables whatever the session token would still be valid. Also Kolide doesn't actually count as an MDM. Has a bunch of missing features. I recently evaluated it. Almost everything, and that's already three generations behind. I don't really need USB-C displays or Thunderbolt for my use case. The touch ID is easily replaced with a Yubikey. Everything else just works. What is the problem? Sounds great for you! What about everyone else? Many people prefer to get new devices so that they can be covered by Apple Care. That completely removes Linux as an option because Asahi Linux never supports any of the recent models. Many people don't care about Linux support in the first place. Generally these two groups are overlapping. "Buy this computer, it's several generations behind and a bunch of stuff doesn't work" is not a ringing endorsement, even if it does work well enough for you.
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