Comment by aurareturn
6 days ago
FYI, for those who are consider Framework, you are usually getting a laptop that is 2x as expensive as a Macbook but slower, with a worse screen, far worse performance and battery life, and likely not as reliable as a Mac long term.
You can basically buy 2 Macbook Airs for the same price as Framework 13 and keep one in the draw if you are ever scared that one breaks. That's how bad of a deal Framework is or how much of a value Macbooks are.
Try configuring a Framework yourself and you'll quickly find that even the basic configuration goes over $1400. Any upgrade on the CPU and you're already at $1770.[0]
You can usually get an M4 Macbook Air 16GB for $750 - $800 on sale. So you can get 2 of them for the same price as one Framework 13 and still significantly outperform it.
Framework is an idealogical buy. It just isn't worth it otherwise.
[0]https://frame.work/products/laptop13-diy-amd-ai300/configura...
The recent base Framework 13 would cost you $1,170, Ryzen AI 5 340, with 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD and 4 full featured (USB4) USB-C ports. Note: You can buy the RAM and SSD separately, Framework even links PCPartsPicker (no price for 2x8GB RAM, so price is for single 16GB). How much storage space does your last gen M4 Macbook Air come with? 256GB would be irrelevant for most anyone, as you cannot upgrade... unlike with a Framework, where you can upgrade everything.
You are comparing dissimilar things, anyway. On a recent Macbook, you are hard stuck with MacOS. If you don't want MacOS (or ARM for that matter), Macbooks could be free and it's still the worse deal. Macbooks are subsidized by pushing you into the increasingly locked-down software/hardware ecosystem, where Apple is rent seeking. Paying for a firewall, or virtualization environment is mostly unheard of in the Linux world. It's like a cheap printer, where the real cost is DRM protected ink.
On a Framework you have excellent support for both Windows and Linux. You are free to do whatever you want.
$1,170 for a laptop that uses one of AMD's lowest end laptop chip. The M4 Macbook Air can be had for $750 often. It's superior in every single way as a laptop including vastly superior performance, battery life, screen, touch pad, build quality, portability.
You can buy RAM and SSD for many other much cheaper Windows laptops too. I don't see why anyone should buy significantly overpriced Framework laptops.
macOS is excellent, much better than Windows nowadays. If you're a dev, macOS is also generally superior to Linux since dev tools often come out on macOS before Linux. macOS is also generally a much better machine when you're not doing dev work.
You can argue about how Framework is better here and there but in reality, Framework only makes sense for 0.001% of laptop buyers, maybe less.
You casually brush over the fact, that you were confidently misinforming people.
> macOS is excellent
> If you're a dev, macOS is also generally superior to Linux since dev tools often come out on macOS before Linux.
Lol. Sure, buddy.
1 reply →
If you're price conscious, buy the self-assembled framework kit. It's fun and takes half an hour to assemble.
I got a framework 16 with a handful of upgrades for $1400. I added 96GB of RAM purchased separately for $300 (before the shortage). I also got a 4TB NVMe for $300. What do those upgrades cost cost in a macbook?
I think most people care more about their OS than their hardware specs, so they defend their purchase like it's part of their identity and it's hard to have a rational discussion.
Edit: If you're talking about the Intel model, I agree with you. The Ryzens are fantastic.
In the context of an M5 Max with 96GB of VRAM, it's a bargain compared to the price you'd have to pay for an Nvidia GPU with 96GB of VRAM for AI.
But if you're talking about slow RAM, you're right. Apple doesn't sell slow RAM on their laptops.
I've personally found the repairability to be worth the price for me. I got the baseline $999 back when it launched & have done stupid things like spilling a whole gallon of milk on it. Had to take it apart & clean as well as replace the keyboard but now it's still chugging along. Used to own a MacBook & the keyboard started dying after a year with a failed A key. Very expensive to replace so I just remapped caps lock to A. Then the screen started getting weird color issues and dead pixels. A MacBook Neo does look attractive though. Probably better performance.
I don't think the new keyboards have issues as the butterfly era. Indeed Mac keyboards were junk before Apple Silicon.
They were solid before the butterfly design too. It was just Apple's inability to admit the new design was shit and their hubris that they'd engineer their way to a solution for so long that the whole world became aware of the issue when mainstream journalists started writing about it in major publications. The Wall Street Journal article with no letter 'e's was brilliant.