This is not surprising, given how many of us were buying Netbooks, even with their OEM specific Linux distros, until Microsoft came up with the Windows XP discount.
My ASUS 1215B survived from 2009 up to 2024, with multiple Ubuntu LTS updates, HDD replaced with SDD and eventually maxed out to 8 GB.
IF Dell, Asus, Lenovo et all started selling on regular computer stores what is only available to computer nerds on their online stores, this would be much more noticeable.
As it is, normies walk into a store and get to chose between Windows, macOS, Chromebooks, iPad Pro or Android DEX/HyperOS Workstation/....
Is framework aiming for mass market breakthrough? if so, I hope they're planning on the macbook neo. I have no reason to recommend it outside of tech-enthusiast circles over a macbook now, thanks to the neo. But I really don't think they want mass market, it wouldn't be a win for anyone. By design, it's a "repairable" computer, so people who want to repair their own laptop are the main customers.
You can't repair macs easily, but they last long enough for that to not be an issue. and honestly, the apple care experience is ideal for most people.
I do hope then that they stick to the tech-enthusiast market perfecting Linux-friendly laptops. The laptop market hasn't learned from framework's success, so I was hoping at the wake of the neo's success, someone could prove a similar quality laptop is possible by a non-apple company, keeping the competition alive.
My biggest concern for them is, one of these bigger laptop makers panic because of losses from the neo, and takes over framework.
I have zero reasons to recomend paying 800 euros for a mobile SOC with 8 GB, and the Apple experience is pretty much hit and miss, it certainly isn't worthwhile the extra cost when one needs to top it up with Apple Care, and get lemons like buterfly keyboard, Tahoe and many other issues that get had waved because "It is Apple!".
Then you get the nerds that get Apple because "I know this, it is UNIX!", when in reality what they wanted was GNU/Linux, and then complain all the time it isn't, because they skipped the class where UNIX, POSIX and all differences throught history were explained.
mass market consumers don't even know what "SOC" is, and would pretty much disagree with the rest of your sentiment. I think I was clear on the context being for them, not tech enthusiasts like yourself.
They will disagree when they find their phone powered experience to be sluggish, after a couple of Electron garbage powered apps are running, which they also don't care are making use of.
People considering the Neo aren't thinking they're being constrained by a mobile SoC when it performs just as well as M1 with a slightly reduced core count.
The fact that they're selling incredibly well is a testament to that.
There has been plenty of reviews and comparisons of the neo in this area, they disagree with your take. Comparing with similarly priced alternatives, it comes out on top. Every reviewer is trying hard to prove the neo sucks by comparison, it helps contrarian takes get better views.
Framework laptops are selling like crazy. The pre-orders on their highest end configuration of the new pro are completely sold out, and the pre-orders on the two lower variants are backed up until their 9th batch that wont ship until August.
It looks like theyre selling more laptops than they expected to, not less.
Their laptops are niche, but that niche seems to be growing quite nicely. There's a big cultural wave of frustration with Big Tech companies and their rent-seeking practices, and Framework is doing a good job of riding this wave.
Your concern about their being bought out is unfounded. They're not a publicly traded company and dont need to sell equity to anyone if they dont want to.
It's at the very least indicative that they are selling more units than they expected to sell, and likely dont have enough allocation of at least some of those chips.
Sure, they could have thought it'd only sell a tiny number of units, but if they thought that, they wouldnt have launched the product.
> It's at the very least indicative that they are selling more units than they expected to sell,
Hate to be contrarian here but this is a known marketing trick to make product appear as selling faster than it does to create hype. I'm sure you waited in line to a club/bar for 30 minutes only to realize club/bar was empty?
They are still a for-profit company and I totally expect those batches' shipping times to actually reduce soon. An order placed right now would ship in August and at this point it must be cutting into their earnings because any regular, walk-in type of customer is not gonna wait this long for their laptop.
This seems unnecessarily cynical. Telling your customers
> 'No, we won't sell you our most expensive new laptop config at all, and if you want the other cheaper configs, you will need to wait at a minimum until August'
is not a very effective marketing stunt.
Besides, Framework has a very consistent history at this point of quite frank, open communication. If they didn't have this history, I might lend more credence to your point of view, but my experience is that these are people that are pretty allergic to that sort of bullshit, and will just say what they mean.
I really can't imagine why they'd try and undermine that reputation just to counterproductively tell people they can't buy a laptop from them.
I am not saying you're wrong, I am just saying we can't draw serious conclusions based on pure speculation. They absolutely need to built their brand first and foremost to scale up and hyping up the brand by "selling out the stock on first day" is a legitimate way to do so. They can't stand clear of regular, high-school marketing for too long. Again, this is a for-profit endeavor with serious investors expecting a return.
It's less about repairability and more about modularity and upgradability. The repairability is just a bonus as a result of its modular-first design.
The whole point of the Framework is that it's your "final" laptop. Just buy it once, and upgrade whatever part you wish as and when you want to. For instance, folks who got the original Framwork 5 years ago can still buy the latest mainboard or chassis and keep using the rest of their gear, if they wanted to.
Of course, most people don't care about all that these days. Heck, most people don't even care about owning a computer, since smartphones have taken over.
I like the form factor, screen quality (even though I prefer 16:10), the fact it works, the ports, but I'm lowkey pissed with the atrocious battery life - my new 13" AMD dies after 36h in sleep mode, unplugged and put to sleep at 90%
All the firmware updates are installed, there's nothing concerning in the logs.
Weak and laughable. Not even a few years old xps13s with hundreds cycles are this bad.
For office work, fine, plenty of horsepower, easy to fix, but not for private use at this point.
The framework 12 is comparable in cost to a macbook neo, plus can work with a stylus as a tablet. I would say that is huge reason to recommend it. As well as that it can be repaired and upgraded as and when you want which is handy. Likewise it also can be used indefinitely theoretically as you can replace broken parts and a computer from 15 years ago is still usable today, so I am sure computers from today can still be used in 15 years.
> The framework 12 is comparable in cost to a macbook neo
No it isnt, not by a long shot! Only if you buy the basic entry level version (DIY) without any RAM, storage, ports or a charger. At which point we arent remotely talking about the same thing anymore!
It's approx £80 to £100 more for the same ram and SSD configuration as a £600 MacBook neo (No charger given in many countries as most people have a usb c charger). That's comparable. It's not a huge difference and the feature set is far greater for the framework.
(£545 with the device with ports,
£80 for the ram
£50 for the SSD.)
Incredible news. I've ordered one myself... wish the 16 Pro was out but I figure it makes sense to support companies doing the things you want.
The last thread on framework was disappointing in how many said "oh, if it just had X I'd totally buy it" who probably all use Mac's with it's basic configuration.
To be fair, many of those who choose Linux at checkout will still end up installing Windows. They’ll just acquire it themselves, sometimes in non-traditional or novel ways.
I mean, I have to imagine the type of people that even know about Framework's products, let alone those that have interest in buying them, are overwhelmingly likely to be the type of people that use Linux, not Windows.
Not to pooh-pooh their success! Just my initial reaction to this headline was that it's a bit misleading/silly.
Framework isn't as mass market as your typical laptop competitors. You can make an assumption a purchaser of framework is tech minded / informed shopper.
You can also see their prebuilt option is Windows only.
When going DIY, adding Windows is between $225 and $339 depending on edition.
Most informed shoppers and techheads also know you can go to key selling websites and get completely legal and working Windows keys for <$20.
get completely legal and working Windows keys for <$20
You cannot. The fact that a $20 key may activate Windows doesn't make the installation legal, Windows is still pirated. And you can pirate it $20 cheaper.
Most tech heads would just use the activator, since the key selling sites are simply sending <$20 to criminals for a key that is equally illegal as the activator.
The last few I've seen on G2A were phished/stolen bizspark or similar accounts and bulk "reclaimed". I would imagine most keyshops are similar.
This is not surprising, given how many of us were buying Netbooks, even with their OEM specific Linux distros, until Microsoft came up with the Windows XP discount.
My ASUS 1215B survived from 2009 up to 2024, with multiple Ubuntu LTS updates, HDD replaced with SDD and eventually maxed out to 8 GB.
IF Dell, Asus, Lenovo et all started selling on regular computer stores what is only available to computer nerds on their online stores, this would be much more noticeable.
As it is, normies walk into a store and get to chose between Windows, macOS, Chromebooks, iPad Pro or Android DEX/HyperOS Workstation/....
Is framework aiming for mass market breakthrough? if so, I hope they're planning on the macbook neo. I have no reason to recommend it outside of tech-enthusiast circles over a macbook now, thanks to the neo. But I really don't think they want mass market, it wouldn't be a win for anyone. By design, it's a "repairable" computer, so people who want to repair their own laptop are the main customers.
You can't repair macs easily, but they last long enough for that to not be an issue. and honestly, the apple care experience is ideal for most people.
I do hope then that they stick to the tech-enthusiast market perfecting Linux-friendly laptops. The laptop market hasn't learned from framework's success, so I was hoping at the wake of the neo's success, someone could prove a similar quality laptop is possible by a non-apple company, keeping the competition alive.
My biggest concern for them is, one of these bigger laptop makers panic because of losses from the neo, and takes over framework.
I have zero reasons to recomend paying 800 euros for a mobile SOC with 8 GB, and the Apple experience is pretty much hit and miss, it certainly isn't worthwhile the extra cost when one needs to top it up with Apple Care, and get lemons like buterfly keyboard, Tahoe and many other issues that get had waved because "It is Apple!".
Then you get the nerds that get Apple because "I know this, it is UNIX!", when in reality what they wanted was GNU/Linux, and then complain all the time it isn't, because they skipped the class where UNIX, POSIX and all differences throught history were explained.
mass market consumers don't even know what "SOC" is, and would pretty much disagree with the rest of your sentiment. I think I was clear on the context being for them, not tech enthusiasts like yourself.
They will disagree when they find their phone powered experience to be sluggish, after a couple of Electron garbage powered apps are running, which they also don't care are making use of.
Mate, it'd smoke the FW12 especially when it comes to energy efficiency and heat. Also FW12 has a fan.
Hardly something that people check down at Media Markt.
People considering the Neo aren't thinking they're being constrained by a mobile SoC when it performs just as well as M1 with a slightly reduced core count.
The fact that they're selling incredibly well is a testament to that.
There has been plenty of reviews and comparisons of the neo in this area, they disagree with your take. Comparing with similarly priced alternatives, it comes out on top. Every reviewer is trying hard to prove the neo sucks by comparison, it helps contrarian takes get better views.
Framework laptops are selling like crazy. The pre-orders on their highest end configuration of the new pro are completely sold out, and the pre-orders on the two lower variants are backed up until their 9th batch that wont ship until August.
It looks like theyre selling more laptops than they expected to, not less.
Their laptops are niche, but that niche seems to be growing quite nicely. There's a big cultural wave of frustration with Big Tech companies and their rent-seeking practices, and Framework is doing a good job of riding this wave.
Your concern about their being bought out is unfounded. They're not a publicly traded company and dont need to sell equity to anyone if they dont want to.
We don't know the batch sizes to make such statements.
It's at the very least indicative that they are selling more units than they expected to sell, and likely dont have enough allocation of at least some of those chips.
Sure, they could have thought it'd only sell a tiny number of units, but if they thought that, they wouldnt have launched the product.
Im happy for them
> It's at the very least indicative that they are selling more units than they expected to sell,
Hate to be contrarian here but this is a known marketing trick to make product appear as selling faster than it does to create hype. I'm sure you waited in line to a club/bar for 30 minutes only to realize club/bar was empty?
They are still a for-profit company and I totally expect those batches' shipping times to actually reduce soon. An order placed right now would ship in August and at this point it must be cutting into their earnings because any regular, walk-in type of customer is not gonna wait this long for their laptop.
This seems unnecessarily cynical. Telling your customers
> 'No, we won't sell you our most expensive new laptop config at all, and if you want the other cheaper configs, you will need to wait at a minimum until August'
is not a very effective marketing stunt.
Besides, Framework has a very consistent history at this point of quite frank, open communication. If they didn't have this history, I might lend more credence to your point of view, but my experience is that these are people that are pretty allergic to that sort of bullshit, and will just say what they mean.
I really can't imagine why they'd try and undermine that reputation just to counterproductively tell people they can't buy a laptop from them.
I am not saying you're wrong, I am just saying we can't draw serious conclusions based on pure speculation. They absolutely need to built their brand first and foremost to scale up and hyping up the brand by "selling out the stock on first day" is a legitimate way to do so. They can't stand clear of regular, high-school marketing for too long. Again, this is a for-profit endeavor with serious investors expecting a return.
It's less about repairability and more about modularity and upgradability. The repairability is just a bonus as a result of its modular-first design.
The whole point of the Framework is that it's your "final" laptop. Just buy it once, and upgrade whatever part you wish as and when you want to. For instance, folks who got the original Framwork 5 years ago can still buy the latest mainboard or chassis and keep using the rest of their gear, if they wanted to.
Of course, most people don't care about all that these days. Heck, most people don't even care about owning a computer, since smartphones have taken over.
And he forced to use Tahoe over Linux? Zero chance.
The macbook neo is pretty repairable. Getting parts might be an issue though.
I like the form factor, screen quality (even though I prefer 16:10), the fact it works, the ports, but I'm lowkey pissed with the atrocious battery life - my new 13" AMD dies after 36h in sleep mode, unplugged and put to sleep at 90%
All the firmware updates are installed, there's nothing concerning in the logs.
Weak and laughable. Not even a few years old xps13s with hundreds cycles are this bad.
For office work, fine, plenty of horsepower, easy to fix, but not for private use at this point.
I assume you are using Linux. Did you do the advanced install to enable S3 hibernation?
The framework 12 is comparable in cost to a macbook neo, plus can work with a stylus as a tablet. I would say that is huge reason to recommend it. As well as that it can be repaired and upgraded as and when you want which is handy. Likewise it also can be used indefinitely theoretically as you can replace broken parts and a computer from 15 years ago is still usable today, so I am sure computers from today can still be used in 15 years.
> The framework 12 is comparable in cost to a macbook neo
No it isnt, not by a long shot! Only if you buy the basic entry level version (DIY) without any RAM, storage, ports or a charger. At which point we arent remotely talking about the same thing anymore!
It's approx £80 to £100 more for the same ram and SSD configuration as a £600 MacBook neo (No charger given in many countries as most people have a usb c charger). That's comparable. It's not a huge difference and the feature set is far greater for the framework.
(£545 with the device with ports, £80 for the ram £50 for the SSD.)
Are these edu prices? Or is frameworks EU pricing just nuts?
Here a comparable configuration to the neo is close to 800€!
I'm sensing the EU prices are just high as Framework don't offer edu prices.
The apple care experience is a scam
Just a few years ago I accidentally stood on my Macbook, screen broke and we got a new one no questions asked. If that's a scam then everything is.
Not for people who don't know the first thing about laptops and how to fix them.
Incredible news. I've ordered one myself... wish the 16 Pro was out but I figure it makes sense to support companies doing the things you want.
The last thread on framework was disappointing in how many said "oh, if it just had X I'd totally buy it" who probably all use Mac's with it's basic configuration.
Anyone know if the new pro laptop has intel ME disabled?
It most likely does not. My framework 16 laptop is AMD based but has the equivalent feature (AMD PSP) enabled.
https://community.frame.work/t/feasibility-of-diy-intel-me-n...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Platform_Security_Processo...
To be fair, many of those who choose Linux at checkout will still end up installing Windows. They’ll just acquire it themselves, sometimes in non-traditional or novel ways.
I mean, I have to imagine the type of people that even know about Framework's products, let alone those that have interest in buying them, are overwhelmingly likely to be the type of people that use Linux, not Windows.
Not to pooh-pooh their success! Just my initial reaction to this headline was that it's a bit misleading/silly.
Except the ratio was never before seen, which makes it noteworthy
This one isn't rocket science.
Framework isn't as mass market as your typical laptop competitors. You can make an assumption a purchaser of framework is tech minded / informed shopper.
You can also see their prebuilt option is Windows only.
When going DIY, adding Windows is between $225 and $339 depending on edition.
Most informed shoppers and techheads also know you can go to key selling websites and get completely legal and working Windows keys for <$20.
Why would people volunteer to pay 1000% more?
It depends on your legal framework. It might be seller's problem, not yours, and 20$ is a price for shifting responsibility.
Most tech heads would just use the activator, since the key selling sites are simply sending <$20 to criminals for a key that is equally illegal as the activator.
The last few I've seen on G2A were phished/stolen bizspark or similar accounts and bulk "reclaimed". I would imagine most keyshops are similar.
If you buy a $20 key you're both pirating and giving money to a criminal, so it is, in fact, worse.
Look into G2A - Nothing illegal about it.