Repairable laptops like Framework are stupid (opinion)

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

3 hours ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

I think you are horendously missing the point. 

The point of Framework is to not just let you replace usb ports, but make the whole thing easy to repair by anyone.

They have the board schemtics available, the whole thing is modular, theyve mad a comitment to make every single part available, they are selling motherboards that you will be able to swap out, so you dont have to buy a whole new laptop, the besels can be swapped out (which is actually helpful, ive crcked a couple besels in the past)

Its not just the usb or the ram or ssd, its literally every single port.

 

And really, it looks better than a lot of laptops out there....

That being said... I wonder how many people would take on that sort of upgrade path... If we look at desktops as a reference (which is pretty much is the level of modularity Framework is aiming for here), I feel like most people upgrading their PCs would also take the opportunity to change out the case. Hence why most new builds on the forum also factor in a case. 

 

Yes, the option to just swap out the board to upgrade your laptop seems enticing... but I'm willing to bet this is just something people would find interesting and praise in terms of sustainability and reparability...yet will never actually do themselves.

[Freakwise]

1 hour ago, Arika S said:

-image snip-

 

OMG this laptop looking laptop is "ugly"

Just want to say that the first and second image is stretched

[AbydosOne]

33 minutes ago, thrasher_565 said:

planed opalescence

this typo(?) amuses me. If I were any better with Photoshop, I'd do a render

[saltycaramel]

Honestly I came here to open a thread to this effect myself, after hearing Linus has invested in this.

 

Guys, sometimes you gotta be blunt.

 

R2R is not stupid.

The product itself is not necessarily stupid if it is somebody’s cup of tea. 

 

BUT

 

It is beyond stupid to think that this would gain any traction or go anywhere.

 

Project ARA kind of stupid.

 

PC-building-nerds-in-a-echo-chamber kind of stupid.

 

Hardware is hard, that’s rule no.1.

We’re not talking branded water bottles.

 

What exactly these guys “in a garage” think they’ve figured out, manufacturing-wise, BOM-wise, economies-of-scale-wise, that the titans of this industry have to figure out yet?

 

The dirty little secret here is that Linus’ premise that “the other companies simply don’t want to do this” (which he reiterated in the post-video outro) is inaccurate or simplistic. There are big benefits UX-wise in giving up this kind of modular repairability because you’re able to push the boundaries of what’s possible manufacturing-wise. Integration and miniaturization are an inevitabile path. Manufacturers have figured this out (with a bit of help and nudging from a Californian fruit company which usually is the first to get there) and they iterate on products accordingly. Sure you can “join the resistance” and put some pressure on companies to meet R2R half way. You can ask them 100 in order to get 60. That’s good. That’s politics, that’s being an advocate for consumer rights, the environment, etc. That’s all good. But LARPing that this Frankenstein thingy would go anywhere (maybe even go public as a stock in the NASDAQ)? That’s madness. This can appeal to a niche of tinkerers and to an even smaller niche of people doing it “for the cause” (call it a soy-top, a kale-top or a Prius-top of sorts). Feature-wise, UX-wise, battery_life-wise, bang-for-the-buck-wise, this is destroyed and will be destroyed by the big dogs of the industry pursuing miniaturization/integration and reaping all the benefits of that. Benefits that 99% of users enjoy and base their purchases on. (as opposed to being able to swap a usb port after the fact or enduring the design shackles of a concept of user-side repairability from last century). 

 

Now save this and rub it in my face the day of Framework’s IPO. 

[leadeater]

22 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

There are big benefits UX-wise in giving up this kind of modular repairability because you’re able to push the boundaries of what’s possible manufacturing-wise. Integration and miniaturization are an inevitabile path

For 2-in-1 laptops that's between maybe and sure, but overall actually not really. This is especially not the case when talking about "standard" laptops, nothing is lost at all. In fact this type of reparability exists now and has for ages, on all the major OEM business laptops. Literally everything in a Lenovo, Dell or HP laptop can be serviced and replaced but for whatever reason this attention to serviceability is not common place of these very OEMs on their consumer products, which look and feel and function exactly the same.

 

I'm strongly convinced this is because business want and expect onsite, next day or same day, repair so these OEMs are obligated to design devices that can meet their SLA's they advertise and sell and customers demand of them. Next day at home repair just isn't a thing nor even an option from these OEMs so they don't have to make devices that can be serviced in this way so they can make them design wise cheaper NOT better.

 

Other than very specific very small formfactor devices the idea that reparability impacts UX, aesthetics or any other similar reason is just a fallacy, don't buy in to it, it's not a thing.

 

This is 100% serviceable

 

 

So please explain how or what has been impacted by that ability.

 

P.S. Nothing stops Framework from becoming a ODM and selling designs and manufacturing rights to other companies in the same way Clevo does. All it takes is a single OEM, say Acer, to partner with Framework on an ODM basis and you'll be just as big of a player in the laptop market as any of the other ODMs.

[Kilrah]

23 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

There are big benefits UX-wise in giving up this kind of modular repairability because you’re able to push the boundaries of what’s possible manufacturing-wise. Integration and miniaturization are an inevitabile path

Except that the framework precisely disproves you, it's not a clunky old brick but looks and feels pretty much the same as any other compartable laptop.

[saltycaramel]

16 minutes ago, leadeater said:

So please explain how or what has been impacted by that ability.

It would be impacted (in general) in the sense that you’re most likely leaving room for improvement on the table, room that the big guys will exploit to make a device that’s better, cheaper, sturdier, with a thicker battery and a thicker webcam in place of millimiters you wasted to make it more serviceable, etc.

 

That said I agree that there are segments of the market where this is more relevant (those premium segments pushing the boundaries of manufacturing) and other segments where more serviceability could be easily implemented without it being a burden or a limit on the general design of the device. (like a playing-it-safe run-of-the-mill laptop design)

[leadeater]

7 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Except that the framework precisely disproves you, it's not a clunky old brick but looks and feels pretty much the same as any other compartable laptop.

I mean over multiple product generations the insides of MacBooks, MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs have been empty voids so I can hardly say there has been all that much benefit to soldered RAM, SSDs and the most fragile cables ever. Later models went the route of hiding this fact by encasing everything in plastic shrouds and covers, it does make it very tidy looking inside though and easy to identify where things are so it's not pointless. But Apple nor anyone else is really struggling for space inside laptops because the chassis has to accommodate the screen and since there is little desire to go below 13" in laptops the volume isn't really changing so miniaturizing the parts more won't impact the overall design of the laptop since the largest factors there is the screen and keyboard.

 

Going from 80% empty to 70% empty has no benefit to the consumer.

[leadeater]

10 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

It would be impacted (in general) in the sense that you’re most likely leaving room for improvement on the table, room that the big guys will exploit to make a device that’s better, cheaper, sturdier, with a thicker battery and a thicker webcam in place of millimiters you wasted to make it more serviceable, etc.

It's an HP laptop, you know, the biggest player on the market...

 

So please explain in specific detail what could be better about this design, how much could it be improved, what benefit would the user get. If you can't name or detail exact things then the your point has no basis. You can say it does but there simply so much counter evidence to that argument I have no idea why people try and roll that one out.

 

Edit:

May I remind you again every single part in the laptop can be replaced.

[saltycaramel]

21 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Except that the framework precisely disproves you, it's not a clunky old brick but looks and feels pretty much the same as any other compartable laptop.

You gotta look at where the puck is going.

 

We’re probably 6 months away (not to always bring Apple in, but it is what it is) from a redesigned Macbook Air that will be bananas in terms of thinness (barely thicker than the usb-c port), power and battery life. Same applies to the rest of the industry eventually. Laptops are getting the everything-on-a-chip treatment just like any other consumer electronics device, they’re not special. 

 

I’m not talking about it being “unsightly” (I don’t it is or it must necessarily be). It goes deeper. Power, battery life, screen resolution, brightness, rigidity, stuff we don’t even imagine yet, etc. every millimeter counts. Happy to be proven wrong and seeing the Framework run circles (even in bang-for-the-buck and build-quality-for-the-buck terms) around fully integrated fully custom fully miniaturized laptops from the big dogs of the industry.

[saltycaramel]

4 minutes ago, leadeater said:

It's an HP laptop, you know, the biggest player on the market...

 

So please explain in specific detail what could be better about this design, how much could it be improved, what benefit would the user get. If you can't name or detail exact things then the your point has no basis. You can say it does but there simply so much counter evidence to that argument I have no idea why people try and roll that one out.

 

Edit:

May I remind you again every single part in the laptop can be replaced.

 

I won’t argue about a particular device since we would need to know its real life battery life to the minute, its rigidity, its keyboard feel, etc. that would always be an apples to oranges comparison.

 

Hence I wrote “(in general)”. 

 

Does that really need to be explained?

 

Even the simplest stuff like replaceable RAM and SSD has obvious internal volume wasting and board area wasting implications.

[leadeater]

16 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

We’re probably 6 months away (not to always bring Apple in, but it is what it is) from a redesigned Macbook Air that will be bananas in terms of thinness (barely thicker than the usb-c port), power and battery life. Same applies to the rest of the industry eventually. Laptops are getting the everything-on-a-chip just like any other consumer electronics device, they’re not special. 

Thinner is not automatically better, hell is many cases it's worse. Thinner in most cases means weaker, weaker means more likely to get damaged, more likely to get damaged means more likely to become broken and waste.

 

As in my above post to this one there are other physical aspects of the device that has far bigger implications than being able to make the motherboard smaller and a smaller cooling design or using the chassis itself for cooling.

 

Having a device with almost nothing inside of it is not complicated engineering, far from it. In fact as you say more things are becoming integrated in to SoCs so there is less and less excuse for designing systems that are not easily repairable. As you need to put less devices, chips and other parts in to a laptop the design gets simpler not harder and therefore easier to ensure those parts can be replaced.

 

I do however agree that things like modular USB ports is probably not all that useful or going to catch on all that much, but that's not the sum total of what Framework is. Boiling it down to replaceable USB ports is rather silly.

[leadeater]

13 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

Hence I wrote “(in general)”. 

 

Does that really need to be explained?

Yes because it's an incredibly weak argument, "mights" are not truths and none of these "mights" have seemed to impact HP, Dell, Lenovo etc ability to design thin and light business laptops that can be serviced and also have none of these drawbacks like small batteries.

 

If it can't be explained then it's firmly in boogie man land and nothing more.

 

13 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

Even the simplest stuff like replaceable RAM and SSD has obvious internal volume wasting and board area wasting implications.

Volume they are not short on, is not getting sustainably less and is becoming less of a problem not more anyway.

 

Edit:

Also regulations prevent batteries larger than 99Wh as well so like I say for the larger more standard laptops all these attempts to make the internals smaller isn't going to result in direct benefits to the consumer/user of the device. I don't want a screen smaller than 13", I want a usable size keyboard and trackpad and I want more than 2 ports and as the majority of laptop designs fall within these types of requirements and desires we are and have been in extreme diminishing returns when it comes to soldering everything on to system boards. Death of the DVD drive has been by far the biggest impact to device size and design.

 

I would quite literally settle for the same reparability of consumer laptops as the business laptops.

[Rex Hite]

The Framework is just more stuff that will end up on the pile. It's not special. It's no more special than PCMCIA or MXM. It just has better PR, updated manufacturing and  a bogus 'green' push.

What "the earth needs" is for us to stop digging mines for more minerals and for everyone to take a break from insisting on more consumer products, friendly or otherwise.. On the spectrum of destruction, human misery, and pollution, a land-fill end point is an easy, low-effort concern. It's really an obscene joke taken against the consumed resources of production.

Framework is not going to stop Apple and HP and Dell from making laptops. This isn't a zero-sum proposition. And when Framework gets copied by others it just means more landfill-in-waiting, not less.

What "the earth needs" is not a real part of the equation. It's not even part of the conversation, except in an Orwellian sense.

The only place 'consumer-friendly' and 'what the earth needs' meet is in a PR presentation. Less must be more.

 

[saltycaramel]

@leadeater

 

I’m not saying it‘s not possible to “meet R2R half way” (as I wrote in my original post) and still make a perfectly adequate device. 

 

I’m saying that it’s obvious that some (or a lot) of what make a device user serviceable is increasingly getting in the way of other manufacturing benefits in this day and age of miniaturization of parts that back in the day forced you to make the laptop bulky and not particular rigid anyway. 

 

I’m just stating the obvious that there’s no designing free lunch and there are some trade-offs. That’s generic more than boogieman-y. 

 

This applies to devices with some user serviceability.

 

Let alone a device, like the Framework, that aspires to be completely user serviceable. There we’re going into ideologic integralism that neglects to look at what could be possible if laptops were built more like high end smartphones. 

[Kilrah]

55 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

I’m saying that it’s obvious that some (or a lot) of what make a device user serviceable is increasingly getting in the way of other manufacturing benefits in this day and age of miniaturization of parts that back in the day forced you to make the laptop bulky and not particular rigid anyway. 

It's not getting in the way of anything useful. A laptop can only be so small as the screen/keyboard/touchpad you want in it to still be usable. Making it thinner has the Apple "sex-appeal" but brings literally zero actual benefit beyond the point we've already been at for quite a while. Battery capacity is a function of weight mostly, there are laptops that have enough space to put a bigger battery but don't because they target a particular weight and the battery is the heaviest component.

 

1 hour ago, saltycaramel said:

We’re probably 6 months away (not to always bring Apple in, but it is what it is) from a redesigned Macbook Air that will be bananas in terms of thinness (barely thicker than the usb-c port)

Which is a well-known drawback. 

 

The framework proves that we're at the point where improving repairability and modularity doesn't limit other aspects significantly. Yeah you lose an insignificant 10% in design but when it's to gain 90% in other aspects that matter more which makes it is worth the tradeoff. 

[leadeater]

59 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

I’m saying that it’s obvious that some (or a lot) of what make a device user serviceable is increasingly getting in the way of other manufacturing benefits in this day and age of miniaturization of parts that back in the day forced you to make the laptop bulky and not particular rigid anyway. 

But is it? It's not obvious when there is a void of evidence showing that it's actually a thing. Like I've said if it's not possible point out specific things then it's not a real problem.

 

Back in the day things were bulky because of screen technology and power, DVD/CD drives, 2.5" HDDs, CPUs that had very high idle and light load power so required bigger cooling solutions, and chipsets for basic things like SATA. All of these have changed.

 

You simply cannot just say in general when there is actually no evidence at all serviceability in design is preventing anything at all. Physical size is dictated largely by screen size, second to that keyboard size and then third to that trackpad size. Screen thickness has been dictated by panel technology. Battery capacity by device volume and battery technology energy density with an upper limit of 99Wh.

 

You're going to need to explain a lot better what these "general" limitations actually are because none of them you are trying to link to serviceability are linked to that at all and have direct links to other factors.

 

It's obvious to me that these are not issues at all. You say that it's obvious . So if it's just opinion on what is obvious then I shall turn to evidence to weigh against this, my evidence is showing literal devices that have not been limited by serviceability, where is your evidence?

[WkdPaul]

Personally, just the fact that you can swap the motherboard when something new arrives without having to change the whole laptop put this pretty high on my list of next device.

 

The fact that you have dongles that you can swap around, that it's focused on being open and letting you install your own components, that it will offer schematics for board level repairs is just icing on the cake at this point IMO ... but still the dongle part is in fact interesting to me, my work laptop is annoying because most of the ports I use are on the right side and so the cables get in the way of my mouse, so I always have to work at an awkward angle, moving the most used ports to the left and having the lest used one on the right would be amazing really !

 

With that said, while other devices are definitely serviceable, the fact that many companies are slowly following Apple's trend to soldier memory and storage to the board isn't something I like. Seeing a company put serviceability at the core of it feels refreshing. I do hope they do well and that I can grab one for my next laptop !

[GDRRiley]

16 hours ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

I feel like most people upgrading their PCs would also take the opportunity to change out the case. Hence why most new builds on the forum also factor in a case. 

I’ve yet to change the case in 6+ years and a few rebuilds of my PC. 
I’d say the build a PC every 3-6 years kinda person gets a new case every time because they want to keep using the old one for something else. 

[saltycaramel]

Desktop PCs are basically dead to the eye of the general consumer market, laptop constitutes like 90% of the PC sales.

 

”So let’s make a laptop that is more like a desktop, with swappable parts and all”

 

Big brain moment there.

 

I talk about hindering innovation and looking at where the puck is skating, and people say I said there are “limitations” that comes with serviceability. 

 

Meanwhile actually integrated black-box sealed-shut fully-soldered PCB-smaller-than-a-poptart laptops are getting close to desktop PCs from another direction: computational power. (you’ll se what I mean one month from now with the M1X Macs)

 

I’ll make it simpler by describing what the “laptop singularity”, where the laws of physics break down, is for me: (or what should a laptop look like in the course of the 2020s)

- everything-on-a-chip and a small-as-possible PCB

- make it thin (everybody likes thin) and completely fill the lower portion with batteries

- the top assembly should be sealed, rigid, using every mm to house the best screen and webcam possible without thinking too much about user-side repairability

- make it IP68 like smartphones because, why not?

- extra rigid keyboard area and perfect keyboard feel

- extra rigid palm rest area

- easy to mass produce while keeping a supreme build quality (incidentally, there’s a famous electric car CEO that applies this kind of reasoning to car manufacturing of all things, by keeping the number of parts to a minimum and reinventing a more smartphone-like way to build cars, applying it to laptops doesn’t feel so unholy in comparison)

- as repairable as a flat oled TV or a smartphone or a tablet because laptops are not sacred grounds

 

If you think none of this get in the way of serviceability, where have you been in the last 10 years of ultrabook design history?

 

That’s why we have the Framework movement in the first place.

 

But regular people will still mostly prefer Ultrabooks and the upcoming Ultrabooks 2.0.

[Qyygle]

3 hours ago, saltycaramel said:

Desktop PCs are basically dead to the eye of the general consumer market, laptop constitutes like 90% of the PC sales.

 

”So let’s make a laptop that is more like a desktop, with swappable parts and all”

 

Big brain moment there.

 

I talk about hindering innovation and looking at where the puck is skating, and people say I said there are “limitations” that comes with serviceability. 

 

Meanwhile actually integrated black-box sealed-shut fully-soldered PCB-smaller-than-a-poptart laptops are getting close to desktop PCs from another direction: computational power. (you’ll se what I mean one month from now with the M1X Macs)

 

I’ll make it simpler by describing what the “laptop singularity”, where the laws of physics break down, is for me: (or what should a laptop look like in the course of the 2020s)

- everything-on-a-chip and a small-as-possible PCB

- make it thin (everybody likes thin) and completely fill the lower portion with batteries

- the top assembly should be sealed, rigid, using every mm to house the best screen and webcam possible without thinking too much about user-side repairability

- make it IP68 like smartphones because, why not?

- extra rigid keyboard area and perfect keyboard feel

- extra rigid palm rest area

- easy to mass produce while keeping a supreme build quality (incidentally, there’s a famous electric car CEO that applies this kind of reasoning to car manufacturing of all things, by keeping the number of parts to a minimum and reinventing a more smartphone-like way to build cars, applying it to laptops doesn’t feel so unholy in comparison)

- as repairable as a flat oled TV or a smartphone or a tablet because laptops are not sacred grounds

 

If you think none of this get in the way of serviceability, where have you been in the last 10 years of ultrabook design history?

 

That’s why we have the Framework movement in the first place.

 

But regular people will still mostly prefer Ultrabooks and the upcoming Ultrabooks 2.0.

Question. Did anyone Actually like typing on the new Apple keyboards when they came out? Does anyone to this day? 

 

There's a point where making things thinner, smaller, lighter, doesn't make them better, since surprise... people still are People sized. We're basically at that point. Go thinner than USB-C and you don't have the space for good key-travel anymore. Maybe people will end up preferring touchscreen-like keyboards in the future, but I think mechanical keyboard popularity is a pretty good indicator that's not going to happen.

 

The thinness that big name manufacturers are pursuing is a dumb goal on several fronts aside from reparability. Temperature, fan-noise, power limits, battery space, it seems like in all the current market, it's pick 1, maybe 2 if you're lucky. But hey, we made it 2 mm thinner! Even Apple's M1's while a huge leap comparing to Intel's failures, hasn't been put in chassis that will make full use of it's power. Don't even get me started on the part about 'hindering innovation', as though company X making fully upgradable/repairable devices is somehow 'hindering' the decisions company Y will make.

It's nice to have choice, and aside from reparability, that's something that Frameworks is offering. 

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

7 hours ago, GDRRiley said:

I’ve yet to change the case in 6+ years and a few rebuilds of my PC. 
I’d say the build a PC every 3-6 years kinda person gets a new case every time because they want to keep using the old one for something else. 

Or they just sell their old PC off or hand it down to someone else as an entire package 

[Saearrin]

I honestly hope that OP is trolling, because I'd be impressed if there was someone so out of touch with reality out there.