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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.

In US, where anything Apple sells, not so much in the rest of the world.

Actually I would like to see some numbers for how much they are flying off the shelves in countries where they are priced 700 - 800 euros.

Pretty sure they've sold out globally that they need to make more due to surge in demand.

We'll find out more during quarterly earnings at the end of the month.

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/04/16/macbook-neo-demand-surg...

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.

Most done by Apple influencers, or people gifted one for review....

do you have a review i can look at by non-apple influencers, or are they all working for apple?

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.

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.

And he forced to use Tahoe over Linux? Zero chance.

The macbook neo is pretty repairable. Getting parts might be an issue though.

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.

Firstly, you had to pay so much money for that screen that you had to consider buying a new device.

Secondly, Apple Products seem specifically engineered to easily break catastrophically (see SSD power supply below speaker grill, zapping the NAND modules if liquid enters the conveniently placed holes. Or a loose metal plate slicing a crucial ribbon cable when the phone was dropped. And many more such cases

This mix of overly fragile design and ridiculously expensive first-party repairs combined with parts pairing and the resulting inability of third-party, non-apple-certified repair shops to level the playing field is what I call a scam.

Not for people who don't know the first thing about laptops and how to fix them.

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?

Advanced install of what?

I didn't do "advanced install" of anything on my previous Dell XPS (which was bad for other reasons) but my battery could easily hold 4+ days.

Also I don't need (S4) hibernation, I'm talking about standby (I meant S3, "save to ram").