this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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No.
I don't trust a single modern platform to last long enough to justify an investment - the company will be acquired and shuttered or the base platform will be upgraded and the current deprecated. The company today can full-throatedly promise you the world, but they know they won't be here tomorrow to answer for those promises and there are no consumer safeguards in place to hold the future leaders accountable should framework show profit potential and therefore become a target of acquisition to exploit that potential or to squash competition.
Framework is a fun, marketable idea, but Phonebloks / Project Ara me once, shame on you...
I never really saw a computer as an "investment". They're pure expenses as far as I'm concerned. Any of the ones I buy could break tomorrow. I don't buy extended warranties, so outside the legal coverage, I'm SOL if something goes wrong anyway. Considering how bad repairability is with other brands anyway, it's not like you're throwing away much. Many of the components are just standard hardware, too - RAM, SSD...
Considering this, I don't really see why I would deprive myself of buying something rather novel I'm interested in, given the product already showed some reliability, in fear of some potential hostile corporate takeover. YMMV, of course.
I agree. $500 to $1200 is the range at which I would not buy a warranty beyond the initial 12 months. I have purchased (and used) warranties for Mac laptops or PC desktops for work that cost over $2k. I can justify it on the Mac because there is usually one recall issue that needs repair (eg weird keyboard issue) but they otherwise have a long life. I’m at 5 years on my current machine with no plans to update. So many of the existing Framework laptops don’t have GPUs that I can’t understand why anyone would be excited about it. It’s a fun idea but feels like you’re paying a lot of money for the opportunity to pay more in the future.
Eh, I'm a fan of the principle that things should be serviceable. Framework is great in that regard. As for GPUs - my laptops are mostly work machines, and I don't really need one past just displaying on multiple monitors and UHD/4k support, so most iGPUs are just fine for me. When it comes to laptops, tons of RAM+a decent build quality >>> most other things for me.
I'm in a similar situation as you are though, my current laptop is from 2018 and I don't have any plans to upgrade short-term.
I think the best part of the Framework is that the parts are replaceable for sure. The keyboard replacement I got was free but if it weren’t it would be several hundred dollars. My dad had a key broken on his laptop and they asked for $700 to fix it. Absurd.
I appreciate the healthy skepticism of typical business cycles, but at the same time - why would you buy the company and not sell upgrade parts to previous customers? If you didn't, you'd just own an overpriced laptop company amongst a dozen other cheap laptop companies.
To end competition. Brand loyalty. Poor vision. Many reasons, none of them very kind.
As others have pointed out, to kill competition and about paradigm shift. All, from their broken POV, so you can ideally eventually sell cheap laptops/phones shitty enough to warrant annual refresh (aka, the holy grail)
They've kept up for three generations, I don't see why they'd stop now.
Even if you just got one upgrade out of it, it's probably worth the cost of entry.
Huh, that's a good take! Didn't think about that.
It kind reminds me of the Oneplus brand. I loved the one plus (1) so I bought a Oneplus2 only for it to be put aside fairly quickly. I remember I used to suggest Oneplus to everybody, eventually I told everyone to stay away... Eventually the brand just lost it's focus imo... Instead trying to pump out as much overpriced garbage as possible...
It's a subsidiary of Oppo, they just tried different brands to corner the market. OnePlus attracted the purists but money reigns and they thought they had a loyal fan base and started changing. Most people would probably say stick to pixel phones for the stock Google Android experience. I liked my OnePlus 5, it lasted for a long time. Never smashed despite being dropped all the time. Just the usb c port lost its connectivity after a few years and needed replacing.
Yep I moved from Oneplus to Xiaomi and I can't day I'm disappointed but I'm feeling they are charging more and more and then phones aren't getting that much better. I think my next phone will be a pixel. Mostly for the camera. As I'm getting older I notice that I don't use my phone for too much other than photos of traveling or just messaging my friends and family on WhatsApp. Games on phone are absolute cancer anyways...
Ara was the kill, Phonebloks was first hope and the actual promise that was suffocated by Google in that instance - we'll absolutely count this here.
They have been here tomorrow for people who bough one with an 11th generation Intel CPU in 2021. I don't think they are looking to get acquired either.
Companies that are looking to get acquired don't hold press conferences to announce, "we're now ready to be acquired". They typically build and acquire press wins to get attention until they are a thorn in the side of a market leader who then takes a meeting with them. It's a quiet process, but the initial conversation is almost exclusively, "we're building this for the long term and we plan to be around for a long time".
Just like all the products that promise long or even "lifetime" warranties - for most of these tech startups, they are well aware that lifetime means "OUR" short lifetime as a company and not your lifetime as the consumer.
Likely, but I'm hoping they last a decade like usual. I'm only slight jaded, and have similar reservations from similar history. Google, Apple, Facebook, and Reddit all had similar ideals. ("Don't Be Evil." Part of open source before it was popular. "It's your data. You control your data." Freedom of speech/information and, "Bits are not a bug.") [Insert Joke: "My back hurts" or "Get off my lawn."]
The good news is Framwork is priced at near parity of Apple's products, which makes them unlikely to be bought out; they're much more likely to get too greedy, and compromise on their ideals.