[chis]

It's so cool that every individual upgrade they did here can be hot-swapped back to the older designs. That's a huge extra lift that they didn't have to do.

To be specific: There's a new lower chassis, and a new chassis top with haptic touchpad. On my older framework I could buy just the chassis top to get the new touchpad. Crazy that they could make that work.

I also just really admire the CEO for doing these semi-scripted public presentations nerding out over the new devices and shouting out specific team members who did the designs. Really hope the company is doing well.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSxgCEpkiKM

[jszymborski]

> That's a huge extra lift that they didn't have to do.

It's sorta essential imo if they want to make good on their one value-prop: repairability and the good will that comes with it. If they start releasing a tonne of SKUs with a million different parts, they'll inevitably have to sunset parts at a clip that'll completely make useless their repairability claims.

I am a happy Framework laptop owner, but I paid a premium b/c I expect moves like this. If this would change, it would become just an over-priced laptop... might as well by another Thinkpad or Dell XPS.

That said, I'm super happy they apparently have the good sense to see this. Not all companies make moves in their best interests.

[noosphr]

Parts are open source. Other people can keep making them. There's franken think pads from China that use a x61 chassis made 15 years after the release. I had a soup of them before I moved to framework for my daily drivers.

[jychang]

That's not open source. That's like decompiling closed source software years after support ended, in order to make a patch.

[bfivyvysj]

Weird to frame that as "their one value prop" as if the quality of their offering in general is just plain better. It comes at a premium thats my only gripe with it.

[setr]

If it’s their only value proposition, then every other element is just plain worse. This is the only aspect that makes them not worthless.

[tuckerman]

My heart sank when they said 13 pro and then to see that so much is backwards compatible was amazing. It's quite refreshing to see a company live up to their mission so well.

[cogman10]

Yeah, really impressive to see that you can take a 13 and turn it into a 13 pro with just a few new parts.

I've just ordered my own 13 pro. I've been waiting for a laptop and this ticks all the boxes. I'd previously ordered a new dell xps laptop and ultimately returned it because the keyboard was busted. I would have kept it if I could have swapped the keyboard for a new one. The use of LPCAMM is also really nice. I've hoped to see this standard start taking flight and I'm happy to grab a product with it included.

[steveBK123]

I'm not in the market for a Windows or Linux machine myself, but the way this company operates I feel like supporting them with a purchase at some point regardless.. maybe their Desktop tower

[drywipes]

I was screaming at my screen when I heard 13 Pro but I am now ever so happy when they mentioned being able to just replace, part-by-part, a regular Framework 13 into a Framework 13 Pro.

[Trollmann]

Same, though the battery upgrade alone will be around $260 because of the new bottom cover, at that might just throw in the speaker upgrade as well for $19. Not sure if I even want a haptic touchpad at all.

[ghqst]

Haptic trackpads are the secret sauce that make MacBooks so pleasant to use. You probably want one.

[pmontra]

It's a matter of preferences. Actually I like trackpads that don't mind and have physical buttons. The separation between the surface that moves the pointer on screen and the surfaces that generate the clicks means that there are no misclicks and no involuntary pointer movements while clicking.

[Gigachad]

The MacBook software is so good that I’ve never had issues with misclicks or movement despite your palms sitting on it while typing.

Long ago I installed Linux on a MacBook and found it unusable because of clicks and movement while typing. It’s probably improved these days though.

[bombcar]

It is so incredibly "weird" to press on a MacBook (non Neo) trackpad when it is off, it's like touching a dead thing.

[aitchnyu]

I had palm rejection work perfectly in my 2015 laptop; for my 2022 laptop, I had to switch to Fedora for the latest software.

[rolymath]

Spoken like someone who has never used a haptic trackpad.

[myself248]

Haptic schmaptic, I just want my Framework's enormous trackpad to respect deadzones and stop detecting my palms. I had to entirely disable tap-to-click, because nothing else would work.

I might have to try their preinstalled Ubuntu images or something and see if there's some secret sauce in the input configs.

[rofrol]

How about this https://community.frame.work/t/palm-rejection/40069/23?page=...

> For Linux libinput “Disable While Typing” (DWT) problems, this page claims libinput will only use the DWT setting if the keyboard and touchpad are either both identified as internal devices, or are both identified as the same device.

sudo nano /etc/libinput/local-overrides.quirks

[Framework Touchpad Fix] MatchName=* MatchUdevType=touchpad AttrKeyboardIntegration=internal

[chao-]

There is no accounting for taste. For instance, I still prefer discrete buttons over tap-clicks or multi-finger-taps, but I would accept the mild annoyance of tap clicks over the pressing down the pad itself.

[VectorLock]

Is the software that makes them so pleasant to use available on Linux?

[Trollmann]

Not a huge fan of the "force touch" trackpads on newer macs, the old man yells at the clouds. In all seriousness though I have used a pre force touch MacBook not too long ago and I prefer that experience a lot over the new one I have from work. Though the larger size of these trackpads is something I really like and where neither the older MacBook nor the the current non-pro Framework 13 come close.

[pxc]

Me, neither! I just had someone suggest to me yesterday that I was "holding it wrong" for preferring a real click mechanism on my trackpads.

[cassepipe]

So you if you want the newer bottom you have to upgrade the battery is what you're saying ?

[cbsmith]

More like the reverse: if you want the new battery you need a new bottom.

[riknos314]

The new battery is physically larger, so the old bottom cannot accommodate it.

[cassepipe]

Oh right but if I want to keep everything but the chassis I can, correct ?

[_-_-__-_-_-]

This page has more details, https://frame.work/laptop13pro?tab=upgrade-to-pro. You can keep everything, but they are selling some of the new parts as a kit.

[yencabulator]

Nitpick: hot swap means without powering off. Not recommended for motherboards, batteries, RAM etc. The running electricity is the "hot" part, and without that it's just "swap".

[cge]

>It's so cool that every individual upgrade they did here can be hot-swapped back to the older designs. That's a huge extra lift that they didn't have to do.

Unfortunately, as is usual for them (edit: and it makes sense; I'm not blaming them), the parts and upgrade kits aren't available for ordering (edit: or pre-ordering) yet, and likely won't be for some time, until the actual laptops are shipping. But yes, this is amazing, and the new pieces are not things I was expecting from them. As soon as it's available, I'll be taking my relatively recent AMD mainboard and putting it in a new chassis+battery+keyboard+speakers+touchpad, possibly skipping the display (I don't care much about a touchscreen, but I do care about display quality, so I'll wait for comparisons to the current 2.8k display). My laptop will, at that point, be almost entirely in a Ship of Theseus situation: I think that only the bezel and some of the expansion cards will be from the original, first-generation laptop I bought from them. That mainboard runs a number of services for me, along with an older display. A second, newer one is waiting for RAM to be a reasonable price (since the RAM it was using is now on my current mainboard); I had planned to use it for some of my research, but maybe I'll end up putting it into this older chassis and have a spare laptop again.

That all this is possible is wonderful, and a credit to them in staying true to their stated ideals.

[overfeed]

> Unfortunately, as is usual for them, the parts and upgrade kits aren't available for ordering yet, and likely won't be for some time, until the actual laptops are shipping.

Why would you expect otherwise? I fully expect any OEM to place itself at the front of the queue for parts coming from its suppliers. If for some reason they sold parts before the laptops started shipping, I'd fully expect impatient customers would build complete machines from parts ahead of the shipping dates, which would wreak all kinds of havoc on logistics.

[cge]

Yes, I really should have clarified: it makes sense, and I'm not blaming them. It's more just that, given their business model, and that they do intend to sell upgrade kits, I imagine that along with the people pre-ordering full laptops, there are quite a few of us who would be eager to pre-order upgrade kits or the parts to upgrade our current laptops.

[_-_-__-_-_-]

Yes, black upgrade kit please. I have it linked and will be checking daily. For me with a 12th gen Intel, it will be worth it to have a new screen, battery, chassis and haptic touchpad. Hardware is just too expensive to upgrade, but the chassis would provide nice quality of life improvements.

[reaperducer]

Unfortunately, as is usual for them, the parts and upgrade kits aren't available for ordering yet, and likely won't be for some time, until the actual laptops are shipping.

It's unfortunate that they can't sell you something that hasn't been manufactured? That doesn't yet exist?

HN is really scraping the bottom of the barrel for things to complain about.

[cge]

I had meant they aren't available even for pre-ordering, and likely won't be until the laptops are either regularly shipping rather than shipping in numbered batches, or are on a high-numbered batch. This could be months after the actual laptops start shipping. This is a process I've been through a few times at this point. It also wasn't really meant as a substantial complaint about Framework, and more just a mention of an understandable annoyance: it makes sense that they'd prioritize getting full laptops shipped.

On the other hand, nrp, since you're likely to be in this thread: if you had pre-orders and/or batched shipments of parts/upgrade kits, I would likely be paying a deposit or even the full price today, rather than ordering in a few months. Even if that meant ordering a full upgrade kit with a new display, but getting the upgrade sooner, I'd probably still go for it.

[d3Xt3r]

But they are available for pre-order though? At least here in NZ. I just ordered the AMD version, but the Intel one is available too (except the Ultra X9 which is already sold out).

[cge]

The opposite upgrade kit: people with a mainboard they'd like to keep, but who want all the other upgrades. The kit is listed, but isn't available yet.

[flakiness]

> I also just really admire the CEO for doing these semi-scripted public presentations

+1. The less-scripted plus the lack of the pretending-reality-distortion personality is such a breeze.

[grep_name]

I have a framework 13. It looks like eventually you'll be able to upgrade the chassis to the pro one, including the battery, for under 200? Am I reading this right? That's borderline unbelievable to me

[universa1]

if you count all parts, bottom, keyboard, cover, battery its more like 500 to 600.

[unclad5968]

Isnt that the entire value proposition of the company?

[lynndotpy]

It's kind of mind boggling to me that they have a tight chassis, AND it meets their buildable/ugpradeable/repairable goals, AND their backwards compatibility is reaching back five years now.

I think a number of people would have expected these to eventually require a trade-off. Especially coming from pc-building land, where we see new non-backwards-compatible CPU and RAM sockets every 6 or so years.

There's a version of this where Frame.work said, "Design tradeoffs mean the 13 Pro is a new platform that is largely not backwards compatible, but don't worry, the 13 series will still get 5+ years of support and parts" and everyone goes "Aw, well, I guess that's reasonable."

I really want to emphasize that it's looking like Framework is creating a laptop with _better_ backwards compatibility and build-ability than a desktop PC.

All this is to say that this is very very impressive!

[aljgz]

Even more impressive than going back 5 years is going back all the way to the first version. While I'm a software engineer, I've worked in teams where we shipped hardware, and for a consumer product with lots of constraints including implicit expectations, going against the entire trend of the past 15 years and targeting a hard-to satisfy market segment, they far exceeded what I expected when they announced their first product.

[idiotsecant]

Its backwards compatible to the first version??? How did they do this.

[toyg]

At some point they will still likely have to force that cut-off, but yeah, it's great that they seem to be able to stretch it for longer than most people would have expected.

[pdpi]

Unfortunately, we live in a world where most companies pay lip service to their stated value proposition, while racing to the bottom.

[cassepipe]

Remember "Microsoft loves linux" ?

[oaiey]

As in sells a ton in azure. I am pretty sure they still love that.

[chis]

They could have done a much more minimal version and called it a day. Being able to swap individual components of the chassis into a 5 year old model is, to me, going way above and beyond.

[al_borland]

Doing the bare minimum isn’t how brand loyalty is built.

[cassepipe]

Sadly brand loyalty isn't as valuable as one would think in a world where price and shiny-looking features tend to dominate

[gaudystead]

Every day feels like a day closer to, if not already at, a day where discerning customers are the minority.

[simonjgreen]

That doesn’t negate how impressive it is

[amelius]

Yes, saying you will do X and then doing X is more impressive than just doing X.

[simonjgreen]

Isn't it sad that we are surrounded by so many broken promises that that is remarkable

[stavros]

Planning is just very hard.

[amelius]

No, the statement is universal.

[prism56]

Yes but it's truly impressive to see it. It shows it can be done.

An 11th gen CPU/mobo that came out in 2020 can be dropped straight into this new chassis.

Or the newest display be can be dropped into your 2020 laptop/chassis.

[aembleton]

I wish they booted them up in that video. Its one thing being able to plug parts in but its another for them to all work together.

[prism56]

Based on my experience upgrading my FW. There's probably drivers and bios updates needed to do the transfer

[tosti]

Back in 2002 I took the HDD from one PC, put it in a different PC, worked just fine. The worst thing that could happen is that the other one already had another disk so I had to change /etc/fstab to say "hdb" instead of "hda" and vice versa. Didn't take long for that to get fixed by specifying UUIDs and having initramfs sort it out.

IDK why it's not working for you but this should all just work without bothering with any configuration, drivers, or whatever.

[Esophagus4]

> shouting out specific team members who did the designs

Inside the case somewhere on mine there was a list of all the names of the people who worked on it. Was pretty cool.

[chias]

This is great! Though in my case, since i have the very first generation they made, i probably need to upgrade every part of the thing so might as well just get a new one

[zobzu]

yeah.. but.. it cost more overall. i can kust buy a brand new laptop every 3y and its cheaper if i stick to other brands.

[ThePowerOfFuet]

Yeah, man. Who gives a fuck about e-waste and the environment anyway?

[dheera]

I was really hoping for 6 USB-C ports, dual NVMe, a flush bezel, a better webcam, and most of all, I was hoping for a cooling design upgrade that doesn't cause the computer to self-roast if placed on top of a sofa due to ventilation blockage. Bleh.