The thing to realize is that the reason EVERYONE knows about Framework Corp is that one of their larger investors is Linus Sebastien of Linus Media Group (most known for “Linus Tech Tips”). He/LMG have a long, well documented, history of conflicts of interest and even a few scandals (both in terms of manipulative data AND sex pestery) and have increasingly been revealed to be VERY manipulative of other channels they deem “smaller” (Rossman went off on them during one of the annual scandals)

So Framework’s social media game is on lock both between their own in-house staff and whatever they get from “investor calls” as it were.

And you know what goes together like peanut butter and jelly? Youtubers and “accidentally” supporting really shitty chuds.

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As for Framework Corp itself?

I dunno. To me it increasingly feels like a company designed to create/trademark IP that would greatly improve assembly line processes that haven’t found an integrator willing to buy them out.

Because stuff like the “open source but we are the only ones that use it” proprietary “not a dongle but is something you plug into a usb c port to use different interfaces” and the pogo plug keyboards and so forth? I think Wendell at Level1Techs put it best where he acknowledged it was REALLY cool and something he would use once when buying the laptop and then as a fidget device during some meetings.

But for a “boutique” laptop integrator? That is something that can be done to really customize each laptop for each customer at minimal cost (by relying on cheap labor in a pre-Liberation Day world).

As for the rest of the laptops? Again, they look really cool. But every time I consider replacing my existing laptop I run the simple numbers. Too lazy to do it right now but basically:

Let a be the price of the laptop you want from Framework and let b be the price of just the motherboard+CPU of said laptop in the Framework marketplace. Let c be the price of a comparable laptop at Best Buy or whatever.

Framework only ever makes sense if a+b is significantly less than c*2. And every time I run the numbers? It is a few bucks cheaper, at best, and usually still more expensive. And all of that assumes you keep the same everything and are just “upgrading” the cpu. Which… considering Framework are already doing revisions of their chassis that, bare minimum, would involve heat pipe tweaks when upgrading… yeah.

I DO think this tech would be amazing for the kind of company that provisions laptops for medium sized businesses. But their software/support and pricing keep them out of that too.

But as it stands? It feels a lot like those phones that had swappable camera modules and the like. It SOUNDS amazing until you actually price them out… and then realize the company went out of business so you never even had a chance to upgrade your camera 5 years later.