Framework 2023 - Why "normal" laptops are bad

 I have written a lot about computers, including Apple and Framework  before.  

To put it simply, I love Apple's designs, and I love the OS.  They have hit a home run with the M1 and now M2 machines due to the fact that you can now have a machine that is ultra slim, light, and portable, more powerful than most PCs, and with outstanding battery life to top it all off!  - but there is a dark side.  

To understand what is great about Framework, we need to understand what is wrong with Apple (and those companies who copy them).

I'll use the Macbook Air M1 as an example, but the same things could apply to many laptops from Lenovo, ASUS, and others.  Likewise, some vendors are following Framework's lead in some areas, for example, HP and Dell support some of the things that Framework does on certain models.  

Let's say you are going to buy a laptop for college.  You have a budget of $1500, but of course you might not want to spend all of that on computer stuff.  

You can get both for less than $1,000 right now.  You immagine you'll be using it for school work: Things like taking notes, writing essays, making spreadsheets, reading PDFs, watching videos for online courses, etc.  You also want to use it for personal stuff like playing music, watching YouTube, etc.  

You decide that performance isn't as important as portability, because you want to be able to carry it around campus in your backpack.  

You decide to buy an Apple Macbook Air M1 or a last generation Lenovo Thinkpad X1, as you would rather keep the price under $1,000.  After asking some of your friends, it seems that 8GB of RAM should be enough, but everyone complains that 256GB drives fill up too quickly, so you opt for the 512GB model.  Everyone says that the M1 mac is faster than the Lenovo and has better bettery life, plus it comes with iMovie, Garage Band, and other fun and free stuff, so you go for the Mac.  Unbeknownst to you, you have already averted a major annoyance by choosing the 512GB model, because the storage can't be upgraded on the Mac.  You find the M1 Macbook Air with 8GB of RAM and 512GB or storage for $750 used.  

You use the Mac for the first year of school, and it's fantastic.  It's super fast, and the battery does indeed last all day long.  It doesn't randomly reboot for updates like windows, and you like the built-in apps.  It runs Microsoft office and everything else you need, so you are happy.  

But... if you have too many browser tabs or apps open, you start getting the pop up box "You are running out of memory... please close open apps..." and a list if shown.  

This actually happened to me with my M1 mac all the time.  

You think "You know what, I've had this thing for year, maybe it'S time to upgrade the memory so that annoying box doesn't pop up", and start checking RAM prices on Amazon.  You are a bit confused by all of the terms, DDR4, DDR5, SODIMM, 2600 vs 3200, low voltage vs. normal.  So confusing.  "That's fine, I'll just take it to the campus computer store and let them deal with it".   

You take the laptop down to the campus computer store, and they quickly tell you in no uncertain terms that the memory can only be upgraded by buying a brand new machine.  They kindly offer to pay you half price for your used PC as trade-in value for a 16GB one.  So you would get around $325 back.  They just so happen to have a used M1 Macbook Air with 16GB of memory but only 256GB of flash storage for $955.  That means you would have to pay $630 for 8GB of RAM, and go through the hastle of moving all your stuff, while also losing half of your storage space.  

Even those 32GB RAM kits for laptops on Amazon cost less than $150.  It doesn't really sound like a good deal at all, and you tell them "no deal".  

In your second year, you decide to take a video editing class as one of your electives.  It's fun to write up scripts, and interesting to learn about things like color grading, focus, etc.  A lot of the people in your class are creative majors, and a lot of them also have Macs, but mac or PC, they all have computers with at least 2 TB of storage.  You soon find our why.  

The course teaches you how to use a low end camera from BlackMagic Design, the Pocket 4k.  This camera is a couple of years old and on the low end side, but it teaches you all the fundamentals of a "real" cinema camera.  

You spend the first few classes working on scripts, and the next few forming teams and choosing locations.  

Finally it's time to shoot, and after the first day of shooting off and on, two things surprise you:

1. How quickly batteries run out on these cameras!

2. How much space the video files take up!

You have taken a bunch of 5 minute takes furing the day, and it only adds up to about 60 minutes of video - but to your surprise, that adds up to over 400GB of video!  

Your plan was to just import it all to your Mac and then go through it on there using the nice big screen, but you don't even have that much space free.  

You wonder what is taking up that much space, and you download the "DaiseyDisk" app recommended by one of your friends to check it out.  Amazingly, although your school work for a full year taked up less than 20GB, the operating system and apps seem to take up a huge amount of space.  That backup of your iphone also takes up 128GB all by itself!  You have about 20GB of mp3 files, and a few dozen GB of downloaded games and movies.  

You start deleting things.  You don't really need those downloaded movies anymore, and you can listen to music on YouTube anyway.  You uninstall XCode (which you installed for that programming course last quarter), and free up 80GB of space in total.  You still only have  280GB free, though.  

Rather than wasting time, you head to the computer lab, which has special machines dedicated to video editing.  You notice they all have 4TB of storage and 32GB of ram, wow!  

I could go on with the story, but the point is, if you are buying a PC which is not upgradable, you need to know:

1. Exactly what you want to use it for (and that that isn't going to change!)

2. Exactly what specs you need for that use case

3. How much buffer you should plan for

To me, Apple selling machines with 8GB RAM and 256GB SSDs borders on irresponsible.  Those are basically Facebook browsing machines.  They are indeed very fast and they do indeed have crazy long battery life, but a 256GB SSD is not useful for much of anything once you account for the space taken up by the OS and applications.  If you are someone who just uses web sites and such, then it will do just fine, but then an iPad would probably also do just fine.  

And all of the above is more or less realistic:  I *have* run out of memory oon an 8GB M1 without running anything crazy.  I have run out of space on 512GB Macs without installing anything huge.  The prices I quoted above are current used prices from Janpara in Japan.  I also did decide to take a video creation class even though I was a computer science major.  

There are lots of other scenarios where people don't know what specs to buy, for example, when parents buy their children laptops for college, etc.  

Software tends to require more and more resources over time, so you should always put in a bit of a buffer when planning a computer purchase.  At the same time, though, people understandably don't want to overpay for things they don't need.  Wouldn't it be nice if you could "Change your mind" later?  

More to the point, people break laptops all the time.  (And laptops break on their own all the time).  

Immagine if you bought a car, and something like the oil pump died one day.  You take it to the shop and they tell you "Yep, that's going to be $5,000 to fix".  Or worse yet, they just tell you that you need to buy a new car.  

I have dealt with, in my life:

1. A broken Sony Vaio from Friend A (HDD Died)

2. A Broken Sony Vaio from Friend B (HDD was dying)

3. A Broken Sony Vaio from Friend C (Randomly powered off)

4. A Broken Macbook Air (Gen 2) from friend B (RAM Failed)

5. A broken Macbook Air (Gen 1) from a family member (they cracked the screen)

6. A broken HP Mini from friend D (Just stopped working)

7. A broken Macbook Air (Gen 1) that was mine - Failed HDD, and later hinge issue that destroyed the motherboard

8. A broken Macbook Air (11 inch i5) that was mine - I cracked the screen

9. A broken Macbook Pro 2011 that was mine - GPU failure, displayed a garbled screen

10.  A broken Macbook Pro 2019 that was mine - (memory failure)

11. A broken Macbook Pro from an aquaintence (spilled Wine into it)

12. A broken Lenovo Thinkpad - WiFi stopped working

That's all from my personal life - I have dealt with broken Dells often at my previous employer, I have seen broken HPs, and broken Thinkpads at my current employer.  Usually these are keys that come off or screens that crack.  

Most of the issues above could have been dealt with if the RAM, screen, keyboard, or motherboard could be replaced at a reasonable cost.  Soldering the RAM and storage onto the motherboard not only means that they can't be replaced, but also means that replacing the mainboard will cost that much more.  

I am actually surprised that at least two of the failures listed above are specifically caused by RAM failure, as I assumed that wasn't a common failure mode.  

Buying insurance also isn't a magical solution, as it means you will be roped into paying hundreds of dollars per year for something that needs to be expensive to account for replacing large swatch of the computer.  

Also, not everyone can afford a laptop with 32GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD, but a laptop that can be upgraded over time allows the user to "get started" with 8GB/256GB and then upgrade over the years, prolonging the service life of the equipment and reducing eWaste.