[ip26]

Upgradable to what? The ability to upgrade is well and good, but suppose the “endgame” configuration of an upgradable laptop was worse than the very base model of a non-upgradable. Why would you care about upgradability then?

[HeWhoLurksLate]

Upgrading to a new processor, or in the case of Framework, perhaps better hinges or keyboards or the like is IMO much more important to the long term desirability of a laptop than a 5% better keyboard or trackpad or RGB LEDs on the chassis.

I feel like the term "endgame" has completely lost its meaning - an "endgame" laptop is likely to be wholly irrelevant in at most ten years, especially so if you buy a super high end machine and expect high end machine things from it long term.

[ip26]

Yeah, it’s a dumb term, sorry. Top spec? Whatever it is.

Certainly it’s fair to argue that the top spec will continue to grow year over year, like happens with long lived desktop CPU sockets. Framework is bearing this out! But that spec does have to actually be GOOD!

This is the hard part about what they are trying to do. Is a 12th gen in a Framework better than a 10th gen in an fully integrated laptop? If not, what does being able to upgrade to 12th gen mean?

The IBM PC platform worked so well because every annual component upgrade was an immense step forward. The macs, by contrast, began to dominate when the annual upgrades began to provide less benefit than seamless vertical integration did…

[Oleksa_dr]

>Upgrading to a new processor You cannot upgrade the processor yourself. This is either an expensive repair or replacement of the entire motherboard.

[kelnos]

That's a weird argument/hypothetical, because the Framework is not worse than the very base model of a non-upgradeable laptop.

[ip26]

It’s an extreme framing for the sake of thought experiment. More specifically, I believe for “upgradable” to be a meaningful sellable feature you need something like this:

LaptopA costs more than low-spec LaptopB. But LaptopB can be user upgraded post-purchase to be strictly superior to LaptopA (even though this costs a bit more in the end)

Or

LaptopA costs more than LaptopB. But LaptopB can be upgraded and customized to be superior than LaptopA under certain parameters (say, a high quality display) for a lower total price than LaptopA.