Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by RandyRanderson | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

RandyRanderson

Very exciting. Hoping they will make something similar with:

. 15 or 16 inch chassis

. 4k display (OLED, if possible)

. largest battery they allow on an airplane

. no keypad

. 2x speakers facing up

. AMD, if possible

. arrow keys as Apple does it

. charge a premium for this - ppl will pay it!!!

Basically just copy what Apple does but with a little customization. I know this would be difficult but hoping someone from framework will read this. No one wants to buy a dell XPS but its the most popular windows laptop in its class for a reason.

View on HN

> 4k display … Basically just copy what Apple does

Apple doesn’t do this. Apple instead does the correct thing: target PPI. Apple keeps their laptops around 226 PPI. The Framework laptop is 200 PPI.

Stop caring about absolute resolution and start thinking in PPI.

This is the one thing keeping me from buying a Framework. That resolution is so close to perfect... but not quite. Too high for 1x, too low for 2x. I'm hoping they will have a better screen option some day, or that there will be a way to replace the existing one.

Really, OSes and applications need to be better at doing arbitrary DPI scaling. I should be able to say “scale everything 1.2x on this monitor”. On Linux, using GDK_DPI_SCALE & QT_SCALE_FACTOR works reasonably well on a single monitor if apps are respecting them.

Personally I think Apple’s PPI target for laptops is too low for 2x scaling.

Lots of legacy apps use bit-mapped graphics instead of vectors. Xaw and Motif are both not resolution-independent toolkits but getting them to support integer scaling (with line-doubling) would be far easier than trying to implement fractional scaling plus anti-aliasing.

Apple literally doubled the resolutions of their pre-HiDPI screens for their current screens and then scaled their interface by 2x for the default OS builds, so if their interface is too big for you then it probably has been since Mac OS X came out.

Sure, and older software not designed for newer paradigms will always be a problem. All major desktop OSes currently make some compromises to handle HiDPI displays.

Apple doubled the base display from pre-Retina laptops (1440x900), but they offered a higher-resolution display (1680x1050) and that’s what I used then. I’ve always adjusted the resolution on Retina MacBooks to be the one-notch higher-PPI option.

It's funny to me that you'd want what I consider one of the worst thing about the Apple keyboard: the arrow keys. Having the half-size up-down buttons means I have far more mistakes on those. Thankfully CapsLock-p and CapsLock-n works as well (I remapped CapsLock to Control of course)

My thoughts exactly. I cursed those arrow keys every day for the 12 months my employer forced me to use a mac. Never did get used to it.

As @fouc points out, I meant this kb:

"poster is probably referring to this: https://images.idgesg.net/images/article/2019/11/16in-macboo..."

As am I

> arrow keys as Apple does it

No. NO!!

poster is probably referring to this: https://images.idgesg.net/images/article/2019/11/16in-macboo...

The left, right, and down arrow keys all on one level, and the up arrow key alone above the down arrow key. Makes it easy to find the right key by touch alone.

What they've got now on the Framework is just "arrow keys as Apple did it": they used this full-height/half-height combo for a while but have since returned to the "inverted T" with all half-height as you describe.

I think the sense that space is wasted by those deadzones above the left and right keys is a powerful motivator of these "hybrid" keyboard designs. I do prefer to have them all half-height if any of them are, as it does make it easier for me to "touch type" the arrows.

For me it's still a no. Half-height key will be hard to press, especially the top one which is near the shift key.

This is what I need. Not what Apple offers. MacBook arrow keys are unusable.

That is the old macbook keyboard (before late-2015), and they brought it back with the m1 macbooks.

Basically late-2015 to 2020 macbooks had shitty keyboards.

Ah, I didn't realize it. Good to know - thanks!

That is a modern macbook

> no keypad

I don't see the keypad.

For some reason laptops that don't have a numpad at 13", they almost always do on 15+ inch versions.

Which 15 or 16 inch laptop you don't see keypad?

Macbook Pro?

XPS?

4k Oled? On a 15" screen seems overkill. Also OLED displays still have ghosting problems. 1440p is the sweet spot IMO.

Ghosting? OLED is way beyond LCD:

https://youtu.be/Qtve0u3GJ9Y?t=686

It sounds like a MacBook with extra steps. Why not just get a MacBook?

What customization do you really need?

Because MacBooks can't be easily fixed by end-users or upgradeable.

How often does that actually need to happen these days?

It feels like a solution looking for a problem.

If everything works then it feels like a luxury, but if something breaks it feels like a necessity.

Being able to upgrade components also lets you buy at a cheaper price initially and then grow it to suit your needs later. Also the laptop will be probably end up being usable for a decade or more.

I recently upgraded my 2015 MBP's SSD from 256GB to 1TB (it's the last upgradeable macbook). It's great to get a significant speed boost on read/write times and more disk space. And it only cost me about $100-150 to make it happen.

The 2015 MBP is still fast and snappy for my purposes, it's hard to justify getting a new laptop yet.

Most people have never had to replace the starter in their automobile, but the ones that have sure are glad it's not spitefully welded in place just to make things difficult for them.

If I remember correctly the replacing the alternator in a 2006 VM Touareg is something like that. Something like a 6k job if you have a shop do it because it requires dropping the engine. Also the alternator is liquid cooled and costs over 1k just by itself.

A vehicle starter's lifespan relative to the lifespan of the whole vehicle is probably very different than that of a component of a laptop relative to the laptop itself. As well as the cost of repair relative to the cost of buying new.

I switched to a Dell XPS + Linux when my Macbook crapped out after only a few months. The Apple store shipped it out and it took over a week before I got it back.

If that laptop had been a Framework laptop, I could have just ordered the part, swapped it out, and moved along.

Not OP but I would want ... not MacOS ;)

Sounds like you Think different. ;)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com