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Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

> And what exactly is wrong with that?

Honestly? Presentation. That's why I consider it a dumb argument in general. People mention "Homer's car" or equivalent memes from works of fiction as some kind of ridiculous contraptions, but don't bat an eye when a show like Star Trek does the same. The big difference, IMO, is that Homer's car is delivered to you up front, a solution looking for problem(s). Star Trek's tricorder or roundabout or a starship only happen to show a different one-off feature every episode - so the realization that the equipment is deeply multipurpose, and has all those features already present, kind of flies past people who're not into this sort of thing.

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The issue for me is how silly it is to hard-code these arbitrary and often single-purpose connectors in the laptop.

A laptop should be a general computing device. So why hard-code something as weirdly specific as an SD card reader into it? Give it the functionality to have any IO device attached (USB-C) instead.

> Give it the functionality to have any IO device attached (USB-C) instead.

Because a laptop is a portable device, and carrying something with dongles dangling from it is something that nobody wants to do.

Hence the solution that the Framework offers: a device body that allocates space for USB-C dongles such that they fit flush when installed.

Now all we need is an industry standard for those.

Yup, I'm singing praise to Framework here.

The sanest system I've seen in a decade at least.

I don't even need a new laptop, and I still want this one.

How many additional watt-hours of battery would they have been able to fit in the laptop if they didn’t have the carve-outs for such dongles?

Say what you want about the MacBook’s lack of user-replacability, but it’s basically a tiny chip board about the same size as the iPhone’s, with a big box of batteries holding it.

Yeah I'm still waiting on the improved battery life that losing 3.5mm was supposed to give me.

Not buying it. I'll take extra 2mm for 3.5mm and usb a.

Going to get into the 1.5mm jack life

Not enough to justify cutting them out.

(The answer is of the same level as question. If you want to imply that there's a significant gain, go prove it.)

> How many additional watt-hours of battery would they have been able to fit in the laptop if they didn’t have the carve-outs for such dongles?

Looking at the insides, I'm going to guess about 2 watt hours. Or they could have made it unmeasurably thinner.

> Say what you want about the MacBook’s lack of user-replacability, but it’s basically a tiny chip board about the same size as the iPhone’s, with a big box of batteries holding it.

Framework has 55 watt hours. The obsolete macbooks have 41. Both intel and M1 macbook pros have 58. Both intel and M1 macbook airs have 50.

Sounds like that lack of user-replacability isn't necessary.

I guess PCMCIA was kind of like this. Of course dongles were bigger back then.

Man I loved the idea of PCMCIA back in the day. Mobile network access (EDGE, if I remember correctly) via one of them on my chunky Toshiba was awesome.

I was fascinated by PCMCIA, because I had a laptop I was trying to put OpenBSD on it in 2001 and its ethernet port was not working, so the card was a workaround. I always wondered why it didn't really take off in Europe, it was a simple and pretty compact way (for the time) to get very advanced stuff in a laptop - I guess it was expensive to produce and the name was atrocious. I believe it got more popular in Japan.

I very much enjoy multiple USB 3 ports, ethernet, card reader on my laptop and do not have to carry any dongles. And I can easily hook 2 x 4K 60P screens using built in HDMI and mini-DP ports. It also has thunderbolt 3 so I can still hook anything extra should I ever wish.

That argument would make far more sense if these anorexia laptops at least compensated for the removed ports with more USB ports. But no, you get the same pathetic 4 (at most) as always.

Even worse when they're the pathetic failure (host-side) that is USB-C, so nothing fits without a dongle anyway. Bonus points if you have to waste one of them for charging the laptop, yay!

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