"Computer as a service" is antithetical to what a framework laptop is to its owners.
Stress on the word "owner." I want to own my machine top to bottom and be able to repair and modify it at will. That's why I bought one.
Stress on the word "owner." I want to own my machine top to bottom and be able to repair and modify it at will. That's why I bought one.
it's not like there's a standard for laptop motherboards similar to the 12"x9.6" ATX motherboard with ATX rear-IO-panel design we've been using for common midtower desktop PCs for the past 20 years.
it would be nice if somebody did standardize such a thing for a modular swappable laptop motherboard with all the i/o ports along the left side, the heatpipe and exhaust along the right side, or vice versa.
even something like a framework laptop has a totally bespoke custom size/shape/design to its cpu+gpu heatpipe and heatsink/blower fan assembly.
but I agree with you in principle.
My son and I just assembled a devterm that is exactly what you describe … would be easy to architect other form factors around it …
Realistically that’s how a laptop standard will have evolve into being, if a consortium got together to try to make one out of thin air it would almost certainly be a disaster.
So at this point, imo, framework’s motherboard is the eigenstandard: either it will continue to exist long enough to attract efforts to build alternative hardware around (as the pi sort of has for tiny form factor sbcs), or it will fizzle out and we’ll be back to square one.
But may as well be optimistic and assume it’s the beginning of “atx for laptops” the same way the ibm pc/at was until proven otherwise. Challenges to that place need to provide more, not less, compelling reasons to believe in them imo.