Hacker News Reader

Comment by makeitdouble | Hacker News Reader

> hardware has usually advanced far enough

That's not what we're experiencing.

Screens have seen improvements, but not in a significant way within these 4-6 years. Keyboards haven't improved leaps and bounds. Track pads either. Laptop casings haven't seen innovation either.

The only thing that significantly changes is the motherboard, which is not nothing, but replacing it independently makes sense to me.

> port module idea.

That's one of the best idea they have! You might have bought a laptop with 4 USB ports 5 years ago, only to realize you'd be so much happier with two USB-A. Or you realize you never ever use the SD Card slot. Well, you'd fix that easily on a Framework, not on any other laptop.

I wish I could do that right now. The only reason I haven't one of their laptop is their stubborn refusal to ship outside a dozen or so countries.

View on HN

I’ll contest that on the screens. Mini-LED backlighting is a substantial step up for contrast, backlights in general have gotten brighter, IPS panels have gained notability better color gamuts and contrast, and OLED panels are now widely available even in budget machines. The screens on the M1-M4 MBPs look quite visibly nicer than those MBPs used up until 2019.

Those painfully awful 1366x768 TN panels that used to be commonplace have finally mostly been ousted, too. As a result, chances are that the laptop you buy at nearly any price bracket in 2026 has a screen that’s moderately to dramatically better than was found in laptops in the same bracket up until 2020-2022.

The problems with the port modules are that due to their dimensions, the number of ports you can have on the laptop at once is small and the big voids in the chassis required for them to be able to slot in greatly weakens it and makes it more prone to flexing.

With an alternative design that uses internal port boards (still hooked up via USB-C) with matching exterior side plates, you could easily do something like 3x USB-C, 1x USB-A on the left and 1x Ethernet, 1x USB-C, 1x USB-A, 1x SD/microSD on the right in the same space as would’ve been taken by the modules for half as many ports. This would suit most users perfectly out of the box, precluding the need for swapping for many, but for those who need one side to be full USB-C or multiple NICs or a cell modem or something that’s still possible.

Point taken, I totally see how brighter screens must be a boon for people who actually bring their laptop outdoors.

My personal needs are way smaller so I missed that part completely (on contrast IDK, I recently had a Surface Pro 8 next to a MBP 4 and it didn't strike me, but I might not be sensible enough to that)

> 1366x768

We've had HDPI for a decade now, that's truly awful.

> ports

Agreed, people needing more than 4 ports or caring a lot more about size are kinda SOL with the current modular setup.

Brighter screens is a boon for anyone using a laptop, full stop. If it’s too bright, you can turn the brightness down, obviously doesn’t work this way in the opposite direction.

Besides, the point isn’t even absolute max brightness, but the contrast ratio. OLEDs aren’t the brightest displays, but their contrast ratio blows pretty much everything else out of the water and that’s what makes you go wow when looking at an oled in a dark room. (At least it does for me, still, and I’ve got an oled tv in 2018.)

To me, OLED being self-emissive is a far bigger deal than the contrast ratio. With LCDs, even the laminated ones in MacBooks, you get backlight shimmering, bleed, halos (especially with Mini-LED), and general inconsistency. With OLED, the pixels are a single, nano-thin layer, the display looks directly printed onto the surface (because it is), there are no backlight issues because there's no backlight, and there's no polarization or enclosure to create viewing angle artifacts. (Note: QD-OLED is inferior in this regard, especially with ambient light, but that doesn't bother me that much; WOLED however is trash.)

The OLED iPad Pro is one of the best screens I've ever seen, besides the awful pixel density. Even if deactivated pixels weren't fully dark, it'd still be far superior to any LCD.

OLEDs have a lot of great properties, but I’m still on the fence when it comes to building them into laptops. On phones and tablets where usage is intermittent, usually shortish, and content is constantly moving they’re well suited, but with a laptop screen that in some cases can be turn on for 12+ hours and is displaying the same static content for large chunks of that, I’d be worried about burn in.

Maybe it’s not an issue with tandem OLED and strict binning though.

I have a non-tandem QD-OLED I used as a desktop monitor for some months and it's totally fine. If you're part of the Apple hype cycle and you replace your $7,000+ laptop every year, you'll never see burn-in.

Not necessarily just outdoors, but to any well lit environment.

Including indoors in rooms with large windows that face east, south, or west! This describes a lot of office buildings, as well as my bedroom in a circa-2005 cheaply built mass development home too. On sunny days, it’s brightly naturally lit for basically half the day, and dim displays can struggle in that environment.

Not to mention cafes, libraries, or other large buildings which are many times constructed to let in as much sunlight as possible.

I have a 6 year old high end laptop that I keep as a backup and I disagree about no progress being made on screens. The current screens are very good, especially in high brightness environments.

> The only thing that significantly changes is the motherboard, which is not nothing, but replacing it independently makes sense to me.

Laptop motherboards aren’t like desktop motherboards where you can define a big outline and fit standard parts within it. The laptop design leverages tight co-design with the enclosure for thermal performance. If you’re lucky and leave enough extra space then you can design next generation parts to line up neatly with the thermal solution of last gen, then cap it at the limit of whatever last gen was designed for. However the optimal solution will always be to co-design the chassis, thermal solution, and motherboard together.

> If you’re lucky and leave enough extra space then you can design next generation parts to line up neatly with the thermal solution of last gen, then cap it at the limit of whatever last gen was designed for.

The mobile Ryzen 3/5/7/9 processors from the current year have a configurable TDP up to the same max (54W) as the earliest Ryzen "H" processors from 2017. The first generation mobile Core i7 from 2009 had a TDP up to 55W. The mobile Pentium 4 from 2003 had a TDP up to 76W (which appears to be the high water mark). In any given generation there were also lower end models using less power across a power range that seems to be fairly consistent over time.

Why does the thermal solution need to be redesigned if the heat output hasn't materially changed in decades?

Screens are dramatically better than a few years ago and have been advancing if you care about and shop for the feature. Trackpads are slowly sucking less.

Most people only see this in MacBook Pros, but the other manufacturers have excellent screens that are often hidden behind customization options and complex models/branding.

I have a framework and love it, but it’s a computer made for a specific purpose that doesn’t align with most people. That’s ok - Dell makes like 500 different let laptops and Framework has a totally different proposition.

I have to disagree on trackpads sucking less. This year I walked into a big box electronics store and tried the screen, keyboard and trackpad on every laptop they had on display.

Trackpads were universally abysmal, with the sole exception of the macbooks. They all had the frustrating diveboard design, every single one at every price point from every manufacturer. I’m sure you can buy laptops with decent trackpads online, but they had none in the store, macbooks excepted.

Keyboards were all over the place, but I notice that even some premium models are now carrying generic low end keyboard parts with weak travel, lack of key separation, num lock mashed into the backspace, and awkward arrow key layout. If anything I think keyboards are getting worse.

Screens are the one place where I’ll say things have improved noticeably, especially colors and black levels, although getting over 200 ppi and 500 nits is still a rare treat, and that is my bar for a compromiseless display.

500 nits is not really good enough for laptop that you might use outside.

Luckily they are still improving and we now have Tandem OLED with about double that.

Should a laptop be optimized for indoor or outdoor use?

Given the primary selling point of laptops is their portability (often at the cost of other things), they should be optimized to be highly usable wherever they might end up getting used.

> walked into a big box electronics store

You're comparing Apple to unnamed computers brands you touched at a random place, I'm not sure what to make of it.

For instance how does the Macbook Air compare to the current 13" Surface Laptop ? Is that what you call diveboard design and awkward arrow key layout ?

I didn’t say good just less bad.

Apple obviously produces the only product incorporating a touchpad that applies any significant, deliberate thought about it.

> Trackpads are slowly sucking less

This is an oddity of the PC laptop market I have never understood - Mac trackpads from a decade ago are still better than a top-of-the-line PC trackpad from the current year.

The only thing Apple has done in that decade is make their trackpads slightly bigger (and made the click haptic rather than physical), so it feels like the PC folks should have caught up by now...

Part of it is software (drivers), and that’s something that hardware vendors have traditionally been poor at writing. The bar for a driver is “it technically works and doesn’t bluescreen” rather than “it works well”. It’s just more evident in this case because the continuous-input nature of a trackpad makes the poor functionality much more apparent.

The other is that I don’t think most laptop vendors spend nearly as much on their trackpads. MacBook trackpads have for a long time shared their touch sensitivity hardware with iPhones, which makes them extremely responsive and precise, and this is paired with a high end haptic motor to produce click sensations. Finally, their surface is oleophobic glass which reduces friction. This all combines to produce a great experience, but I’m positive that they cost notably more than the typical plastic diving board fare, and most laptop manufacturers are squeezing out margin with cheaper parts wherever they can.

Apple pours all they have into making their trackpad the best it can be, including working from the OS to the UX to the SDKs.

It's sailant when using the Magic Trackpad on Windows: the acceleration curves don't match, the keyboard combinations are less natural, the gestures clunkier and the overall advantage of the trackpad is I think lesser. Mouses are a better fit on windows in every respects IMHO.

The modules are just inset usb-c dongles.

Handy that you can have them fully encased but there’s nothing really limiting any other laptop on this front. You just use an external dongle and have the same flexibility.

Maybe some people really want the enclosed module so they have fewer things to carry, but that’s a pretty small advantage that I’m not sure many people will value.

I could get something like this ( https://satechi.net/products/undefined/products/pro-hub-slim ) for my MacBook Air and come out ahead on weight and size.

In wish I could have lived for a month or two with the Framework system to get a better feeling of it.

I'm usually either docked at my primary desk and only need a single USB-C, or moving from place to place and need 2 USB-A and a full size SD reader. I imagine the nice part with the insets is they're flushed so they'less surface to hit when moving the machine around.

I'd actually love to make my own insets that bakes the wireless dongles in them, that sounds doable.

If you have a 3D printer you can print enclosures https://www.printables.com/model/139879-framework-laptop-exp...

https://github.com/LeoDJ/FW-EC-DongleHiderPlus?tab=readme-ov...

I've yet to build one, but this project looks very interesting in that regard.

>but there’s nothing really limiting any other laptop on this front. You just use an external dongle and have the same flexibility.

Yeah, but thars another part to lose. I have tons of dongles and expansion bays, and have lost half a ton of them to the tides of school, work, travel, and carelessness. Most lost, some break because it's a huge portrusion out of your core machine. A few borrowed and never returned. One of them stuck at an office I got laid off from but never returned to post pandemic (but the severance hush money was worth more than me raising a fuss as opposed to replacing the $30 bay).

I don't need it to literally be plug and play, but I appreciate a more modular setup that is flush and stuck to the machine.

PS. Your link is 404.

Ah weird the link didn’t work. It looks like their site overrides the url that is set for link sharing.

This one should work, copied it from the address bar instead.

https://satechi.net/products/pro-hub-slim?variant=4019950983...

> You just use an external dongle and have the same flexibility

And with thunderbolt, you get to have one dongle-sized dock, that connects with one cable, and gives you the full gamut of ports. I really love being able to connect 1 cable when I get to my desk, and have multiple monitors, all peripherals, plus power cable instantly.

> That's one of the best idea they have! You might have bought a laptop with 4 USB ports 5 years ago, only to realize you'd be so much happier with two USB-A. Or you realize you never ever use the SD Card slot. Well, you'd fix that easily on a Framework, not on any other laptop.

With all due respect -- meh.

I have a fairly old-ish laptop that I am not bothered to upgrade because a Ryzen 5500U is super capable to this day (and I don't do local LLMs) and it has a 10Gbps USB Type-C port, an HDMI port, and a USB 3.0 Type-A port. And an SD card reader.

I bought a hub. I put the laptop on a stand and plug its Type-C 10Gbps slot in the hub. Job done.

All this clamoring about being able to replace ports surely resonates with many people but to this day I don't view it as a true advantage. If you have to carry your laptop to a dedicated office, a stand and a hub are table stakes anyway. And that's not even touching a proper big display, keyboard and a mouse.

And furthermore, if making the ports flexible leads to too many design compromises then to me that means that I am making a bad deal.

I am periodically inspecting Framework laptops and I still find them lacking. Their appeal to tinkerers has IMO peaked and they should pivot to another pitch or they might not survive. Though I really, really hope they do. We need the competition.

> keyboard and a mouse

That's the part that's hitting me the most.

I have two dongles for the wireless connectivity of both, and the choice is between sticking both in a dock and bring the same huge dock every single place I go, or move them from dock to dock as needed.

Having two USB-A would mean I stick them on the machine itself and never think about it anymore. Then if they could completely disappear inside the port extensions it would be a dream.

TBH I wouldn't be using the Framework as my primary work laptop either way, use cases are very limited and I already have the power and modularity needed with the Z13, but as a personal laptop for way wider use cases it ticks all the right boxes. If only it shipped outside of US and EU.

I understand. I have a mini hub, something like 10x4x1 cm. Works fine for me and it even also has Ethernet.

As mentioned, I'm sure Ftamework has valid usages. To me they command a much higher price premium than I'm comfortable with paying for those valid usages however.

I do love and want a libre booting stack. To me _that_ is the really good stuff. But they need to chill on prices.

I’d be better off for my work laptop with an even smaller cube that was built expecting a hub to be plugged in. No monitor, keyboard or mouse. I don’t think the keyboard and monitor on it have ever been used outside of diagnosing why the hub isn’t working.

Yeah, that too. And AFAIK many devs do that, they buy mini PCs that are very generously specced and just carry them between home and office, usually plugging every periphery needed (display, keyboard, mouse, Ethernet) by just plugging one high-speed port from the box PC to the hub.

I worry about throwing a box that isn’t meant to be moved a lot into my back back every day

Reply on news.ycombinator.com