I bought a MacBook

Last year I bought a framework laptop. After saving up and being on the fence for quite a while, I ordered the 13" AMD Ryzen 7840U model during batch 9.

And generally the laptop has been fine. Build quality is fine, speakers are horrible tough, linux support is fine. Most things are fine. The big selling point of these laptops is their upgradeability. It simply isn't old enough to really shine here.

About 50% of the time I use the framework 13" closed, connected to a thunderbolt dock with 2 monitors. After several months I stopped using it closed. It would start getting very hot while watching a YouTube video and not doing much else. So I started leaving it open while connected to the thunderbolt dock, with its built-in screen turned off. This improved the temperatures a bit, but not enough.

Even using it like it was meant to, on top of your lap, without the external monitors beating the crap out of the internal graphics, it still gets too hot. And after 30 minutes or so, it's just not comfortable anymore.

I was never uncomfortable for very long while using the laptop on my lap in the sofa, because the battery never lasted long enough. This meant I had issues using it on my lap and on my desk. Not ideal.

All that heat is not good for a laptop. And then, a couple of weeks before its first birthday, I noticed that the trackpad was not working very well. On closer inspection I saw that there was now a small but noticeable gap between the "chassis" and the top cover of the laptop. I feared the worst, and on opening the laptop up I could confirm that the battery had swollen. Not a huge amount, but I had no interest of continuing to use a laptop with a spicy pillow inside.

To framework's credit they did send me a replacement battery after contacting them. Although it did take more message back and forth than I would expect.

After being frustrated with my purchase and now the battery failing, I was seriously considering a different laptop.

I also have a 16" M2 MacBook Pro at home, provided by my employer. It never complains when connected to the same dock. It barely gets hot, even under load. And the battery life is amazing.

Because of this I started to consider buying a MacBook. There are some drawbacks to Apple devices: Repairability is worst-in-class. Upgradeability? Forget it. And everything upgrade is very expensive. But the advantages are too great. Performance is great, build quality has been unmatched for... forever? Battery-life is best-in-class.

After the M4 MacBook Pro's came out it didn't take very long until I bit the bullet and bought one. An expensive purchase but hopefully one I will not regret this time. I've been using it for about 2 weeks and so far it has been great. I'm hoping this laptop will last me a long time.

Lastly, I did consider giving the framework another shot with the replacement battery. There might be a chance that I just had a faulty one to start with, which then could have been the source of all those issues. But looking online, the experience is very comparable. Battery life is not great, fans are loud and it gets hot fast.

I'm still really rooting for framework. I think their mission is an important one. I hope they succeed and that my next laptop will be another framework. I'm sorry for going to the dark side guys.