The new Start Framework, based in San Francisco, was launched with the goal of fixing an “incredibly broken” computer industry, as the CEO says. To combat this, Framework laptops are an ecosystem of pieces that work together into a computer that can evolve constantly.
Framework founder and one of the original Oculus employees, Nirav Patel, tells The edge that he wanted to address the biggest problems in the computer industry with his new company.
“As a consumer electronics company, your business model effectively depends on throwing out constant tons of hardware and pushing them into channels and markets and into consumers’ hands, and then dropping them and letting them exist,” Patel says. “It encourages waste and inefficiency, and ultimately damage to the environment.”
To address this, Patel and his team created Framework: an ecosystem that is more than an individual product capable of exchanging and upgrading different parts over time to enable customization, easier repairs, and of course, the device can improve with changes in technology.
The base frame has a 13.5-inch 2256 × 1504 screen, a Full-HD 60 frame per second webcam, a 55Wh battery and a 2.87-pound aluminum chassis. It is powered by 11th generation Intel processors, up to 64 GB DDR4 memory and 4 TB (or more) of Gen4 NVMe SSD storage.
All of these components, from the battery to the memory to the storage space, can be swapped and changed over time, which is not very uncommon for computers, but rare (or never existed before) in laptops. But Framework goes even further and offers the ability to exchange even external parts like gates, the keyboard or even the screen and the rings (held by magnets).
The company also offers a ‘DIY’ set of parts that you choose when purchasing, allowing customers to build their own laptops at home and install Windows 10 Home, 10 Pro or Linux. Of course, all the parts are also replaceable and upgradeable at any time.
Framework will support these interchangeable parts through its own market that will launch it, which will serve as a hub for buying and selling parts. The market will serve as a central point for consumers, but will be open to third-party sellers and sellers. Framework hopes that those who can break a part or just want to replace it with something else will know that it is easy to find the Framework market they are looking for, rather than searching the internet for the best options.
The concept sounds great, but if The edge point out: this has been done before and has failed. Intel tried and failed modular computers, Compute Card’s Ghost Canyon NUC could not keep up with new parts, and Alienware’s Area-51m also never got the promised future-proof parts. Framework’s success depends only on its ability to meet the promise of parts that customers actually want to upgrade, and it’s probably not enough to trust third-party manufacturers to do so.
Patel believes that the companies that have failed this concept in the past did so because they were not committed to it, and since it is Framework’s entire business strategy, the result will be different.
The framework will be pre-ordered in the spring and expects shipping to begin in the summer. No prizes have been announced so far, but Patel says The edge to expect it to be “comparable to other well-rated notebooks.”
(via the edge)