I heard somewhere, Intel is quite extensively helping small projects with hardware/board design. I assume that’s the reason they started with Intel (apart from AMD chip sourcing in the last 1 - 2 years), and if that’s the case, they may not have the actual capabilities to make an AMD/ARM board on their own yet - not a matter of wanting to. I doubt this a about a preference for Intel over AMD at all, otherwise. Especially with their target audience.

Considering how well their first machines are received, how outstanding their public image holds, I am sure they will not have troubles hiring passionate talent. Management, values, making an arguably thoughtful and desirable product, … seems like a dream job, when you work in that niche, no?

I kinda wish I had a need to buy a laptop. I'd love to support what they are doing, and the specs and features are pretty much what I would be looking for if I was buying a laptop.

I'm not concerned with the chip. Anything modern is plenty for my needs. I'm waiting for a 3k screen. That's what I spend all day staring at.

You won't catch me hunched over a laptop all day. I just need the screen for the few occasions where I am on the road or maybe in a meeting. Most of the time I will be docking my laptop. The ergonomics are just way better.

This became more obvious to me working from home though I should have realized it earlier. I was already using an external display (27") - then switched from that to a 43" inch (with the 27" moving to the side in rotated-portrait mode). The productivity gain was day and night - being able to glance at a 2x4 grid of code is a big jump from constant Alt-Tab. My only regret is not buying it before the prices started going north on account of wfh being wide-spread.

Fair. I built a desktop for the first time in a decade over the pandemic, so I'm looking for something that will basically never be hooked in to an external monitor.

I wonder if they’ll do a Ryzen option anytime soon. Connecting displays and some of their modules (e.g. HDMI) appear to need thunderbolt. Ryzen doesn’t ship with that, yet.

Didn’t intel release a Thunderbolt chipset for motherboard manufacturers to include? I thought some Ryzen motherboards had it to implement thunderbolt? Is it just not available in the low power-mobile category?

There are just a couple that have and the reviews have been lack luster. If framework is trying to get things off the ground I would not expect them to spend a bunch of time going down this rabbit hole.

There are rumors that future Ryzens will have Thunderbolt but we'll need to wait for those then get into motherboards that are for this. It won't be right away.

Are you sure it's thunderbolt and not USB-C/DP alternate mode?

Tbh. I tend to disable thunderbolt always due to security concerns which have more then once shown to be well founded.

It’s thunderbolt physically, but they don’t call it that because they aren’t certified, or something like that.

It's Thunderbolt. (Typing this reply from a Framework laptop connected to a Thunderbolt dock.)