Our thing was more custom than the framework, but mid seven figures sounds like a steal. Does that include making Linux be reliable on it? (5 engineers total on the EE/mechanical/industrial engineering and SW bringup teams * 4 year product lifespan is mid seven figures, just for salary. That doesn't include facilities, HW budget, stock, etc)
I've never used a framework, but I assume suspend resume is reliable, it can sleep for a week, the GPU works, sound card doesn't pop/crackle, etc, etc... That stuff is hard to get right over time as distros get updated, which is why the above team needs to stick around over time (hopefully while they make version N+1).
Like System76, the firmware is open source, so perhaps after a while it'll work.
Edit: sure enough. Several little gotchas and obscure commands even with the top-line distro, fedora.
From the crowd sourced setup guide (https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Fedora+36+Installation+on+th...)
> If you are seeing high suspend power drain, set "nvme.noacpi=1" in your kernel parameters. In Fedora, you can do this by running the following command: sudo grubby --update-kernel=ALL --args="nvme.noacpi=1"
> sudo grubby --update-kernel=ALL --args="module_blacklist=hid_sensor_hub"
Yeah, no. This is not what I would consider supporting Linux. Are there more gotchas? Who knows? Nobody's checking until its released!
My impression was that Quanta does way more for Framework than final integration. Well, good to see that somebody takes on the design themselves today.
> The cost of developing a from scratch laptop like ours is closer to the mid seven figures.
With most of that being the cost of buying the reference design, and access to the documentation I believe?
I last worked on a budget Atom laptop back in 2014. Back then the docs were freely available with enough good Googling, as well as commercial quantities of Atom chipsets sold around Intel's channel. Now I believe it's near impossible without going through an Intel approved IDH.
This is not correct. See elsewhere in the thread. However, its not as custom as Apple, but they're also significantly smaller than Apple.
Designing a laptop from scratch may be an adventure with a budget close to $200k-$300k, but there are tons, and tons of US brands who can pull this financially. Yet, even the "innovative" Framework laptop is mostly OEM work. It seems no Western brand took risk designing own hardware since nineties.
I've been a privy to Dell's plans for launching a low-end sub-brand for Asia few years ago, before the COVID.
Every contact manufacturer they been considering was exuberant about an opportunity to launch something original under Dell's brand, but Dell's MBAs were horrified of the prospect giving franchisees permission to run own designs: "what if they will make something too good, and compete with our main brand?", "what if they will screw up the design, and degrade our brand?", "how we will square this off with our part suppliers if we will divert them to another party?"
I myself would've eagerly taken an opportunity to spin up my own laptop brand, with original design. It's far, far easier than most these fellows imagine, and certainly shouldn't cost many millions.