That's exactly my point. When I bought the 13 I figured there would be these kinds of upgrades down the road. You're right to say that was stupid and it was. And next there will be the framework 17, a 16 that's not backwards compatible or something?
Like the other commenter mentioned, you can upgrade the 13". It's pretty common for laptops to come in two classes: smaller with a focus on portability and larger with a focus on performance.
There's a reason why a lot of us sat on the sidelines and were looking forward to the 16". There is no slippery slope here, the differentiated product lines 100% make sense.
Edit: there is another class I could see making sense - desktop replacement. Those chassis' tend to be pretty chunky because they put desktop parts into a laptop. Think 10 lb laptop with a battery that lasts 20-30 minutes. But I'm not sure if the market is large enough for them to pursue it.
You can hardly expect Framework to reconfigure the physical structure of your laptop to support a new GPU card when the device didn't have one to begin with.
You seem to be looking for something to complain about.
The 13" is upgradeable, just not in the same way the 16" is. It shouldn't be surprising that you can fit more stuff in a chassis for a 16" laptop than an 13" laptop, not to mention it's harder to deal with thermal issues in a 13" laptop. While it's not unheard of, it's much less common to see a dGPU in a 13" laptop, and Framework is no exception there.
I've upgraded my Framework 13 a bunch already since I bought it in 2022, and will hopefully continue to do so for years.
I think you are making up a scenario that is not real.
You assume Framework will just abandon models willy nilly and make slight model line changes to break compatibility like moving from 16” to 17”, but in reality they have no track record of doing that.
The original 13” model has been around for 5+ years and it’s been 100% forward and backward compatible through multiple iterations of parts. Framework has never discontinued a product line.
As framework doesn't produce their own hardware, they're also forced to live with the reality that generations are also bound by the whims of the producers.
E.g sockets and chipsets change and will force incompatible changes, no matter how much framework would like to keep things stable.
Not sure what you mean by "produce". Nearly no PC/laptop brand actually manufactures their own hardware.
Framework does work with ODMs (Compal, I believe, is their main one?) to design mainboards for their chassis, which are designed specifically for Framework. It's not like they just take an off-the-shelf design and build it without any modifications.
And yes, chipsets change. (A "socket" changing isn't really a thing when we're talking about a laptop where the CPU/SoC is soldered in.) Generally this isn't a problem, though: as long as you can design something that physically fits in the chassis and supports the features you want, you're fine.
The socket still has a significant impact, even if the CPU is soldered on. It puts constraints on where things can be.
I believe the framework CEO himself mentioned in an interview how the chipset and socket are kinda at the core of designing the whole laptop, because it necessitates the placement of the cooling and all other components. I sadly didn't bookmark that YouTube video, so I cannot provide a link however
And fwiw, Apple is the only company that could make their laptops fully compatible and upgradeable, because they've got the relevant stack under their own control. Sadly, they're not interested in reducing ewaste, as that would mean less profit for them
