I’ll contest that on the screens. Mini-LED backlighting is a substantial step up for contrast, backlights in general have gotten brighter, IPS panels have gained notability better color gamuts and contrast, and OLED panels are now widely available even in budget machines. The screens on the M1-M4 MBPs look quite visibly nicer than those MBPs used up until 2019.

Those painfully awful 1366x768 TN panels that used to be commonplace have finally mostly been ousted, too. As a result, chances are that the laptop you buy at nearly any price bracket in 2026 has a screen that’s moderately to dramatically better than was found in laptops in the same bracket up until 2020-2022.

The problems with the port modules are that due to their dimensions, the number of ports you can have on the laptop at once is small and the big voids in the chassis required for them to be able to slot in greatly weakens it and makes it more prone to flexing.

With an alternative design that uses internal port boards (still hooked up via USB-C) with matching exterior side plates, you could easily do something like 3x USB-C, 1x USB-A on the left and 1x Ethernet, 1x USB-C, 1x USB-A, 1x SD/microSD on the right in the same space as would’ve been taken by the modules for half as many ports. This would suit most users perfectly out of the box, precluding the need for swapping for many, but for those who need one side to be full USB-C or multiple NICs or a cell modem or something that’s still possible.

I have a 6 year old high end laptop that I keep as a backup and I disagree about no progress being made on screens. The current screens are very good, especially in high brightness environments.

> The only thing that significantly changes is the motherboard, which is not nothing, but replacing it independently makes sense to me.

Laptop motherboards aren’t like desktop motherboards where you can define a big outline and fit standard parts within it. The laptop design leverages tight co-design with the enclosure for thermal performance. If you’re lucky and leave enough extra space then you can design next generation parts to line up neatly with the thermal solution of last gen, then cap it at the limit of whatever last gen was designed for. However the optimal solution will always be to co-design the chassis, thermal solution, and motherboard together.

The modules are just inset usb-c dongles.

Handy that you can have them fully encased but there’s nothing really limiting any other laptop on this front. You just use an external dongle and have the same flexibility.

Maybe some people really want the enclosed module so they have fewer things to carry, but that’s a pretty small advantage that I’m not sure many people will value.

I could get something like this ( https://satechi.net/products/undefined/products/pro-hub-slim ) for my MacBook Air and come out ahead on weight and size.

Screens are dramatically better than a few years ago and have been advancing if you care about and shop for the feature. Trackpads are slowly sucking less.

Most people only see this in MacBook Pros, but the other manufacturers have excellent screens that are often hidden behind customization options and complex models/branding.

I have a framework and love it, but it’s a computer made for a specific purpose that doesn’t align with most people. That’s ok - Dell makes like 500 different let laptops and Framework has a totally different proposition.

> That's one of the best idea they have! You might have bought a laptop with 4 USB ports 5 years ago, only to realize you'd be so much happier with two USB-A. Or you realize you never ever use the SD Card slot. Well, you'd fix that easily on a Framework, not on any other laptop.

With all due respect -- meh.

I have a fairly old-ish laptop that I am not bothered to upgrade because a Ryzen 5500U is super capable to this day (and I don't do local LLMs) and it has a 10Gbps USB Type-C port, an HDMI port, and a USB 3.0 Type-A port. And an SD card reader.

I bought a hub. I put the laptop on a stand and plug its Type-C 10Gbps slot in the hub. Job done.

All this clamoring about being able to replace ports surely resonates with many people but to this day I don't view it as a true advantage. If you have to carry your laptop to a dedicated office, a stand and a hub are table stakes anyway. And that's not even touching a proper big display, keyboard and a mouse.

And furthermore, if making the ports flexible leads to too many design compromises then to me that means that I am making a bad deal.

I am periodically inspecting Framework laptops and I still find them lacking. Their appeal to tinkerers has IMO peaked and they should pivot to another pitch or they might not survive. Though I really, really hope they do. We need the competition.