Trades pay significantly more than that in the urban US in my experience. Not sure if it is because of a history of being less well-respected but supply is definitely low still relative to demand post-COVID.

I wish my midwestern US city had some more money sloshing into civic projects.

Sure but in terms of build quality does any laptop compare with a MacBook?

Real question: Do you truly think the XPS is comparable to the Framework? I’ve no experience with the Framework so genuinely curious. OP seems less than impressed?

They're in the same price tier and both target software devs. With the XPS you're paying about the same price for a far better display and trackpad. With the framework, you might save some money on memory and storage and get decent repairability.

And yes, I'd say an XPS compares in build quality to a MacBook Air, and has so many benefits over a Mac that it's not worth listing.

> XPS compares in build quality to a MacBook Air

I don't know about the Air but I've used both and it is certainly not a match for MacBook Pro.

> has so many benefits over a Mac

Curious, such as what? I'm not invested in the Apple ecosystem at all, but I think MacBook (Pro) is the best developer laptop available.

Thanks for the comparison.

The Razor laptops are really sturdy and the touchpad is very close to how a mac one feels.

I was curious about those. What's the Linux situation on them?

There’s a special version released in conjunction with Lambda labs that comes with Ubuntu - called the Tensorbook. High prices though

It’s actually a stein of beer, carried on the end of the barrel of the tank’s main gun, for others that like me did not understand. It’s cool.

Maybe pockets are one of those things that everyone says they’d like, but really that preference is subordinate to so many other considerations, that it doesn’t materially affect the success of the product. Couple that with simply costing a tiny bit more or just being different than the status quo, and it ends up a nonstarter, because why bother with something that won’t make the product more successful?

> Shouldn't they already factor in the cost of app support for the next X years when selling the product?

Depends what you mean by “should”. If you mean that they should because it would be the right thing to do, sure. If you mean it would be competitively advantageous, well I rather doubt it. Consumers have almost uniformly demonstrated that price trumps all.

Price and marketing. For better or worse[0], the consumers are putting trust into marketoids and their emotionally manipulative messaging, that focuses on imaginary nirvana-like experience, and completely omits how the experience is likely to look like a few months after purchase.

--

[0] - Sadly, it's likely for better. The world after most people get an accurate feel for how much they can trust companies will be a very bad place to live in.

People were saying this in 1923 after the radio became popular.

And they were correct then and they're correct now.