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.
I've upgraded my Framework 13 a bunch already since I bought it in 2022, and will hopefully continue to do so for years.
E.g sockets and chipsets change and will force incompatible changes, no matter how much framework would like to keep things stable.
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.
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
Unless you already have the Ryzen AI 300 motherboard - in which case you're up to date - you can upgrade your motherboard right now:
https://frame.work/marketplace?compatibility%5B%5D=amd_ryzen...
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.
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.
Obviously we can’t predict the future.
I'd be more concerned about what I'd be able to do with an older 16-inch mainboard, as the 13-inch has the Cooler Master case options.
Still rocking the Intel Tiger Lake 13-inch here, mixed Windows / Ubuntu workflow, loads of RAM.