There isn’t another viable option with just the performance/battery life combination, before even considering the excellent build quality, etc. Repairability has a major cost to space. They’re in direct conflict. You can’t do the form factor and have user repairable parts.
Buy a giant, bulky laptop that still can’t match the performance for a full day of use if you want, but there isn’t anything even in the same space as the Apple Silicon MacBooks, let alone competitive in that space.
Apple intentionally builds their devices to not be repaied, there is a BIG difference in technical constraints because of a lack of space and intentional decisions like sothered SSDs with a swap partition (RAM overflow on the storage drive that causes tons of writes) by default or a special storage architectures that has no benefit over existing solutions except that noone can buy replacments. It’s not like you need a bulky Laptop for user servicable parts ether, the Framework Laptop isn’t the thinest on the market but it’s certainly not bulky and if even a small startup can achive that imagine what amazing devices Apple could build if they invested a tiny bit of their money in repairability, and if it’s just the part they currently invest in to the opposite!
The soldered components are because space.
The framework is fine, but it’s an entirely different class of product that’s not even sort of in the same neighborhood of portability, and doesn’t compete at much else either. The only way you’re getting your money’s worth is if you actually do use it and its bad display for a bunch of generations.
People are buying Apple laptops because they’re by far the best at what they are, to the point that there isn’t a single competitor that’s not laughable to compare to it.
