This is all my opinion and my takes are based on what I’ve read on this thread and on my own time. I own a A1 got it right after the original cable failure back in April since then I’ve put 1600 hours into the printer and haven’t had much issues. It was nice to have the connivences of out of the box printing. But since then I’ve been using orca since June just cause I loved the built in calibration feature. This update if I’m reading it correctly will just make MY printing less convenient cause of having to either switch to BS(Bambu studio) or use the connect. Swapping shouldn’t be that hard but I can manage, what worries me is how inconvenient will Bambu start to become? That’s my only worry I guess. This is my opinion just on how the changes will affect my life this isn’t to mention the other shady stuff that’s been unearthed on here. These are my opinions and I guess I’ll just have to wait till the dust settles and see if its going to pass and we all just lost are ■■■■ for nothing, or all hell will break loss and I’m going to have change printers and let my A1 collect dust/sell it. Which I’m really hoping doesn’t happen. Again take my opinion with a grain of salt I’m just here to try to make sense of this by going on my own rant lol. But please if there’s something BIG I’m missing please feel free to politely educate me I don’t mind : )
… announcing this monumental change practically a week before everybody in China goes off for the Chinese New Year celebration and will remain for another week like this - then they can ‘justify’ the radio silence with seasonal vacations. “What, you want people not to have their vacations so they can immediately answer you?!”
It’s an equivalent of Microsoft announcing that with the next release of Windows 11 you’ll be able to install apps only through Microsoft Store a week before Christmas…
I am in fact primarily concerned about the utility as an appliance being limited after the sale, and all the false advertising of features that are now being removed (or never existed at all).
(I think it is good if people are able to tinker, I just don’t think this is the crux of the current issue.)
For anyone who doesn’t understand why Bambu controlling what software I have can and cannot access the printer I purchased, please read Unauthorized Bread by Cory Doctorow. Like a Bambu printer, a toaster is a simple consumer device. It’s a short story, and can be legitimately read for free here: Unauthorized Bread: Real rebellions involve jailbreaking IoT toasters - Ars Technica
I am just going to leave this here:
If you have read that, and still don’t understand why everyone is upset about the direction Bambu is heading in, then there is no way to explain it.
Could be. Could also be that people simply want a way to fully utilize the thing they own. This isn’t a rental.
Cory was waaay ahead of all of us.
You buy a product for the privilege of being the product. The world isn’t designed for you.
Unless you rebel and cease to be the product. Which some of us have already done…more will (eventually) follow…or select the easy way out and choose to remain the product.
I respect the effort. I agree that this is a worthy goal. Sadly, I do sometimes wonder if we have crossed the capitalist rubicon - that as people we no longer have access to the mental tools to extricate ourselves from a form of slavery that we’ve gotten so used to we can no longer see.
It has been reversed somewhat, with the likes of the right to repair movement, and the anti John Deere stuff that was going on, but I do fear when you have people falling for the BMW subscriptions, insurance premiums being linked to data collection about you, and going for subscriptions like netflix and spotify rather than buying and owning their music and movies/tv shows outright (which you can always change format)… that those who wish to remain in full control of their products, rather than rent them, are every much in the minority 
Bambu Lab will choose to do what it decides is best for themselves as a corporation. When you bring investors to the table, you loose percentages of say in what goes on in the future. It leads to a board which then becomes talk about money, products and PR.
They’ve presented their capabilities and gained a percentage of the consumer print market. How they adapt and move towards growing the brand is unknown. I dislike what they’ve chose to do but in the end I myself won’t change the minds of an entire company. In the meantime I’ve invested in other brands releasing the same capability of BL printers with other features that improve my experience. I’ll hear about this new printer sometime in the coming months and if its something absolutely eye catching, innovative and one-of-a-kind. That’s pretty much the only way ill even bat my eye.
$1499 - $2,499 somewhere in between is a large price tag for a coreXY. Voron’s Stealthchanger is revolutionary and if its not toolchangers well I’m over the multicolor thing. I need TRUE multi-material printing.
Those few will (hopefully) become more and more to understand that simple fact, and they’ll be viewed either as the rebels, or as the renegades of this consumerist society… Looking at human history, those few who dared to rebel have brought positive changes to society (in any case, most of them, as not all were successful). I’d rather challenge the existing “status quo” imposed by corporations (and whoever else wants us to accept being the product and not the beneficiaries).
The best slave is the one who think he is free.
Prusa XL? (25 characters is such a dumb rule)
What we really need is a Bambu hub, some security camera firms give the choice of cloud storage or a local hub. Servers do have a cost associated with running and maintaining them. I suspect Bambu are a victim of their own success and server costs are growing. I can live with LAN mode. There is already a middleware program and if it continues to allow LAN mode fine. In the meantime I won’t update anything until Bambu’s intent becomes clear. My next purchase may well not be Bambu, others are catching them up.
If I were Bambu I would be concerned about their reputation, Trustpilot score currently 80% 3 star or less, 72% 1 star! Just had a look at creality, their Creality Cloud, 2 options free and a subscription based premium version.
Too bad I ordered my first 3D printer yesterday. The A1 mini. I only saw the controversy after I ordered it. The intermediary “agent” contradicts my beliefs and is perhaps acceptable in China, but not for Europe or other large parts of the world. I’m considering whether to return it or just run it in SD card mode and see how the situation develops. If it stays that way, it will certainly be the last printer I buy from Bambu Lab. I will also refrain from using such devices in a school environment and any orders have already been canceled. (Unfortunately) I will probably keep my private small one as described, I can’t imagine that Bambu Lab will survive internationally if it goes down this path. But that’s just my opinion.
At a minimum, it’ll kill a large part their “prosumer” business for their next flagship. Besides schools and small businesses posting here, I have seen X1’s in Universities, R&D labs and even industrial production environments. None of them can even think about procuring a printer requiring Bambu Connect. So with it likely being priced above the X1, are there more than a handfull of likely “prosumers” left?
I remember that in 2023, Bambu did a customer survey. It may be worth it for them to do another one to get a better understanding of the “prosumer” market. It’d allow them to alter course without loosing face.
That would be particularly important as Bambu’s usual response to security/legal concerns is one of ill informed panic. Bambu Connect now, X1 Plus in late 2023,…
If you’re not comfortable with what they’re doing now return it unopened and let them know why.
I doubt they will backpedal on this, we would know by now.