I've always been told it's called business. But I fully agree with you. Just wanted to note that this is the current business model both with hardware and software
Without the ability to run your own code, this will be everywhere and everything.
Without some counter force of open source pushing back and offering alternatives, we'll be putting tokens in a machine to check your email. Reading email will cost 4 tokens and you'll only be able to buy them in groups of 7.
The "business" ended when the sale transaction concluded. The fact that you were the seller in that past transaction doesn't entitle you to vandalize goods that now belong to someone else.
This is just crime trying to disguise itself as legitimate business, as scams often do.
Actually not, though not in a way that makes the rest of your post incorrect.
Various laws and regulations state that the seller has responsibilities to the buyer after the initial transaction has completed, one of which Bambu might¹ be transgressing by removing features that people we lead to believe were part of the product, and could reasonably expect to remain part of the product, at the time of the sale.
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[1] This has not been tested in court, and I'm no lawyer, take my idea of what is the case with a requisite serving of condiment.
Never buying a cartridge based inkjet printer again.
However, if you want your pictures to last 10+ years under the sun, or being able to read what you have printed after some time, getting the genuine ink is the way.
People think ink is simple. It is not.
Anybody thinking otherwise, some points of pondering:
- Why Xerox and HP run their own toner/ink labs to formulate their own ink down to molecule level?
- Look at your standard disposable pens. Gel, liquid, dye, pigment, alcohol/water/oil based, UV resistant or not... It's a hard chemical problem.
- Similarly even something bland like fountain pen ink has hundreds of different formulations. Not colors, formulations. Washable to cellulose reactive and everything in between...
Lastly, I'm not against people using 3rd party ink at any level. I just want to point out that not every ink cartridge is created equal.
Then why don't they allow it, perhaps with warnings?
They don't block after market ink because of quality concerns, though they might claim so, they block it because they want to make more money from you themselves through ink sales. The common response here is “but they make a loss on selling the hardware!”, to which my response is “their bad pricing decision is not my problem”.
But indeed, the third party brush caused the robot to have all types of errors. Some third party parts did work, just not the brushes. I guess there's some sort of strict size tolerance and the third party ones were a bit too big or small.
But I had only myself to blame for that.
I can still use any print I got from it even after a decade. Ink's that stable on these.
From my perspective, 3rd party ink or toner is a support nightmare, esp. if it's bottom of the barrel. Again, from my perspective you should be able to take the responsibility and use these if you really want, but any ink or toner related damage might be out of warranty then (HP's genuine cartridges come with their own guarantees).
So, I can speculate that makers both offset the price and don't want to handle support tickets related to 3rd party ink damage for lower end devices, and buyers of higher end models are either using 1st party ink, or fine with paying the repair costs if their 3rd party installations go haywire.
Also, it's possible that kits for higher end inkjet systems (large format/plotter systems) tend to be higher quality since these models cater to professional shops which needs high quality supplies.
Lastly, I talked with someone who said that they buy the cheapest paper and cheapest ink because the printouts are disposable for them, and I find that point entirely fair, too.
My main point was underlining the fact that ink is not something simple in formulation. I don't defend banning 3rd party ink, but just pointing out some facts. I believe everybody can carry out their own fafo procedure.
Yes, your ink might be better. Market it that way and make it known. No problem with that. But prevent me from using my tool using DRM and firmware updates? That is customer hostile.
Ah yes, the standard usecase for a printer. putting pictures outside for a decade.
It's one of the exact reasons inkjet printers and blank, inkjet-compatible photo paper exists. HP was bundling them with their printers when I last opened mine.
https://www.techradar.com/pro/did-your-3d-printer-start-prin...
It could be argued that it is not theft by various devious uses of legalise¹.
Personally I'd go with calling it, at best, deceptive sales practices (on the assumption that they knew they'd be moving this way long before they did), or possibly outright fraud if I'm in a less generous mood.
[FYI: Bambu A1 user for nearly two years, also have a Snapmaker U1, if I buy anything else it won't be Bambu unless their attitudes change. The A1/A1mini are still two of the best budget beginner printers IMO, though some clones come close, and I do recommend them if asked but with caveats around potential lock-in later and not believing promises due to a history of changed online posts, deliberately excluded from the WayBackMachine, and what to my understanding is an AGPL breach]
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[1] “There is a way to use the feature, so it isn't an attempt to permanently deprive”, or “you agreed to the possibility of such changes in the EULA”, and so on.