I went with the Brother Skitch PP1. It's right around $300 on amazon. It has sub-par reviews, but I realized that most of those were because of the poorly built software and subscription fee. So far, it has worked really well for me! Edit: here is a video/image of a patch I made: https://x.com/simpsoka/status/2115254318161182876
replyIn the past I've been really impressed by Brother products so I'm surprised to hear about their subscription model.
replyWhat benefits (if any) does the subscription offer?
I think they didn't intend for the bluetooth protocol to be reverse engineered. The free version of the software you really can't do much (limited colors, tools). I believe they also have some clip-art that they make available with the subscription. It's pretty bad.
replyIt's maybe different business units. I have a couple industrial label printers from Brother, and although some of the software decisions are weird, there's no subscriptions or stuff like that.
replyI wonder if we might actually see an uptick in sales for hardware that has bad/abusive software out of the box... I hadn't really considered getting an embroidery machine, but now the idea actually seems sort of intriguing, esp. if it isn't locked to some terrible subscription. I doubt the manufacturers will connect the dots, but maybe if they ask Claude why sales are up...
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