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The Enshittification of 3D Printers – Are We Losing What Made Them Great?
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this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2025
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I mean, most people don't care. How often do you see mainstream smartphone reviewers making a single mention of the insane amount of bloatware and spyware on phones, or calling out Apple for their unrepairable devices? Shit just blows over eventually and consumers accept it for what it is. 3D printers are not exempt from this mentality.
Jeff Geerling made a video today about how he bought a dishwasher that was top-rated by ~~RTINGS~~ Consumer Reports with no mention of the fact that in order to make it do a God damn thing, you have to connect it to the app, create an account, and connect it to them OEM's cloud.
Several years ago I bought a DJI action cam and it was the same thing. You can't do jack shit with it without connecting it to an app and creating an account. I watched dozens of reviews and this was never mentioned. I returned it but I'm sure 99.9% either don't give a fuck or accepted it.
When I'm shopping for cell phones and reading reviews a routinely see comments about the amount of bloatware embedded on various manufacturer's devices. People actually do care about it, reviewers actually do write about it.
Never seen it before.
I think 3D-Printers have just this DIY image for me and that's why i thought the general 3D-Printer user is more tech-savvy and aware.
If they would tell me that my ESP32 needs cloud connection to use them i would be furious to.
The industry is evolving. It happens in every industry eventually. When any one OEM corners a sufficient market size (like Bambu), they start taking freedom from the user to lock them into their ecosystem. Then all the other OEMs go "well if they're doing it I guess we can do it too". This is what you see trickle down from Apple all the time: headphone jacks, glued together devices, soldered RAM, and most recently unhinged RAM and storage prices, etc.
It's what you see in the smart home industry as well. A dozen different brands with zero interoperability because none of them want to compete on a level playing field, they all just want to lock you into their ecosystem.
It didn't seem to work for Bambu but they will back down and then try it again in another 12 months or make smaller changes. They just boiled the frog too quickly.
Apple's RAM/storage prices have been unhinged for a long time. I try to avoid any upgrades when I buy their products, it's usually better to get the higher model - I.e. with better processor/better product line (which usually has a better starting RAM/storage), than to upgrade a base model
yeah but it's only relatively recently that other OEMs are adopting these pricing strategies.
Do you mean having a lot higher margins on upgrades? I don't think that's true either, but maybe they've been getting more aggressive on that front over time.
I mean they charge 800%+ the value for additional storage options. There's no "thinking" it's true, it just is.
I was talking about other OEMs that you've mentioned. It's obvious what Apple does
As was I.
Which OEMs are as bad as Apple is, can you show me an example? I had no idea to be honest
I think you mean devolving
Just wanted to mention, it was top by consumer reports. I don't think he mentioned RTHINGs but could have missed that.
Edited, thanks
Thats not really a good comparison. Fist thing someone does when they buy a smartphone is replace the OS. Same as laptops.
If you genuinely believe that, you are either living in some kind of serious tech nerd bubble, or you have no idea what replacing the OS means and you're talking about doing software updates, tweaking settings, and installing apps.
The vast majority of smartphone users probably don't even realize you can replace the OS, and if they do they probably don't see the need.
For desktops and laptops, around 71% of them are running windows, somehow I doubt people are buying Linux or Mac laptops just to turn around and install windows on them. Then around 16% of them are running MacOS, and I doubt that any significant number of those are hackintoshes. A fair amount of the remaining 13% or so are probably people who have installed their own OS, but not all, some of them are using ChromeOS, I don't hear much about people deciding to make their own Chromebook, and some people are buying an off-the-shelf Linux device.