Comment by carpenecopinum
3 years ago
I can't wrap my head around how the printer market has turned into this absolutely dispicable, foul state that it is in right now.
Decades of innovation that have been invested, not to make a better product, but mostly on how to extract more and more money from their victims, I mean "customers".
I would like to own a printer again, but for printing something like once a month, I just can't financially justify spending several hundred bucks on a device that might, at the whim of the manufacturer, decide that the way I'm using it is not okay anymore, is probably designed to break after two years, requires me to sign up for a subscription service for ink, or whatever BS else the decision makers in this space come up with.
> I can't wrap my head around how the printer market has turned into this absolutely dispicable, foul state that it is in right now.
This is the dying gasps of an industry that is mostly irrelevant in the modern age.
When I was growing up we always had a printer, and while ink wasn't cheap, it wasn't too bad, so we used it a lot and printed everything we needed. The industry grew to expect this, most households with a computer also owning a printer and regularly buying ink for it.
This isn't the case anymore. So much of our lives happens "digital-only" that printers aren't needed by most people, and those who do need them don't need as much ink. I have never owned a printer myself, and my parents still own one but buy ink on a yearly basis now.
The market should be shrinking naturally, and so every printer company is trying everything they possibly can to grow or at least keep from shrinking as much. In the panic they are in, it's understandable that this will lead to crappy business practices.
Once again the "market" is abusing everyone in the pursuit of endless economic growth. Our economic system forces successful businesses into enemies of the consumer once they can't keep momentum.
Coupled with the concentrating monopolisation of the economy, this creates a phenomenon where helpless consumers are held at ransom: the ultimatum being that they either continue to be exploited in ever more devious ways, or to simply do without. Small businesses that spring up to fulfill the void are bought up quickly in order to squash any hope of real competition.
This is not an economy that works for ordinary people. Ordinary people does include temporarily embarrassed millionaires (and real millionaires, and startups and micro-businesses for that matter) on Hacker News.
The only people who are benefiting overall from these practices are major shareholders and those chasing endless quarterly growth targets.
Uh... Pretty sure the printer industry is holding literally no one hostage. As mentioned in several comments—this industry is dead.
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> Coupled with the concentrating monopolisation of the economy,
There is no “monopoly” in the printer industry and it’s definitely not holding the economy “hostage”.
We do not need the government to break up “Big Printer”.
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IDK, I'm in my mid 30s and I really can't remember printers being alright.
I do. I had a number of great printers before they adopted the DRM to enforce their razor+blades model.
1. HP Deskwriter. Built-in localtalk networking, connected to two Macs over phonenet. Bulletproof, paper handling was great.
2. HP Laserjet 4N. Built-in Ethernet print server, fast, bulletproof. Worked with 3rd party toner just fine. It was priced to pay HP enough for the printer even if you never bought toner.
3. HP Deskjet 6000-series. 6210? Worked great, beautiful color, obsoleted by USB replacing parallel ports.
4. Lexmark laser, bought used, worked with 3rd party toner, fast, networked, postscript. Was the workhorse for a political campaign.
Since about 2007 I haven't been happy with a printer. The toner is very expensive and the products are poorly made and not easily repaired.
Epson Workforce Pro: needs to print every week or its jets dry out.
HP OfficeJet X page at once, a great idea, but the jets jam if you don't use enough color, and the paper path breaks.
Brother printers: always yelling at me for some reason, and they wear out.
Lexmark color laser: great physical printer but the controller board hangs. Too unreliable for business. Toner is expensive.
Before the Deskwriter I had printers I was less happy with. An Epson dot matrix, I mean, nobody liked their dot matrix printers, and an Apple Stylewriter that was finicky, not crisp, and didn't hold much ink.
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I am the same age as you; when we were young the printers themselves were garbage. Constantly breaking, ink cartridges drying out quickly if you weren't printing regularly. Do they still have that damn ribbon thing inside of them? I seem to remember that being a constant source of pain for 13-15 year old me.
Now the printers, mechanically, seem pretty good. Some still feel cheap but not necessarily low quality. But all the firmware and software around them seems to be geared at whatever it takes to get you to spend a little more money. Stories like this one are exactly why I don't update my Brother TN-730 firmware.
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I'm in my late 40s and I remember the joy of printing out banners with Print Shop on a Commodore 64 using a dot matrix printer. It was fantastic but it's been pretty downhill since there. Video to show what I mean:
https://youtu.be/BIltpheSZPs
In the modern era, I've just bought a cheap Brother black and white laser printer and called it a day. The toner lasts F-O-R-E-V-E-R.
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Printers became garbage when we switched from dot-matrix to inkjet.
Then they were horrible for 20 years until I decided to buy a Brother laser printer, and suddenly everything was right in the world.
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I am mid 30s, and the Brother MFC black and white laser printers have been solid since I was 15.
No, this did not go bad recently in a declining market. There were never good actors - inkjet printers were physical malware in the 90s, too.
The cheap printer market has always been an abusive, anti-user shitshow. Arguably bad for the sellers, too - I've heard an argument that making cheap printers was the catalyst that ruined HP.
> printers aren't needed by most people, and those who do need them don't need as much ink
Cool anecdote. Here in Brazil, some small shops and cybercaffes will offer copy/printing services to you for a small change. That's usually where people go if they have to print/scan something. BTW this service is also know as Xerox.
I saw some shops running on retail printers, but most use those printers you can just fill with cheap ink.
Funny thing with my printer - I bought a "SAMSUNG Xpress M2026W Mono Laser Printer" for £60 about 4 years ago. Thought this is pretty good - Samsung's the way.
Then HP bought Samsung and killed that model.
Now I see they go for £130+ second hand on ebay.
I think that says something about how the market's going to hell as it were.
I still love my Samsung laser (ML-2251N), but it will be my last. On the other hand, I was able to get more toner fairly inexpensively, so it'll keep running for years now.
> I would like to own a printer again, but for printing something like once a month, I just can't financially justify spending several hundred bucks on a device
For printing something like once a month, it is even harder to justify wasting space by putting a printer. Printers should be put around in form of vending machines which would let you you insert a USB stick, drop some pennies and print the PDFs.
I for one, like being able to print content in the privacy of my own home without letting private companies like Fedex/Kinkos see it, and potentially filter/share it with third parties.
We're already shifting towards a society where things that offer a traditional offline, anonymous way of transacting information or currency is being construed as a threat because "terrorism", aka it cannot be monitored and controlled. Easily justifiable to still have one.
My dad still uses a Laserjet 4L daily to print ebay stuff and refuses to replace it because it works, and my 14 year old brother mfc, with an ipv6 stack(!) still works as good as the day I bought it. These things last generations.
The laserjet 4L works really well.
Where I live convenience stores (7-11) and most larger supermarkets have this. Basically a combo photo printer + office copier with a touchscreen and USB/memory card readers. Some of the are also loaded with postcards (for xmas cards) or even sticker paper to make your own stickers.
I also like to print out A3 posters for my kids and these printers can do that, whereas I'd never buy a huge A3 printer to have at home.
Your local public library is also a good option for this. Most, if not all, libraries have publicly-accessible computers where you can either log in to your cloud storage or email to print, and some have printers that can directly read from USB devices. Some will also let you send a file to a dedicated email address, where the library staff will print the document for you, should you be concerned about using shared hardware.
At my local library, prints are $0.05/page, vs. $0.15/page at my local commercial print shop.
Japan?
US 7-11's absolutely do not have this service, and you're lucky if you find a grocery store that has a photo copier these days (was somewhat common in the 90s).
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They are. Public libraries and places like FedEx Office do this and have for years. FedEx even has a virtual printer driver.
Until my kids were a little older, I had an old HP laser printer and then one of those cheap Brother devices. Now I use a little HP mfp with instant ink… it’s essentially a worry free existence.
I was at Kinkos last month to print a us govt passport renewal application document. The document had one tiny bit of color, entirely non essential to the purpose of the document. FedEx printer will scan the print job, and if there is any color in it, will unavoidably print in color, at much higher price per page. I asked, there is no way to force it to print in mono chrome.
There's no way I'd ever use put that USB stick in one of my computers again.
It's not going to make a rubber ducky from it. And the age of autorun USBs is hopefully over. I think this is but too paranoid
However, I'd not want to be the device manufacturer, making it secure against all kinds of USB attacks
> Printers should be put around in form of vending machines which would let you you insert a USB stick, drop some pennies and print the PDFs.
Every Fedex Print/Office center has this service. Most city libraries do as well.
And it seems the nearest "Fedex Office Print & Ship" is 176 miles away and gets 2.7 stars. No thank you.
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For what it's worth, if you have a staples nearby that's exactly what they offer. They accept emails too. I use it for my once a month printing, usually spend like 2$ on a small stack of papers.
My local library allows me to print for a few pennies per page. I need to print things so rarely and don't want a printer taking up space, so I've been using my library most of the time.
... and store copies of your private files on their hard drives for up to years. No thanks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC38D5am7go
Office stores have exactly like that in the Midwestern American city I live near. I like paper, so I have my own printer, but for occasional prints in 11x17 I use this and it's great. Quick, cheap, easy.
I'd love this but I can't think of a vendor that is reliable enough to put in a minimally attended machine. Thus we have the ones in UPS stores and markets.
There's been a sea change. In 2000 if you wasted time on a website for a pitch, it was a gimmick. People wanted a nicely printed, bound pitch book that they'd have in front of them at the meeting. They'd probably throw them away but one would float around for a while if you were lucky.
Now people expect you to have it digitally, and don't have a place for paper.
A lot of office equipment stores do that. For example in Australia Officeworks does that. You can even upload your bigger documents and drop in to pick up the ready result. https://www.officeworks.com.au/print-copy/info/pcc-print-and...
Anyone remember about a decade ago when Chrome had a "Print to FedEx Kinkos" setting in the print dialog? I used that so much. It was the most convenient thing. It was only available for a year or two? Then suddenly the feature vanished and I had to go back to using USB sticks. And now these days there aren't as many locations to print as there used to be.
I don't know where you live, but such devices are pretty common at least in France : you can go to most supermarkets and print a couple pages for less than a euro.
Definitely more expensive than ink+paper if you print a lot, but for my uses (couple of times a year) it's a no-brainer.
In France, some post offices have such self-service printers. I chose to go to the a self-service printer shop when I need it every few months. It minimizes resources, it limits feeding this toxic industry and it saves space on my desk.
UPS Stores also have this type of option. Though, depending on your print choice it is freaking costly.
We had a machine exactly like that at my university.
Pro-tip: Libraries.
> I can't wrap my head around how the printer market has turned into this absolutely dispicable, foul state that it is in right now.
There's no room left for innovation or competitive advantage. Its a commoditized market where they only make money when you buy their supplies so naturally they will engineer the product to work well with their supplies only.
This might be an opportunity for open source printer components. Maybe someone can create replacement parts to take out the "brain" of a small printer and replace that with a connected Raspberry Pi that doesn't change the print quality or reject 3rd party cartridges. I know there's likely a lot of settings in the software for head movement, ink usage, etc. so that might take some (possibly illegal?) reverse engineering. I'm a web software person so that idea may sound stupid to someone more knowledgeable.
> There's no room left for innovation or competitive advantage.
What? A hackable, OSS printer whose manufacturer puts time and effort into reducing waste and creating the best, longest lasting ink on the planet would crush it.
Well, maybe not. But anytime anyone has said: “That’s it. There’s nothing more to do here.” It tells me there’s a complacent market ripe for disruption.
How many people are using FairPhone or PinePhone outside HN bubble? I don't know anyone, even though most of my friends are from tech or science... I think that answers if people care about hackability / sustainability or similar
> A hackable, OSS printer
Outside of our bubble nobody cares about that
There is always something you can do, we see it with phones, just add more gimmicks on top, the thing is smartphones are aimed at the general population and became a fashion/class/status symbol. Printers are just printers, they work just fine and most of them are used in pro environment (aka most people don't pay, maintain or replace printers).
> It tells me there’s a complacent market ripe for disruption.
Then let's disrupt coffee mugs, or the wheel... some techs are good enough that further """progress""" isn't required.
Most people who have issues with printers buy cheap ones and/or use them once every 6 months, they then proceed to complain that they don't work anymore and that all printers are bad. It's like buying a car and never doing any maintenance until it dies and then complain about reliability.
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So it sounds like a company like System76 should build a printer and partner with no-brand ink cartridge companies to supply ink.
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No, you're right. There's nothing particularly magical about a printer. The PCL and Postscript specs have been in place for decades. Writing a driver to take that output and drive a print head to put it to paper should be pretty straightforward. (Needing to mark each print at the behest of the Secret Service to prevent counterfeiting is a question mark to me. Is that spec public?)
It SEEMS like you could make printer "kits" for people to assemble themselves, which would take bulk ink, and escape all of this nonsense. But then you'd have to sell it in stores, where HP, Epson, and Brother would act like any other large corporation to block chains like Best Buy and OfficeMax from carrying it.
I recall in the past, laser printers shared significant guts with copy machines. That's a product with an effectively 100% business market, so they're going to be way more TCO-driven.
From what I understand, once you get far enough above the SOHO market, even current printers are still that way. I suspect in the past, the small laser printer market was getting trickle-down benefits from technology innovations to service the commercial market, but now it's become its own free-standing market which no longer responds to the same signals.
It also makes me wonder if that's the road to an affordable, if overkill, printer-- a module that bypasses the scanning side of a used copier, and renders your PostScript data to it.
Reliable physical paper handling, e.g. supporting different paper weights, sizes. and thickness, duplex printing, avoiding paper jams, is nontrivial.
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I believe it's the print heads that are the bottleneck. I don't think they're available to put in your kit.
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> I can't wrap my head around how the printer market has turned into this absolutely dispicable, foul state that it is in right now.
Rent. You are effectively renting your printer, supplies are the payments. The hardware is expensive, sold cheaply, and supplies have high margins to make up for it.
It is often investors forcing this model.
I don’t think so. Nobody likes paying up front for equipment.
People lease cars, which is also a bad deal. Same motivation.
I'm not convinced that leasing is a "bad deal," per se, any more.
It’s been known since forever that printers are sold below costs to hook users.
Public buy printers. Good printers last a long time. Printer company offers online services (drivers / patches / APIs - see original post) which have on gong cost. But revenue stops after printer is sold. Printer company's remaining income is ink, ink sales undercut. Printer company goes bust. Printer company, who make printer, force you to use their ink. Printer company does not go bust.
Alternative (game console model) printer company license right to make ink for printer. Printer company does not go bust.
Cost of printer is printer + driver + server over life time of printer... what the public pay; a single one time purchase price.... model doesn't work.
> drivers / patches / APIs
It's a shame there aren't any open standards like lpd, jetdirect, postscript, and pcl for printers. /s
The printer business model has been abused for a long time in an effort to squeeze every last dime out of the market.
I'd argue there is one, and it's been around a surprisingly long time: Internet Printing Protocol.
<insert XKCD reference here>
I've had to dig into this a fair bit at work, and it's rather amazing. Certainly not perfect, but basically printers which are certified for IPP Everywhere (Mopria for Android, Airprint for Apple) are required to have built-in format support for a set of given formats. For example, Mopria certification requires PCLm (a backwards-compatible subset of PDF, designed for streaming), PWG Raster and PDF. IPP Everywhere mandates PWG Raster, JPEG and PDF. Of course Apple being Apple, they have their own Raster format (urf). The printers can support more (and typically do), but they have to include the base. Also the formats (and capabilities) the printers support can be queried via standard IPP. (*)
That sounds complex, but it means that as long as the printer supports any of those standards, you have a good chance of printing to it). I've printed to some pretty strange, limited printers via IPP, and had surprisingly good luck doing so (mostly via raster-urf).
Apparently in Linux CUPS is going this way completely, and has recently added built-in on-the-fly conversion. So CUPS will query the printer, and then send documents in whatever format the printer supports. If it's an AirPrint certified printer, then it'll send raster-urf; if it's IPP Everywhere it might send PWG-Raster or PDF.
Certainly not perfect (as my testing has shown), but it's a heck of a lot better than what we had before. And I've heard that they now have a standard for 3D printing (3MF*) aiming to replace STL. Apparently developed with the Linux Foundation. I have no personal experience with it, but with the complexity of 3D printing, I'd not be surprised if it's still immature.
(*) https://openprinting.github.io/driverless/01-standards-and-t... (**) https://www.pwg.org/3d/
Its because American consumers value cheapness over everything else and American corporations value profit over anything else.
Setting aside the general decline of the printer industry, and simplifying slightly, those two interests compliment each other into:
1. Producing the cheapest possible product, and then selling it for a loss while concocting subscription schemes to make-up for the lost profits at the point of sale of the product.
2. Paying employees in general less and less money proportional to inflation to "reduce costs", thus forcing the average person to demand cheaper and cheaper products. Completing the cycle.
This. Everybody wants quality products that last forever but they will go with the cheapest POS they find and then complain that nobody makes quality products anymore.
If you want to print something once a month you can buy a cheap printer for like €40 – which is probably subsidized because the manufacturer thinks they will earn it back on selling you overpriced ink. But they won't since you will buy a single toner and cover all of your printing needs.
Anyway, I don't have a printer. I always just take my pdf and take a walk to a local printing service.
As long as it's not an inkjet printer, since the ink will dry out or the printer will just think the ink is too old after half a year or so.
Yes! This was my plan too but I made the mistake of buying an Epson that is always “low on ink” and a PITA about third party cartridges.
And the ink will have cost you £41.
Maximise the waste and minimise the cost, yay !
What?
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If you print something once a month, then shouldn't the starter cartridge last for about the life of the printer (maybe a decade or so)? That's been my experience with the B&W Brother laser printer I bought about 2010. I've never changed anything on it. And really I don't find much need to print anything these days anyway.
This is actually the biggest problem with my current home printer. My wife or I will print something after installing brand new ink cartridges. Then a month or two later, we try to print something again. The printer acts like it's printing (and seems to think that it's printed the document correctly), but the page comes out with little or no ink inconsistently spread around the page, as if the cartridges were empty.
We finally realized the problem was that excess ink was drying up on the (outlet/spout/I'm not sure of the right term) where it's fed out of the cartridge and onto the paper. In short, *we weren't printing _enough_.* Sure enough, as long as we print a page or two a week, it keeps working properly. Also, for some reason, the "Clean print heads" function or whatever it's called doesn't resolve the issue.
Yep, inkjets need to periodically "clean" the heads by squirting something through them, and they happen to be filled with ink, so that's what they use. I successfully got one working once with vodka when its self cleaning routine couldn't do the job and rubbing alcohol wasn't close to hand.
This is why I use and recommend a black and white laser printers - total cost of ownership is easiest and cheapest in my experience. I suppose they're more expensive than an ink jet to start off with, but it's not that big a difference and a decade of near trouble free printing is worth something for sure.
I don't see the need for color printing documents, but if so there's office stores. For photo prints I'd be looking at places with high end inkjets most likely these days, but there are other color processes that should still work well - I did RA-4 chemical photo printing way back when and it was excellent at the time and should hold up well, but I don't know that anyone bothers with that today.
A laser printer, even a B&W laser printer, is the best choice for a lot of people. I ended up getting rid of my ink jet for the reason you say. I don't print a lot but I do need to print semi-regularly and I'm certainly not going to drive 15 minutes to the nearest Staples every time I need a page or two printed out.
They artificially expire on some brands.
I don't know why you're getting downvoted, but that's my experience with a Samsung of about the same vintage/type. Still on the original cartridge.
Toner cartridge? It should (artificial limitations notwithstanding).
Ink jet? Nope, those starter packs are only enough to get you hooked on expensive replacements.
Toner != ink, in printer tech speak. Toner is a dry powder, and lasts forever, and laser has no jets to block.
Laser is more expensive, but is the only way to go for rare printing.
Because you have a laser printer. A lot of people try to be cheap and buy inkjets, and those things will fail if they sit without use for a month. And if the ink won't dry, the machine will claim it has, and force you to buy new ink -- which will cost more than the sale on the printer was originally.
True of most inkjets, but tank-type inkjets have water-based ink which is supposed to be more resistant to drying. The tanks are also "dumb": no sensors to check the level, or check that you are using approved ink.
How well does it work in practice? Well on my Epson ET4500 I get a few clogged jets every two or three months, but running a cleaning cycle has always cleared them. A bottle full of black Epson ink costs about £7.50 and seems to last about 1000-1500 pages. Colour has the same price, but I don't use enough colour to estimate low long it lasts. There seem to be several alternative ink suppliers.
This isn't a universal recommendation, just a response to your specific points. There is a premium for the tank models, so whether they are worth it depends on the amount that you print.
My 10 year old laser printer finally got dirty or something, the tops of pages have mottled spots on them now. I haven't tried cleaning it yet.
Low end printers are sold at a loss. Manufacturers must sell OEM ink/toner to make a profit. If you do not what to purchase expensive OEM ink/toner, there are many ink tank type printers available. Those printers are sold at a profit because replacement ink is sold at essentially no profit.
If you're using it for documents just get a laser printer. I have a brother laser sitting next to me. I bought a replacement toner when I got it 7 years ago. I'm 10% into the first toner cartridge. It doesn't really go bad either and the toner is reasonable. It also prints super fast and reliably.
For real world prints I just go to walgreens or now more likely to use a digital frame. My mom with memory issues LOVES her digital frame even more than photo albums as she can sit there watching it rotate through her memories. She has boxes of albums in her room but forgets they're there.
I think it boils down to companies finding legal ways of artificially lowering the baseline price signal that they send into highly price-sensitive markets. Similar phenomena in this sense include phone/DSL/cable plans that don't include various fees in the advertised price, the "sticker price" of a new car, smart TVs not mentioning that they're going to show you ads, and so on.
This is something Europe has been able to outlaw. US should really do the same.
> I would like to own a printer again
Just as a thought experiment, what about the other way round, where you could only rent a printer, fully serviced, as an appliance? Surely, this kind of business wouldn't be sustainable with this kind of tech with consumables running out every now and then, things breaking at any possible instance, non-replaceable consumables, etc. Follows, in addition to all this vendors are off-loading considerable hassles onto the "customer" (or rather, those who have no way around these offerings) to enable this scheme.
Suggested title for a fictitious article on the matter, "If the IBM 1401 had been built like a modern printer".
I agree. It's so hard to recommend printers to family and friends now. It seems they all suck in their own very special way.
The only reason I even have a printer is that I happened to find an old LaserJet for 10$ at my local thrift store. It was "broken" but all i had to do was oil the laser scanner motor. Right era of printer, toner cartridges are only around 20$, and I put in a JetDirect card. Only thing is the memory is a bit lacking, even being fully upgraded, so for complex documents it sometimes will pause between pages.
I definitely wouldn't have bought a printer new today.
+10 to this. Old monochrome laserprinters are the way to go.
Amd a very good case for anti e-waste laws and right to repair.
Never throw out a serviceable laser printer.
All my printing is via a 15 year old desktop mini laser printer rescued from a dump. It's been worth locating a printer engineering company to service it. Most of the time it sits idle in a clean, dry cupboard. When I print it's usually a whole document for marking, so it's worth the bother of getting it out, plugging it in and running one print job. Ink-jets, and that whole market is a failed technology in my book, not for technical reasons, but because the vendors have turned every product into toxic crap.
I haven't had a printer for the past 3 years and I refuse to buy one because of the disgusting economic and environmental practices of the ink mafia. Their behaviour has been beyond despicable for decades but somehow the world has just shrugged their shoulders and accepted it.
I have an iPad and downloaded PDF Expert and got an Apple Pencil to sign digital documents and I've only occasionally had issues I can't get around - Amazon return labels are the biggest pain in the ass.
If you're from Amazon, sort out a way we can ship returns without needing a printer!
You can return Amazon purchases without a printer. I've done it multiple times. You can either have them mail you a label (for $1) or take it to a UPS Store where they scan a barcode on your phone.
Lately, they've had our regular UPS guy, doing usual deliveries, have a shipping label with him, and he just picks up the return. We put a post-it on the cardboard box to let him know that it's the box to return.
I don't think you get to pick that service anywhere as such, so it might be regional or limited in some other way. When you initiate a return, you don't know whether you'll need a printer or not.
In the U.S. maybe those options work, but in Canada they don't. If by chance the goods were shipped via a courier that will scan the barcode to return, that works - UPS for instance, but 90% of the time you need to print a return label because the goods aren't returned via a carrier that supports that.
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2 other no label options sometimes available are to use an Amazon returns drop at a local Whole Foods or return to a local Kohl's store.
I just bought the cheapest HP laser printer so I can print tickets, shipping labels, etc. Toner lasts about a year with my usage? Never had to install any crappy software because it's AirPlay. Pretty happy with it.
I purchased it in August 2021 and the demo toner it came with ran out this week.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B079Z44VZ7
Toner is like £40 which works out at like £3.30 a month
IMO, this is a byproduct of capitalism. Do you own Brother stock? (Don't even know if Brother is public.) If you own Brother stock, then you care about the stock price. I'm guessing Brother executives compensation is related to Brother stock price. Markets price in profit growth. Printing has long ago progressed to the point that further improvements are not needed for the human eye -- so Brother can hardly make more money by making a better printer.
It's why industries need to be regulated. A company run for shareholder value is going to maximize profits and externalize costs. This class of behavior is not at all unique to this product segment or this industry. You think this is annoying? Gonna be somewhere between interesting to horrifying to see what big tech does if the profit growth flags.
> at the whim of the manufacturer
I've seen a clip on the Internet where printer rolls a customer satisfaction survey during printing on a little screen panel locking its features away.
I'm afraid that once my Samsung laser printer will be broken beyond any repair I won't have any other choice than to get the one of the newest anti-customer devices that will maneuver me into "supplies as a service" scenario.
And the question is why competition isn’t working
I’m sure I’ll get a settlement for like $7 in a few decades because of printer manufacturer collusion and price fixing. Like my recent optical drive settlement.
Because it is not profitable.
Buying cheap third party consumables is a hack. It is people taking advantage of the low prices (entry level printers are often sold at a loss), without paying for the overpriced consumables that is where the real profits are. Back then, manufacturers could absorb the loss, but now, with the printer market tanking, it is becoming harder and harder.
A company that decides to tolerate third party consumables is likely to attract customers who want to do exactly that, a significant loss. If they want to stay profitable, their printers will be more expensive, more than what casual users are ready to pay.
I don't know about laser printers but traditional manufacturers sometimes offer an alternative to expensive ink cartridges: ink tank printers. They are way more expensive than their equivalent cartridge-based printers, but ink is sold in bulk with no DRM (cheap). These, however, are only worthwhile if you print a lot.
They just don't get it... It's never been easier to _not_ print things.