Comment by bdcravens
3 days ago
For most people, it is definitely a closed ecosystem, similar to the iPhone. But they do give people the escape hatch if they're willing to take ownership of the software they run. (To be fair, they only enabled this after a lot of backlash)
Willing to take ownership, and also forgo a lot of functionality that the device was billed as having when it was purchased. Defending Bambu here seems like the same mentality as supporting a manufacturer that implements a subscription model for heated seats in their cars. (Don't worry, we're an ethical manufacturer so we don't charge a premium for access to heated seats. As long as you have our app on your phone (requires location permissions) you'll be able to make use of them!)
Or perhaps Claude, where if you decide go use a client other than theirs you are on your own in terms of the pricing model and implementation.
A service is entirely different than a physical product. While I'm not necessarily on board with what Anthropic has been up to it's certainly more nuanced than a simple bait and switch as appears to have happened here.