Comment by shrx
8 hours ago
That is literally what they said:
> I can no longer use OrcaSlicer to interact with my printers (e.g. sync filaments) and start prints remotely.
The remote interaction with the printer goes via their cloud.
> If you tell me my new toaster can send a live video of my bagel to my phone then I am entitled to receive that functionality without being subject to your shitware.
No you aren't. You might be able to use 3rd party clients, but this is never a given. BambuLab owns their cloud servers, they can choose which clients they will allow to use them.
Well I guess we'll have to agree to disagree because we have a fundamental difference in our view here. If they advertised the printer as having certain functionality that relied on their cloud and if the printer was also advertised as working (with full functionality) with third party clients then they don't have the right to later try to block people from using those cloud services.
A SaaS company enjoys full control of their cloud servers and licenses use of their proprietary webapp to you. A hardware company sell a physical product that you own and is not morally allowed to yank functionality later. As far as I'm concerned their cloud servers are part of their product and that's a hill I'm willing to die on. Anything short of that is a blatant bait and switch.
I'd be willing to settle for them offering fully refunded returns to all affected customers who want it. Failing that I'd expect the court system to award appropriate damages. This sort of scenario is literally what consumer protection laws were created for.
Edit: I (and many others) might be operating under a misunderstanding? It looks like all (?) the advertised functionality might be available (at least for now) locally via MQTT. But I'm not entirely clear on that. https://github.com/Doridian/OpenBambuAPI/blob/main/mqtt.md