"Officially support" printing without internet connection?
Was this explicitly documented as a feature or did this just "happen to work" as you expected?
A lawsuit may have some leverage to find that something could have been "reasonably expected" to work in a certain way, but that's quite uncertain territory.
i.e. I would expect an Apple Watch to also work with Android Devices, but this was never officially supported by Apple and it's arguable whether it was reasonable for me to even expect this.
Leading to obvious speculation as to why they have stuck themselves processing megabyte g-code streams between your desktop and the printer on the same network...
But since cloud use is optional anyone with the security/reliability/longevity concerns just don't have to use it.
Personally I don't see the cloud stuff as providing any value at all though I know people whose kids print stuff from their makerworld site via their phone app that consider it useful.
Had the new requires phone app workflow and it was so buggy had to just resort to UPS/Fedex
It says:
Operations That Do Not Require Authorization The following actions will remain unaffected by the authorization mechanism:
Sending status information from the printer (e.g., MQTT status push for tools like HomeAssistant).
Starting a print job using SD cards.
General operations outside the listed authorization controls.
https://blog.bambulab.com/firmware-update-introducing-new-au...
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/20/with-core-one-prusas-open-so...
Selling a walled garden is one thing, building walls around a garden you already bought is another thing entirely
I've not ran into any banking applications which won't run on a non-google build of android (as then they would only run on a pixel). That being said, I refuse to seriously bank with any bank which doesn't offer a functioning website. My main bank offers an app but you have to wholesale switch to it.
That said, the recommendation I always give, and personally follow: keep a spare phone in a drawer somewhere, with official Android installed, a Google account, and use it exclusively for business purposes - banking, government services, and the email account you use for those (separate from the one you use for everything else). Nothing else, no messaging, socials, browsing, or games.
Then you're free to keep your personal phone FOSS and as private as you like, without fear of getting locked out of important stuff due to a crappy Google® SafetyNet® upgrade.
Anything which doesn't support an alternative method (not involving a proprietary blessed google phone) of management should be illegal if it's government related and should be boycotted if it's not.
Nevertheless, for living in this world while preserving your privacy, my advice stands. Separate the devices that you control, which you will use for personal and private purposes, from the devices that global corporations and institutions control, which you will use to access the services those institutions provide - services which, by definition, you would not control anyway.
It is far, far simpler than having to get proprietary, frequently-updated software to play nice inside a secure sandbox. If they do, great, but separate devices ensures it isn't a capital-P Problem for you if they stop.
(FWIW, I lived in three different European countries over the past decade and so far the governments all offered TOTP-based web alternatives to their apps. When it comes to private banking, only one (Lunar) was available only via app, but it was also the only one that ran without Play Services.)
What I am saying (and what I do) is that it's far simpler still to just not rely on anything where this might be the case.
If my bank turned around tomorrow and said I can't use their website to manage my account, I would not attempt to get their app working on my phone, I would switch bank.
Thanks for the recommendation tho - you reminded me that I have some old Xiaomi phone that should be able to run it still!
It works on GrapehenOS with their own keys (or you can, if you want, probably use your own keys).
- Danish national identity app (MitID). I had to get a hardware token that generates one-time passwords.
- My banking app (still works in the browser though).
- The de facto payment app used for peer-to-peer payments and as a credit card alternative all over Denmark (MobilePay).
- The app for controlling the heating system in my car.
- Revolut.
- The app for showing a digital version of my government issued health insurance card. It's literally just a barcode and a number, so I can get by using a photo of the card instead. This underlines the ridiculousness of requiring Play Integrity attestion.
- The app for showing a digital version of my driver's license. As a bonus this app also doesn't work if you have set your default browser to Firefox instead of Chrome, even on a non-rooted phone.
On top of this, one app for scanning goods in the supermarket stopped working, but without explicitly saying why. I suppose it just silently depends on some Google service, but I have not way of knowing that.
I also cannot get Chromecast to work, but that is perhaps to be expected when replacing the Google services with microg, and not strictly a result of DRM. It is a major inconvenience though.
Denmark is one of the most digitized countries, and in many ways that is good. However, it also means that you are increasingly coerced into the whole Google/Apple ecosystem and that it is very hard to get out. Luckily there are alternatives to all of the above apps, but it is a major inconvenience to have to use them.
If LineageOS did support those APIs (which it can support if it wanted to, without any blessing from Google) then presumably most if not all of those should also work.
Try GOS and see if it's broken there. If it works on GOS then you can shout at google for ever exposing the attestation APIs but the apps you're complaining about aren't actually abusing attestation in the way you claim, LineageOS is simply choosing not to implement the features they rely on.
If I'm on a custom ROM, the notification never pops up.
But have you checked if GrapheneOS handles it?
Yes, but see my other comment in the thread. It's not something trivial. It's not I didn't dig.
> But have you checked if GrapheneOS handles it?
I jumped the platform soon after, so I don't have the hardware anymore, so I can't.
It's like Trusted HDCP pipeline. Every part has to be signed properly, and no open distribution of Android can do that, period.
There was one missing file (which I don't remember its name now, it's long gone), but I always carried over that one from the official ROM (same Android version, mind you), but while everything still worked, this was not enabling me to use the secure element based SIM services (namely e-signature).
The problem was not "not being able to access secure element", it was visible, but making it do (secure/verifiable) things, which require an "operator message" to trigger the right process on the phone. Even if the system which I'm trying to login said that the process should start, the phone just didn't respond/started the e-signature process. In my country, if your SIM is blocked for any reason from using these services (e.g. when you change your SIM and not-activate e-sig again), you SHALL and WILL (in RFC sense) get a message detailing what went wrong.
Again, the moment I flashed the original image, secure element based SIM services started working, I didn't need to do anything on the other side. Different ROM, it's working. Flash the custom one, reboot, it's gone. Add the required files back, no luck. That simple.
BTW, I was not mad that it was not working. It's a legally binding wet signature equivalent. I don't want that pipeline to be peek/poke enabled.
- Battery Management (iPhone 6, 6s, and SE): In 2017, Apple introduced a battery management feature in iOS 10.2.1 to prevent unexpected shutdowns by throttling the performance of iPhones with degraded batteries. This led to slower device performance without informing users, which is a removal of expected performance functionality.
- 32-bit App Support: With the release of iOS 11 in 2017, Apple dropped support for 32-bit apps. This meant users could no longer use older apps that had not been updated to 64-bit, effectively removing access to those apps on updated devices = You want the new OS? -> you have less functionality.
- Pulse oximetry features were recently removed from new Apple Watches due to Masimo's patent infringement claim.
As opposed to the device unexpectedly shutting down due to a degraded battery not being able to push enough energy to support the CPU? They didn't remove expected performance, they prevented crashes which are by definition 0 performance. All Li-ion batteries degrade over time. That's not removing a feature...
This whole thing was totally overblown.
Previously you could directly upload the 360 videos do youtube, now you need to download the film locally on the phone, then host a converted version and only after those loops you are permitted to upload.
Or you can now buy a monthly subscription and get back the feature that was already there before. Quite disappointed with this kind of behavior.
the problem is that user got no choice. Some might prefer degraded performance, others might prefer to charge their devices more often.
Also seller should have no business touching anything that they've already sold - they do might offer support, but it should be up to user to accept it or not.
Source: had two 6S's in the family. In the cold it could just suddenly shut down mid-call from 60% battery.
USER should chose that. not apple.
not all of them shut down, someone might get a battery replacement.
What apple should've do is to introduce a toggle, give a warning in notification. and in case of crash, display it again.
After the massive hissy fit the Internet threw (along with lawsuits), they added a switch. Now you can choose to have your phone suddenly die.
But the legend lives on that "Appple slowed down phones permanently!!" - even though the fix for that is a 40€ battery swap that takes 30 minutes in any mall phone repair shop.
Maybe i want to use the device in a way that's 100% connected to the charger and repurpose it.
It's not apple's business what I'm doing with it
I like a toggle for features like this, but it was a pretty standard user experience / reliability choice imho.
what if you replace battery AFTER the fix was applied? you can't rollback.
again, it's about user's choice. it's not apple's device, but whoever bought it. they shouldn't be even allowed to DECIDE which option is better. user should be able to pick whichever they want to go with.
I get it, but if you’re going to accept binary blob updates from a manufacturer at all, this one wasn’t bad.
If there was a toggle, Would you really run your phone in “reckless disregard for battery condition” mode?
Because that is what this fixed, a flaw in the firmware where the power management subsystem made incorrect assumptions about the battery condition. All new phones come with this baked in and working properly, so your phone doesn’t randomly die in the middle of calls when your battery gets old.
People pitchforked over this update without understanding what it was designed to do. If your phone has a good battery, it does not throttle the cpu. It just adjusts the power management profiles to reflect battery aging.
But the way they did it was far from malicious. It only affected users who were actually in danger of an emergency shutdown, during times when the shutdown was imminent. While I don’t want anybody diddling my firmware without giving me a choice, this particular issue was really a nothing burger in the end.
It was discovered when it became apparent that replacing a defective battery made the phone faster. Seems like a standard reliability / user experience fix to me. Not Many people would choose the “don’t adjust system power consumption to prevent unplanned shutdowns when the battery is about to fail” toggle.
The root problem was not the throttling, it was the phone's inability to run at expected speed after a couple years.
So they know this yet they refuse to let users swap the battery?
1) open phone
2) remove battery
3) replace battery
4) close phone
People don't go telling that Ford "refuses users to let their change their oil".
It's all perfectly doable, but you do need the tools and an ability to follow a step by step guide with pictures.
Yet there are always people justifying these type of awful practices as better for users. These aren't, the measures are only good for business.
They are SO LOUD if you don't service them at regular intervals. They're even doing fancy tricks to make sure you're not faking the service.
Regular service is indeed a bother. You know what I hate the most? In my oldish Mercedes it isn't even possible to change/update the hour without using a proprietary tool only available at official Mercedes mechanics. Since I refuse to pay premium cost for attending their mechanics, the clock on my car is always with wrong time.
And let's not even get into new business models like charging you a subscription to unlock the car to move faster or to unblock the heated seats. Indeed they also have quite "creative" ways to squeeze money and force to get new models.
Not even that hard.
For me, the firmware fix helped me limp through the 2 months before I finally got around to replacing the battery.
It made my phone that was flaky and unreliable below 40percent battery into a phone that worked slightly slower once the battery got low, but didn’t just randomly shut off during calls anymore.
I’d have preferred a toggle, but to be honest I doubt I’d have ever used “reckless disregard for remaining battery capacity” mode.
Many cars enter limp mode for when the ECU senses a possibly damaging condition. This limits the performance and capabilities until someone with a diagnostic computer can plug it in. Many times these diagnostic computers are entirely proprietary.
I'm not saying it is justified, but to pretend that other businesses don't do this is silly.
And even for that case there would be a warning on the console and a mechanic would be able to inform what is happening. On this iphone case, there was no warning at all on the device nor there was any disclosure that they would be doing this to the phones.
You know this. In either case, thank you for the ECU info.
It does actually. It limits your top speed, and your engines rev range to approximately half of redline or less. Typically you end up limited to under 45. Also, accessories and other options, like A/C are disabled. The only indication that you will get is the reduced performance and the check engine/service light (sort of how you might get a 'service battery' warning and reduced performance on a phone).
Again, not defending it, but pointing out that Apple hardly invented artificially limiting performance behind opaque warnings to prevent unwanted outcomes. Cars have had limp mode since before the iPhone was invented.
It reduces your speed by much more than that. Varies depending on the model, but limp mode often won't get you go past 2nd gear.
No, it isn't. If the battery was broken and they knew the battery was broken, they should have informed the user the phone could be fixed with a new battery. They decided to gimp the device and not tell the user so they would be more likely to purchase a new device rather than simply fixing the old one.
Apple's actions in this case were even worse than Bambu's. At least Bambu documented what the update did and offered the option of declining it.
- Battery management was to handle an issue that was encountered as batteries aged
- 32 bit support: Apple is well known for being one of the more aggressive companies when it comes to forcing users (and especially people coding apps for their platforms) to adopt required tech changes. But again, not directly profit-driven.
- Pulse oximetry: probably the closest to a profit-driven-decision, as this was driven by a patent issue, and presumably they calculated less of a hit from removing the feature than paying feed to the patent owner? Not great, but still not directly part of a user-unfriendly Apple-derived strategy, as with Bambu.
New firmware upgrades made older devices slower and painfully unusable: https://www.techradar.com/news/apple-might-be-slowing-down-y...
And they have plenty of experience building walls around a garden. Ask anyone using OSX for the past 15 years and you will see how difficult it has become to write or publish software for Apple.
They did nerf speed. But they did it for a reason. I get being mad about your phone being slowed down, but i don’t get being mad about it once you understand why.
That reason was to incentivize people to replace their old "slow" phones with faster new phones. If Apple actually cared about the problem of older phones having limited battery life they'd have made the batteries in their phones replaceable.
For instance did an OS update ever prevent you from doing something that you could before ?
Yes. Countless times. OS updates have breaking changes, older apps lose support etc.
And for iOS these updates are irreversible under supported ways, while the very nature of the "there's an app for this" paradigm means losing a third party app equals losing that functionality for your device when you upgrade (you won't get a translation layer or virtualization to help the transition)
You may like Apple more and feel they communicate better, but fundamentally it's the same situation.
No. None of this crap. I want to 3D print. I don't want to service industrial machinery in my spare time. Why should 3D printing require spending weekends troubleshooting machines just to keep the thing working? I want to print models not play repair technician.
Vorons are fantastic printers and a fantastic kit if 3D printing itself is your hobby. 3D printing is a fantastic hobby. There's tons of fun to be had building up and dialing in a printer kit. A well tuned voron can be up with the best of the best 3D printers. If that's what you want to do go for it!
But for heaven's sake I want to print models, parts and other practical things. I have other things to do and problems to solve. My 3D printer is a tool. If I have to spend just as much time working on the machine as I do using to actually print things then I'm not interested.
Bambu is still the best game in town for a turn-key, just works printer. Prusa can deliver the same experience at double to triple the ticket price. A voron is not a replacement for a Bambu printer no matter how good the printers actually are.
the whole process is basically cnc but with z hops and extruding instead of removing material.
we do not even have conical slicing yet.
Ya, it is, and it’s been there for quite a while now thanks to Bambu.
The X1 just works. Coming up on a year of frequent use, I can count the number of failed prints on one hand. It’s incredible.
Tell me you don’t anything about 3d printing without telling me you don’t know anything about 3d printing.
It's all just much less tinkering then 5 years ago.
I've owned or used probably every major (and some minor) printer released in the last 8 years and for most people Bambu really will just be "plug and play" (and even if something goes wrong they'll hold hands as much as needed)
Also, subtractive manufacturing is much harder than additive manufacturing, because you need to position the machine around an existing piece of stock and sequence your operations manually, instead of letting a generic slicing algorithm slice from bottom to top with an offset vs the intended printing location only being a problem if you accidentally print over the edge of the build plate, which is usually not possible mechanically.
also there are so much stuff that are in open prs and issues for years that are not implemented for slicers.
"take a load" - I don't know what kind of load, do you mean the fact that PLA is creeping under sustained load?
If that is YOUR usecase that is fine, but that does not mean that set and forget works just fine for others. Btw gun people use PLA plus just fine.
Don't get me wrong here. PLA is a great polymer, However you can't really expect parts made with it to hold up when compared to other "engineering grade" polymers.
It can be a fantastic material for some functional parts.
But even if not, I don't see how it's invalidates that there are printers out there that are more or less set and forget.
It is a great machine though it does not always make the strongest parts, and single material builds is geometry limiting. Lack of chamber heat and one nozzle makes some things easy, but does not entirely avoid the trouble with higher performing polymers.
Not many people use 3d printing for applications that require extreme strength though, that's really not the goal many people are aiming for.
I do this for a living and people are always looking for more parts to run through the process and better filaments to see those parts end up performant.
CF-PETG is strong! For a bit more toughness and temp resistance, PA12CF35 is seeing a lot of use. Some companies out there have service departments to keep machinery running. They apply FDM more than you might expect. Alloy 910 for gears, Cf of various kinds for abrasive scenarios, like cardboard handling, in one scenario.
Comparing Bambu to Voron is an absurd comparison
I politely disagree. I was in the market for a more modern printer, and it boiled down to either a BL or a Voron - in the end I decided against ease of use and in favor of an open ecosystem. I agree in that they are not universally interchangeable, but for some people either can be an option, each with distinctive advantages and disadvantages.
I’m sympathetic to your POV but the reason you should is that’s the price to keep things open.
Obviously many people don’t care about that. Fair enough. But then you should be prepared to deal with their shenanigans.
Prusa also does things like maintain and develop printables.com and PrusaSlicer (itself forked) which many of these closed printers fork with minimal changes.
People don’t care about this either. So again, get ready to deal with garbage when Prusa goes under.
I think it’s sad since the whole domestic 3D printer thing started as open source.
No, it's not, and the perception that it is hurts the cause of openness.
Open Source has every ability to be better, to Just Work, to not require constant debugging. Good Open Source systems manage this. The fact that 3D printers apparently have not is the fault of those printers, not any inherent quality of openness.
The Bambu has been ideal for that reason. Every material pretty much just works, and the quality is excellent. The cloud integration and janky LAN mode is the downside, and this current topic even moreso.
But for 3D printers that worked out of the box under $1000, Prusa had no real competition itself.
The Mk3 came out in 2017 and I swear Prusa just sat on their laurels. I was a Mk3s+ owner (well, still am) and was pretty disappointed how little improved with the Mk4.
Bambu’s competition was Prusa and they clearly strived to improve over what Prusa had accomplished.
Sure, it is a better printer, but it is clear that they are going for scale, and most of what makes them better is in the software rather than in using premium hardware.
I hadn’t had any experience with the new platform prior to this upgrade and I skipped over the MK4, but the 4S upgrade is a significant step up over the 3S/3S+. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend the upgrade kit — that took much longer than expected to complete (about two days) and I regret not buying a new printer instead. But, I have a 3S I plan to upgrade to 3.5 just to get the new electronics; that upgrade is far less intensive.
If you haven’t tried out a 4S you might be pleasantly surprised by how much nicer it is than the 3S+.
I went for the 3.5 upgrade as the upgrade from 3S+ to 4 was almost as much as outright buying a new 4. I'm glad I did it this way because now I'm thinking of getting the CORE One and then I'll have 2 excellent printers.
They still seem to be thinking the primary audience of 3d printers is people who tinker. It's not been that way for a long time. People just want to be able to unbox, plug it in and print. The second you add in the "oh just spend 5 hours tweaking this spaghetti mess of an MMU" you've lost them.
I think they just screwed up the design of the MMU but they never went back to the drawing board.
Well, Open Source did compete on one quality very well: being open, hackable and staying that way. With this being removed from Bambu lab printers it seems as if this is a very much valued aspect for many 3D printing enthusiasts, yet few people were willing to compromise for this aspect.
Apparently it is true, you don’t know how much you value something until you don’t have it anymore
Entirely this. I bought my A1 mini over the Christmas holidays and couldn't be happier with it, it's my first 3D printer. Searching for models on Makerworld, adjusting tiny bits here and there if needed and print. It just works and I don't really care about anything else, much like my Brother printer.
But the fanboyism and shilling in the 3d printing community is intense. If you mentioned these misgivings you'd get flamed. If you bought or enjoyed another printer people would advise you to sell it and buy Bambu. Lots of people in various threads seemed to defer to that kind of expert advice.
I think there is/was a similar fanaticism for Prusa going on, but it seems a little less at the forefront since Bambu.
The 3d printing community just slapped down heygears for similar BS to what bambu is pulling right now. Once Bambu hire some better software devs and sort out their issues, open access will return, I bet.
I'm not saying I wouldn't love for an fully open source printer company to have the quality and velocity of development that the bambu has (AMS-compatible TPU, delicious), I'm saying people who are making "It's clearly X... You should have known Y" aren't providing useful perspective nor are they accurate. Looking at your post history shows this.