"Own." This has been going on for a long time. A hacker space I belonged to in early 2011 had a Cricut and were using third party software for it (Make The Cut?). There was a big warning on the machine to not upgrade the software because Cricut had forced the publisher to drop support in a subsequent version. (ETA: details are hazy, but this is broadly correct as I understood the situation as a non-user)
Nowadays, it looks like you can use MTC with "your" Cricut, but you have to pay Cricut for the privilege.
I say fuck 'em. This isn't new, and it's not going to stop if people keep buying the machines.
What I don't understand is why a company like this doesn't embrace maker culture. They're already selling some seriously expensive hardware, so raise the price a bit if necessary to ensure a safe profit margin, while making all the software free and open source. The community would design an ecosystem of software around the Cricut for free and they wouldn't need to maintain a garbage web app that can't even parse SVGs correctly.
Their business model should be closer to 3d printers than to inkjet.
> it's not going to stop if people keep buying the machines.
Reducing citizen's power to mere consumes, limited only to buy or not buy, is exactly what allows corporations to get away with these practices. It starts with one, and soon they all collude and you have no choice but to suffer their abuse or go without an entire category of products (spying smart TVs displacing dumb TVs, telecoms selling traffic data, etc.).
It's not going to stop until they're forced to stop, with legislation.
I bought a Cricut Maker just a week ago to see if I can save on buying a full-on laser cutter for some thin acrylic sheets. The machine and software are incredibly locked down. Can’t use anything to work with the Cricut other than the jank desktop app it forces you to use. You have to be a bit creative with custom cuts by uploading an image to the design software and having it threshold the image to identify cut lines. It’s workable but seriously it’s just a toy for scrapbooking.
It’s not surprising though. The machine is probably sold at breakeven like printers [0]. It’s a shame. The machine is decently built and can do a lot more.
If they are pricing their hardware based on expectation of being able to rent seek, I wonder if someone could make a little side business buying their hardware, replacing or flashing firmware or control board, and reselling a open version of the same hardware.
> will now start charging users a monthly subscription for unlimited printing, which prior to now had been free.
This is line is just infuriating to me; phrasing this change as a "we were giving you something for free before, but you should be paying for it".
Of course it was "free"; the thing had already been paid for. This is about as ridiculous as Samsung charging me a subscription fee for unlimited watch-time on my TV, which previously was free, or Apple requiring a subscription for the unlimited use of my Macbook.
Wrapping perfectly-functional-locally devices with a "cloud service" in order to maintain control needs to be reigned in. The cricut argument here of "[the cloud is needed to] optimize the design and the cutting instructions" is a problem of their own making.
> Wrapping perfectly-functional-locally devices with a "cloud service" in order to maintain control needs to be reigned in. The cricut argument here of "[the cloud is needed to] optimize the design and the cutting instructions" is a problem of their own making.
Yeah, this is why it "prior to now had been free". They were basically packaging unlimited uploads into the hardware (which is almost universally a stupid idea). They did bring this on themselves.
I'm curious why the opted for cloud optimization. Is it too hardware intensive for their target audience? My CAD software doesn't struggle too hard unless there are a ton of polygons, but my desktop is probably specced more than the average consumer.
> Of course it was "free"; the thing had already been paid for. This is about as ridiculous as Samsung charging me a subscription fee for unlimited watch-time on my TV, which previously was free, or Apple requiring a subscription for the unlimited use of my Macbook.
Here's the thing, though. It costs Samsung nothing for you to watch TV (they actually might make money if you watch more ads). Likewise, it costs Apple nothing for you to use your Mac. Updates cost them money, but that's a fixed cost. The amount you use the Mac doesn't make it cost more. Cricut is actually paying for these, so it does cost them money. Not saying what they did was right, but these things aren't the same.
One potentially reasonable answer is that their optimizations are a significant part of their value add, and they weren't comfortable letting people run that software themselves. If that's the case, this doesn't bother me as long as they add the ability for it to use an open format.
We need some kind of a consumer protection law that triggers a return window any time the functionality of a device that you have already purchased substantially changes (for a reasonable period of time after purchase). People who bought a Cricut should be able to return them now, and Cricut should have to eat that cost. If it's no longer viable to provide that cloud service for free, give people a version they can run on their desktop or add the ability to print open formats, or accept that a substantial number of customers are going to demand refunds that Cricut will have to process.
The only thing that makes this different is you’re uploading to cricuts servers which do processing so I can see why they’d want recurring revenue for that. But it shouldn’t be forced on customers that have already purchased before the plans were introduced. That’s just scummy.
Services that require a cloud connection without a compelling reason are rent-seekers. There's absolutely no reason why the client software can't do the calculations that the server is doing to "optimize" cutting, other than for the purpose of turning something into a subscription that most assuredly should not be as such.
> There's absolutely no reason why the client software can't do the calculations that the server is doing to "optimize" cutting...
Well, there is one reason: the cloud is more powerful. A computationally heavy task can run locally, but if uploading to the cloud and sending the results back is 10x faster, most users would probably prefer that. However, the best way to solve that (IMO) is to by default do local computation and have a subscription for cloud access.
Unless things have changed with Cricut, I've always found their machines to be a huge ripoff – even more so than inkjet printers because at least those will allow you to print whatever you want. I remember looking into Cricut and realizing it was made to force you into buying designs from their store rather than giving you the ability to provide an SVG(or even gcode?) of your own. It's possible to use your own designs, but the support for it is terrible since they clearly want a percentage of whatever designs you end up buying. In other words, it's not a useful device to own. If you think you're going to use a Cricut to make things you can sell on Etsy or the like, you will be sorely disappointed.
I'm not super surprised by that. They're almost the only company competing at this low of a price range. I looked at laser cutters that could cut acrylic, and I don't think I found a single one cheaper than $2k or maybe $1.4k and that was for offbrand Chinese stuff.
These cutters live in a weird market segment of people that want to work with a complicated device, but who don't want working with it to be complicated. It's, in some ways, an inverse of 3D printing, which has a lot of people who revel in the complexity of the device. I love my 3D printers, and putting them together from scratch so I kind of know how it functions. I can't imagine my girlfriend buying something like a Cricut that she has to assemble herself.
> If you think you're going to use a Cricut to make things you can sell on Etsy or the like, you will be sorely disappointed.
Do people really do that? I always presumed that Cricut's were for one offs or prototypes, and that by the time you had an Etsy store, you would just order printed and cut stickers from China. I may well be wrong, I just figured there would be huge cost savings for doing so because of the factory's economy of scale.
> looking into Cricut and realizing it was made to force you into buying designs from their store rather than giving you the ability to provide an SVG(or even gcode?) of your own
In ye old days that was the case, then the explore line came out (with them advertising that you could bring your own SVGs), and it worked okay for a while... But now we're back to locked down.
It's interesting that the moment RMS speaks about really crystalizing software freedom in his mind was when he couldn't access the software running a printer so that he could add a feature. It seems like every generation needs their own evil printer (or printer-like) manufacturer to radicalize the next round of user rights advocates.
Dutch/EU users should probably keep a lookout for a blogpost later this week here[0]. Arnoud is a Dutch legal expert on technology related topics and I've been told he might be looking into this.
My wife and I are so irritated about this. She bought a Cricut Maker last year to make masks for friends and family. Custom images were cut for every person she made a mask for. Now, nine months after we bought the machine, we will have to start paying $10/mo for the same privileges we enjoyed when we first got it.
Is that even legal? Cricut does not own those machines any more, the people who bought them do. So by what right can they restrict the owners access to their own property?
This is what I have never understood about 'clickwrap' on hardware (like my car).
I have already bought it...shopped, signed a contract, paid for it, agreed with a bank in some cases on financing it...before I encoutner or have access the the licensing agreement.
If I disagree with licensing can I juts take it back? Am I just precluded from using my smart driving features?
I bought it, you don't get to establish rules after the fact...
The restriction is not on the machine, it's on the cloud based software that you have to use to send a design to the machine. (and there's no limit on printing designs that you create within their software, only on images that you upload and convert).
So technically, this isn't a limit on the hardware, but on the software, even if realistically it's the same thing if you print a lot of uploaded designs since you can't use the machine without using their cloud software.
So legally they are probably in the clear to put limits on the "free" software, even if morally it's the equivalent of a hardware restriction.
Farming circuit accounts may amount to a small fortune after 2021.
> A Letter to the Cricut Community, From Ashish Arora CEO
> We will continue to allow an unlimited number of personal image and pattern uploads for members with a Cricut account registered and activated with a cutting machine before December 31, 2021. This benefit will continue for the lifetime of your use of these machines.
Cricut's USB exposes itself as a serial USB port, and it looks like the library is there to make SVGs cut for it.
EDIT: It looks like there is some sort of encryption between the host and Cricut as well? So Cricut makes it intentionally unfriendly to make it work with thir party vendors.
The makers of Cricut have sued those who have tried to market alternative software before. I'm guessing they'd issue DRM related takedown notices for any open source projects. Won't block the effort but make it less useful to the non-technical audience that usually buys Cricuts.
the legal remedy goes something like " it is an offense to sell a device then retroactively reduce function or demand further payment beyond the original purchase price "
now we need the legal team and the class action, good thing for me im not a lawyer.
It's depressing to me that strategies like this seem to work for these companies. Any time someone tries to force me into a subscription, I hard cut ties, unless there is literally no alternative to the product and I need it for my livelihood. And in that case, good game.
For those looking for an alternative, Silhouette machines are affordable and can be driven completely offline using an open-source Inkscape plugin. (So you can cut any file type that Inkscape can convert to a path, which is pretty much anything. SVG, DXF, PDF, raster image tracing...)
Silhouette's proprietary software comes with a "store" like Cricut for buying designs, but it's a resource hog and you have to pay for an SVG cutting feature. Inkscape is a little hassle to setup but once you get it working it's great.
Have you heard of Baumol's cost disease? It's the idea that if a sector of the economy experiences productivity growth, wages in that sector grow; as a consequence, wages in the other sector grow, because otherwise workers would flee to the higher wage sector; but because those sectors have not seen productivity growth, the price of what they produce will go up.
I think we are experiencing a similar problem in the world of new enterprises. Software companies can produce huge growth/profit/market valuations/etc. To attract the capital required to create the company, they have to promise and do everything in their power to achieve the same money-printing results as software ones. But they are not inherently high-potential as software companies, so the price and quality of their products suffer.
Everyone wants to be a tech company because that's the way to survive and thrive in the current capital climate. Banks, airlines, real estate leasing companies, hotels, etc. mimic tech companies, because otherwise, capital looks elsewhere and the company won't get funded.
Alternative Viewpoint: Speculating a little bit, this might actually the best thing for the end users. This device already depended on software and cloud services to function at all. Probably Cricut is not doing well financially (I have no data in this regard) and is in danger of not staying in business. This at least gives the die-hard users an option, and helps the company pay for ongoing support of the software and running of the service. Keep in mind they're probably losing money on the hardware.
There have been plenty of other companies who were not able to make the business model work, folded, and left their users stranded with hardware that is no longer supported and doesn't work. That's a worse outcome. (Juicero, Picobrew)
I'm not justifying hardware that depends on services like this - I wouldn't design it that way, and I wouldn't buy something like this. But here we are...
[+] [-] ddingus|5 years ago|reply
I go way back with various machines. Cutting, bending, printing, whatever.
If it won't take gcode, or some other open data to operate with, whatever it is, no matter how good it is, the answer is no.
Always no.
It has to take, gcode, svg, dxf, real postscript, hpgl, png, something. And it has to do that offline, period.
There are great machines made in the 80's still making money, and I saw one just yesterday. Wonderful to see.
Yes, I realize these are consumer grade machines, but what will also happen is these things will get abandoned.
Maybe someone will reverse engineer them and they become useful over the longer term.
I hope someone does.
[+] [-] duckfang|5 years ago|reply
https://discord.gg/KsReJ3cN Come help!
[+] [-] benrbray|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mauvehaus|5 years ago|reply
Nowadays, it looks like you can use MTC with "your" Cricut, but you have to pay Cricut for the privilege.
I say fuck 'em. This isn't new, and it's not going to stop if people keep buying the machines.
[+] [-] benrbray|5 years ago|reply
Their business model should be closer to 3d printers than to inkjet.
[+] [-] MikeUt|5 years ago|reply
Reducing citizen's power to mere consumes, limited only to buy or not buy, is exactly what allows corporations to get away with these practices. It starts with one, and soon they all collude and you have no choice but to suffer their abuse or go without an entire category of products (spying smart TVs displacing dumb TVs, telecoms selling traffic data, etc.).
It's not going to stop until they're forced to stop, with legislation.
[+] [-] atian|5 years ago|reply
It’s not surprising though. The machine is probably sold at breakeven like printers [0]. It’s a shame. The machine is decently built and can do a lot more.
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/why-all-printers-suc...
[+] [-] cwkoss|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huhtenberg|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cosmotic|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nullserver|5 years ago|reply
My wife has one, absolutely loves it. Never ending supply of trinkets and gifts for people. Keeps her busy.
Not cheap, but a lot cheaper then random shopping trips.
So she’s happy, and my wallet is mostly happy.
She’s not remotely technical. That she can operate it means they did something right.
[+] [-] nrmitchi|5 years ago|reply
This is line is just infuriating to me; phrasing this change as a "we were giving you something for free before, but you should be paying for it".
Of course it was "free"; the thing had already been paid for. This is about as ridiculous as Samsung charging me a subscription fee for unlimited watch-time on my TV, which previously was free, or Apple requiring a subscription for the unlimited use of my Macbook.
Wrapping perfectly-functional-locally devices with a "cloud service" in order to maintain control needs to be reigned in. The cricut argument here of "[the cloud is needed to] optimize the design and the cutting instructions" is a problem of their own making.
[+] [-] curryst|5 years ago|reply
Yeah, this is why it "prior to now had been free". They were basically packaging unlimited uploads into the hardware (which is almost universally a stupid idea). They did bring this on themselves.
I'm curious why the opted for cloud optimization. Is it too hardware intensive for their target audience? My CAD software doesn't struggle too hard unless there are a ton of polygons, but my desktop is probably specced more than the average consumer.
> Of course it was "free"; the thing had already been paid for. This is about as ridiculous as Samsung charging me a subscription fee for unlimited watch-time on my TV, which previously was free, or Apple requiring a subscription for the unlimited use of my Macbook.
Here's the thing, though. It costs Samsung nothing for you to watch TV (they actually might make money if you watch more ads). Likewise, it costs Apple nothing for you to use your Mac. Updates cost them money, but that's a fixed cost. The amount you use the Mac doesn't make it cost more. Cricut is actually paying for these, so it does cost them money. Not saying what they did was right, but these things aren't the same.
One potentially reasonable answer is that their optimizations are a significant part of their value add, and they weren't comfortable letting people run that software themselves. If that's the case, this doesn't bother me as long as they add the ability for it to use an open format.
We need some kind of a consumer protection law that triggers a return window any time the functionality of a device that you have already purchased substantially changes (for a reasonable period of time after purchase). People who bought a Cricut should be able to return them now, and Cricut should have to eat that cost. If it's no longer viable to provide that cloud service for free, give people a version they can run on their desktop or add the ability to print open formats, or accept that a substantial number of customers are going to demand refunds that Cricut will have to process.
[+] [-] dawnerd|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LocalH|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colejohnson66|5 years ago|reply
Well, there is one reason: the cloud is more powerful. A computationally heavy task can run locally, but if uploading to the cloud and sending the results back is 10x faster, most users would probably prefer that. However, the best way to solve that (IMO) is to by default do local computation and have a subscription for cloud access.
[+] [-] ravenstine|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] curryst|5 years ago|reply
These cutters live in a weird market segment of people that want to work with a complicated device, but who don't want working with it to be complicated. It's, in some ways, an inverse of 3D printing, which has a lot of people who revel in the complexity of the device. I love my 3D printers, and putting them together from scratch so I kind of know how it functions. I can't imagine my girlfriend buying something like a Cricut that she has to assemble herself.
> If you think you're going to use a Cricut to make things you can sell on Etsy or the like, you will be sorely disappointed.
Do people really do that? I always presumed that Cricut's were for one offs or prototypes, and that by the time you had an Etsy store, you would just order printed and cut stickers from China. I may well be wrong, I just figured there would be huge cost savings for doing so because of the factory's economy of scale.
[+] [-] mgarfias|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 542458|5 years ago|reply
In ye old days that was the case, then the explore line came out (with them advertising that you could bring your own SVGs), and it worked okay for a while... But now we're back to locked down.
[+] [-] patrickyeon|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aequitas|5 years ago|reply
[0] https://blog.iusmentis.com
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prefrontal|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WrtCdEvrydy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leowbattle|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avs733|5 years ago|reply
I have already bought it...shopped, signed a contract, paid for it, agreed with a bank in some cases on financing it...before I encoutner or have access the the licensing agreement.
If I disagree with licensing can I juts take it back? Am I just precluded from using my smart driving features?
I bought it, you don't get to establish rules after the fact...
[+] [-] Johnny555|5 years ago|reply
So technically, this isn't a limit on the hardware, but on the software, even if realistically it's the same thing if you print a lot of uploaded designs since you can't use the machine without using their cloud software.
So legally they are probably in the clear to put limits on the "free" software, even if morally it's the equivalent of a hardware restriction.
[+] [-] atian|5 years ago|reply
> A Letter to the Cricut Community, From Ashish Arora CEO
> We will continue to allow an unlimited number of personal image and pattern uploads for members with a Cricut account registered and activated with a cutting machine before December 31, 2021. This benefit will continue for the lifetime of your use of these machines.
[+] [-] hctaw|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kop316|5 years ago|reply
http://jimlund.org/build-to-spec/Setting%20Up%20Libcutter%20...
Cricut's USB exposes itself as a serial USB port, and it looks like the library is there to make SVGs cut for it.
EDIT: It looks like there is some sort of encryption between the host and Cricut as well? So Cricut makes it intentionally unfriendly to make it work with thir party vendors.
[+] [-] marcinzm|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rolph|5 years ago|reply
now we need the legal team and the class action, good thing for me im not a lawyer.
[+] [-] pfortuny|5 years ago|reply
Big no there. Or big "caveat emptor".
[+] [-] okprod|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ddingus|5 years ago|reply
If I do not see one of those, the machine is a hard pass. Everytime.
[+] [-] anm89|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Fwirt|5 years ago|reply
https://github.com/fablabnbg/inkscape-silhouette
Silhouette's proprietary software comes with a "store" like Cricut for buying designs, but it's a resource hog and you have to pay for an SVG cutting feature. Inkscape is a little hassle to setup but once you get it working it's great.
[+] [-] smnrchrds|5 years ago|reply
I think we are experiencing a similar problem in the world of new enterprises. Software companies can produce huge growth/profit/market valuations/etc. To attract the capital required to create the company, they have to promise and do everything in their power to achieve the same money-printing results as software ones. But they are not inherently high-potential as software companies, so the price and quality of their products suffer.
Everyone wants to be a tech company because that's the way to survive and thrive in the current capital climate. Banks, airlines, real estate leasing companies, hotels, etc. mimic tech companies, because otherwise, capital looks elsewhere and the company won't get funded.
[+] [-] mdavis6890|5 years ago|reply
There have been plenty of other companies who were not able to make the business model work, folded, and left their users stranded with hardware that is no longer supported and doesn't work. That's a worse outcome. (Juicero, Picobrew)
I'm not justifying hardware that depends on services like this - I wouldn't design it that way, and I wouldn't buy something like this. But here we are...