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Comment by atian | Hacker News Reader

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.

[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/why-all-printers-suc...

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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.

Until they get DMCA'd out of business, sadly.

Have you returned it?

Not to mention you need an account on their system.

Oculus does this too, you can't use the product _at all_ without registering it with your Facebook account. Should be illegal.

Well, this is what we get when financed by Scam-a-con Valley companies.

Selling hardware to do a thing well is so passe. So we force hardware to the cloud where we can then exert a toll booth for usage.

I will never, ever own one. And that is the primary reason.

They are also very hostile to the mod system. They really don't want you to play outside of their walled garden.

Hardware is nice, but their software decisions completely ruined it. Have a quest 1, will never buy oculus again.

Not sure what you mean, SideQuest (sideloading apps and mods, like custom beatsaber songs) has been working for the last 2-3 years. I haven't seen any of this hostility you refer to.

They have released at least two auto-updates which have broken sidequest functionality. First time I had to reinstall sidequest, second time they removed the way to access BMBF and now quest is collecting dust because I'm not faithful that they wont keep automatically installing breaking changes.

I guess I'll just turn off autoupdates once I get it working again so they don't break it a third time.

SideQuest has now directly partnered with Oculus, for the new "App Lab".

https://www.androidcentral.com/how-find-and-download-app-lab...

Perhaps your not the target audience.

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.

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