Almost all the reasons in the article are problems with the current price, size, and reliability of 3D printers.
Someday, there will be a machine that will whip out objects so easily that you'd use it to make a doorstop.
I may be wrong, but I think you are falling into the typical false technological assumption that a new technology will revolutionize everything just because it becomes available. I mean, look at computers. Even though they are becoming ubiquitous there are not computers in every object we use every day. A lot of our home equipment is still based on "stupid" electronics because it's good enough in most cases.
3D printers will become more common, more reliable and cheaper as the market develops, but when you can order something on Amazon for 3 dollars and have it delivered at your door in one day, there is a strong competition as to what is the best/most effortless way to get the thing in question. If your goal is to make unique objects that you cannot find anywhere, then, sure, 3d printers are the future, but most of us are living in environments where many things have been standardized, and products fitting these standards are readily available.
In reality, uniqueness is overrated. Given a really large pool of objects to choose from(which are manufactured in mid quantities) , there's not a lot of consumer need for unique objects.
The largest market consumers do need unique objects is the healthcare market. But the economics there are totally different. for example 3d printing of dental crowns existed for a long time , but it doesn't(yet) captured the market with lower cost solutions(although it certainly has the power to do so, technically).
If residential manufacturing was coming, it would have come a long time ago via CNC technology. Additive vs subtractive is really just a methodology. There are probably more people out there that need custom metal parts for their car, boat, motorcycle hobby than people that only need plastic parts for their hobby. Although I know several with CNC mills and lathes in their garage, it is simply not going main stream.
I think 3D printing has a lot of value (especially 3D printing powered aluminum to make low-volume plastic injection molds), but I don't think you will see one in every home.
(Mechanical Engineer here)
3D printing is not like that. There is already an entire set of industries built to produce widgets. 3D printing doesn't offer any benefit except for customized items. So how often do you need something customized? No matter how cheap 3D printers are, it's always going to be cheaper to get somebody else to print a one-off for you using their machine. You don't use it all day multiple times a day. You pay them for that one-off, and then you don't need a 3D printer again for a long time.
With computers, there are a lot of day-to-day tasks that become much easier. For example, before computer, everyone had to balance their checkbooks in order to know how much money they had. Now you can just log into your bank website or mint.com. People used to correspond by phone and physical letter to keep in touch with relatives (also on a daily or at least weekly basis), and now that's much easier.
It's hard to say though. With computers, our "need" to perform large-scale automation and computation grew to fill the new capacity. Manufacturing is not as clear cut, but it seems reasonable to theorize that if our abilities to manufacture things grows, our "need" to do so will as well.
And let's not forget that with computers, there was a period where people were saying much the same things that we're saying now.
One thing that I think might happen is that various consumer items may become even more disposable (or perhaps more recyclable). More than that, I suspect that manufacturing itself may become increasingly viewed as a temporary, disposable utility. Right now making most goods requires extensive capital investment in factories and assembly lines, which tend to be large permanent fixtures. But what if manufacturing could be transitory? What if you only needed to make a small run of something? What if you could bootstrap a production line from a small core of machine tools and then dispose of the materials afterward? What if you could efficiently and rapidly break down the production line into its component recyclable parts?
Coupled with completely automated configurable manufacturing I think these innovations will revolutionize our relationship with manufactured goods and with manufacturing. Manufacturing will not be something one consumes it will be something that most people do (either through proxies or through "disposable" production lines or both). The era of cloned consumer goods may give way to an era of boutique goods and to transitory goods. Do you need a radio? Print one off at the corner factory then have it automatically disassembled and 100% recycled when you are done with it. Do you want to give your kids a set of toy soldiers to play with? Set up a quick production line at home and produce a set, then dispose of the machinery. Then recycle the toys when your kids grow bored of them. Don't worry, it'll be just as easy to print more if they want to play with them again.
This is a world that will confound our imaginations because it will disrupt the assumptions that are so deep seated we don't even know we have them and it will create new opportunities and change the balance of feasibility in ways that we lack the creativity to think of, yet.
I'm not sure where I'd get the raw plastic, though. Do they sell that at the hardware store?