Nothing, but we’re planning in the future to release them as a Premium feature. When that happens, anyone can get them with Premium, but Premium will be required to access them.
We have chosen to be much, much more conservative about safety than most. We haven’t found any other companies’ practices that we can emulate and feel good about.
There is!
The entire design can be resized, so with a little math you can make it work. If it has a 0.1" slot in the design, and your boards are 0.125", then you can use Glowforge Print to scale everything 125% and it will fit. (Ironically I’m helping my kids with ratios right now so this is now going to be a topic of conversation at dinner!)
Honestly, Dan, I’m frustrated. I waited years for this machine - much, much longer than my Pro trial has lasted - and now I have a few weeks for this decision? And if my finances or personal life doesn’t allow for it, I’m punished to the tune of 4x the cost later. Basic shapes and text are features that everyone should have access to - I believe for free, but at the very least for a reasonable price. There are plenty of features contributing to that $50 pricetag that the average joe like me doesn’t need. There needs to be a more budget-friendly option.
Edited, because I just realized: My employer had been asking about my Glowforge and considering purchasing a unit or a number of units for our warehouse and design department. An additional $50 on top of the initial investment is almost certain to nix that. They want to use it for prototyping and customizing, so things like ‘millions of graphics’ and ‘unlimited designs’ aren’t compelling at all.
In that case just don’t subscribe to Premium. The Glowforge will continue to work as it always has without the subscription. The subscription is only necessary if you’re interested in those features.
As for basic shapes, I just keep an SVG file handy with a square, circle, line, and a few other things. I drop it in whenever I need it.
“That’s a nice set of snapmarks you have there… wouldn’t it be a shame if you’d have to pay $50 a month to keep them? Why don’t you go ahead and pay us $15 a month so you can keep them? Oh, you’re 1600km from your machine for the next two years? Well, that’s not our problem, is it?”
…I was expecting that post. Read my post again - I’m not complaining about having to pay for them. I am, however, complaining about having to pay $50 a month for them. (And next, I expect “No, you only have to pay 15 etc.” – before you write that post, read mine again).
I have no objection to criticizing the price. But you did suggest it sounded like extortion, and I think that’s an unfair characterization when Dan was honest from the very beginning that this was a purely experimental feature that might end up costing extra.
I don’t mean to sound unsympathetic to your situation. I do in fact agree that it truly stinks that your only choices are to pay for something you can’t use or forfeit the discount.
I have not been defending the subscription pricing, I have been pushing back when people say Glowforge is doing things they’re not doing, like deliberately breaking the service or taking away features. I don’t consider it taking away when they say “here’s a free trial” and the trial ends, or “here’s an experimental feature we might discontinue or charge extra for” and then do exactly that.
By all means, everyone’s entitled to their opinion about the pricing and business model, what kinds of features should be standard, and especially whether the value proposition works for them. I have my thoughts on those topics and they’re probably a lot closer to the naysayers than the cheerleaders. I’m just staying out of that conversation because I have nothing new to say and I kind of don’t care. The outcome will be the outcome. I can afford the subscription, and I can also live without it like I did for most of the time I’ve had my Glowforge. I think the only Premium feature I’ve ever used was to draw a line to cut the end off a long piece of acrylic, and I used to do that with a file with a line in it. So I’ve been trying to sit this out, but I just can’t keep away from an Internet argument.
But as long as I’m here, I will say I agree with the suggestion to change the discount for current owners to a lifetime deal — in other words, get rid of the requirement to subscribe in the next 30 days, and let people re-subscribe at a discount price even if they’ve lapsed. The current system has some sharp corners that I don’t think play out very well.
@Chris1, thanks. I don’t want to argue with you - mainly writing this post in the role of Advocatus Diaboli. I’d say “If you don’t give us your money now, you lose the feature. If you want it back later, it’ll cost you a lot more” does sound a bit like extortion, doesn’t it?
(Obligatory smiley to show I’m not 100% serious… but not 0% either: )
added later - oh, and I fully agree with your last paragraph… and while I’m here: If they were to name a reasonable one-off price for “snapmarks for as long as you have the machine”, I’d be the first to yell “Shut up and take my money!”…
Wait.
It’s pre-coffee but does this mean that if I have Snapmarks now, I’ll have to get premium to use them in the future or does this only mean for those who do not yet have them?
I work away from home for extended periods (although measured in months, not years), so I understand your frustration, but honestly, we represent an extremely small fraction of Glowforge customers, and face this same sort of issue in all sorts of other areas besides just the Premium subscription.
Having an atypical lifestyle brings atypical problems, but I can’t expect other people to have to compensate for how I’ve chosen to operate.
Just here to remind Glowforge you marketed this as a HOBBY laser. And some of use use it that way.
Until now I never regretted my purchase. Now I can honestly say I wish I had found something else. Being punished (because that’s what slower processing speeds are, a punishment) because I don’t want to earn enough to pay for the equal access I was told I was getting when I purchased the machine is just WRONG.
I can assure you I will not recommend to a soul at this point.
This will excite you then…It’s not getting slower!
Your machine is still going to work just exactly the same as it did before they offered the Premium Service, only faster, because everyone got a 2x server speed increase a few weeks ago. That is not going away and we don’t have to pay for it.
Something that probably needs to be explained…the Premium Service processing speed increase does not in any way impact the speed of the cloud or the internet or your wifi…and it does not impact how fast your job runs. We all got the speed increases on engraving raster images almost a year ago now …they are free, and we get to keep them whether we sign up for the Premium Service or not.
The processing time that speeds up with the higher rated servers is the amount of time that it takes between when you hit Print on a job, and the time that the button lights up on the machine. For really complex files that can take ten minutes or so…under the high speed servers, it’s down to about a minute.
If you aren’t running really complex jobs, or batch after batch, it’s not the end of the world if you don’t have the high speed servers.
If you run a business, and are cranking things out non-stop on the machine and every minute counts…that’s when you need it. The time savings can add up over a day.
In the future, if anyone wants to understand what’s going on with the development, read the Latest Improvements section in the Dashboard, and check out the Announcements section of the Forum just once a month. That’s where they update us on what is going on, and what the plans are as the machine improves. And now, that will include what the plans are for the Premium Service as well.
I don’t understand how it’s being punished? Someone paying for an additional tier of access isn’t them cutting in line - it’s just you in a different line - the line you’ve always been in.
That is the case, I asked Dan about it directly. I’ve had them since they were available and they are really handy, but I don’t use them enough to justify paying a premium and will lose them once it goes live.
And I admit I can be wrong but based on the problems I and many others (purely anecdotal evidence) are having getting speeds we had before over the last week or two it FEELS like you have to pay to get what we had.
And I’m just worried about how this plays out long term. Yeah, right NOW it’s just design tools and snap marks but it makes me nervous and upset.
Look, I WANT to be wrong, I really do. But coincidences and past issues with companies change to subscription models are making me super suspicious and cranky.
I guess all I can do is wait and see, hopefully in a year we all look back and think “geez that was so off the mark”.
I think the real fear isn’t that they the non-paid servers will sudden be slower, it’s that everything non-paid will stop receiving upgrades. Assuming glowforge units continue to sell, it’s entirely possible that non-paid will get slower over time from additional load since there is every incentive to encourage people to pay a monthly fee. How long will it be before we see queues for service and a big button that says “pay to skip the line”?
I don’t hate paying $15 for the premium, but what happens when my machine is down for repairs for 6 weeks? Do I need to keep paying for the subscription or can I pause it to continue for the same price later?
Once we subscribe once for the discounted rate will our accounts be identified for life so we can get it again if we at any point cancel?
Also I read we can add up to 2 other users to our premium account. How do we invite them to join?
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