Feb 2017 Update

[hansena]

Thanks for the update! Gets me excited again every time. I saw that viola repair, love it!

[dawime]

@jbash

ecause I notice that the original message carefully didn’t promise that (while at the same time carefully not calling attention to that fact). And I wouldn’t be too surprised if there were never a single update.

But if they weren’t hounded, then I wouldn’t expect even that.

The whole cloud dependency is a critical limitation that was mentioned nowhere in the original crowdfunding promotion. It took about 50 percent off the value of the product. When people noticed it, we got a “well of course it’s obviously cloud dependent” act. Which I guess may look true if you’re deep enough in the “Internet of Things” lemming herd, but sure isn’t if you’re not.

If I’d thought of the the thing as anything but a toy, I would have cancelled instantly.

After that, Glowforge burned any remaining “benefit of the doubt”, not so much with the extreme delays, but with the lack of communication about them. That lack of communication was so extreme as to make one suspect a deliberate attempt to mislead. And it’s still going on, under thin “trade secret” justifications that may indeed be the true reasons… but are frankly irrelevant from the customer’s point of view.

I still can’t understand the people in these forums who ordered these for actual businesses and have NOT cancelled.

So I’m not inclined to be very trusting about any delay or lack of communication with respect to the minimal mitigation we’re supposed to get for the original bait and switch. At this point it’s time to start telling them that people remember their promise.

I will be amazed if this 3rd delay actually ships within the deadline. At least now you have $20 bucks/month of credit on the store for every month things are delayed, so the team has an extra incentive to keep things moving.

[Tom_A]

@dawime

I will be amazed if this 3rd delay actually ships within the deadline.

Ditto. I’ve stopped answering the embarrassing question of “So when are you getting your made up laser that you paid thousands of dollars for?” These days I just shake my head and say “I don’t want to talk about it.” Then they usually ask “Oh, did they go out of business and take your money?” And I say “No. I just have no idea when it’s coming. I think 2017 though.” And they have a chuckle at my expense.

[dawime]

I am doing the same thing. Stopped talking about it, don’t believe any 6+ month deadlines since they are based purely on it sounding good as far as I am concerned. Once I actually have it, then I can get excited about it. Till then, its waiting…

[Tom_A]

@dawime

Till then, its waiting…

…and paying that credit card bill. Which is definitely a bitter taste when you’re paying off something you don’t even have.

[marmak3261]

@jbash

The whole cloud dependency is a critical limitation that was mentioned nowhere in the original crowdfunding promotion. It took about 50 percent off the value of the product. When people noticed it, we got a “well of course it’s obviously cloud dependent” act. Which I guess may look true if you’re deep enough in the “Internet of Things” lemming herd, but sure isn’t if you’re not.

My memory and appraisal of this is very different from yours. About the cloud aspect, it was a major plus for me who regularaly work with several different computing platforms so I recall this as a crucial point in the initial marketing I saw. As to 50% of the value lost: since I paid half price, I guess I’m still getting full value then. what you value must be very different from mine. What values would that be other than end of life issues?

And just to cross reference my humble post on a trace of an object.

It works well and now I know how to make it work better in order to scan a part directly and cut a new one. This was a smaller part and just one piece under the camera. L

Upgraded LED Nightlight: Clear Proofgrade Acrylic

Ok. I couldn’t let it rest. Your comment made me think of another way of doing this, along with @jamesdhatch’s suggestion. I put masking over the original reflector, trimmed it around the edges and placed it in the bed over a dark background. I realized I just needed the contrast here. [image] [image] This didn’t quite make it all the way around to be able to differentiate a cut. The bottom is pretty precise and detailed. The shadows in the cutouts interfere with a good scan. [image] This …

[Scott.Burns]

@marmak3261

As to 50% of the value lost: since I paid half price, I guess I’m still getting full value then.

That made me giggle.

[Scott.Burns]

Regarding placement accuracy, @dan said

@dan

we’re constantly improving and refining. Already much better than before - yes!

Question: have any of these improvements been pushed out to the pre-production machines via updates?

[ez2remember]

Seems to me that since all of the updates occur in the cloud and are automatically rolled out to all devices at the same time…

edz

[Scott.Burns]

Or, Dan is simply referring to internal research developments.

[ez2remember]

True, I’m sure they have at least one testing cloud too!

[Scott.Burns]

Yes, no doubt, but with a beta tester who is under NDA not to talk about it.

[jrnelson]

@jamesdhatch

Alternately, figuring out their cloud destination and then altering your home router to redirect that to another service based cloud server would make it really easy (except for people who can’t figure out how to touch their routers )

while i doubt they’ll be hardcoding IPs in, i do wonder if there will be any sort of handshaking that will preclude this sort of maneuver (otherwise i agree it seems like the easiest way to play around).

[jbash]

About the cloud aspect, it was a major plus for me who regularaly work with several different computing platforms

I can think of three different non-cloud ways to support “different computing platforms”, at least two of which are actually reasonable to deploy. They are somewhat more costly than cloud computing.

so I recall this as a crucial point in the initial marketing I saw.

I remember the marketing talking about different platforms. I do not remember it talking about the cloud. Maybe you assumed they would use that architecture. I was too trusting to make such an assumption.

What values would that be other than end of life issues?

First of all, isn’t that enough? Especially when “end of life” often comes so quickly with these little companies? Even if the company doesn’t die, the product often gets dropped like a hot rock when the next generation comes out, and, yes, that has included dropping cloud services for working equipment. Look at Nest.

Second, there are a ton of other drawbacks to the cloud:

• No Internet connection for an hour? Your device doesn’t work, so I guess you’re not going to be filling that hour by using it.
• Use a relatively unpopular feature? You have a good chance that it will go away in version 2.0. Sure, there’ll be a bunch of new features, but tough beans for you if you needed that old one. Software-as-a-service does that all the time.
• Use a popular feature that gets involved in some kind of patent battle or industry politics or whatever? That can go away, too. You will not get any warning.
• Speaking of which, the feature set, bug set, and workflow can and will change on a schedule you don’t control. I hope you don’t have any deadlines to meet.
• Don’t want the world to get your design? You’re trusting Glowforge not to let the world get it. Security is not a core competence. In fact, I bet they use cloud infrastructure, meaning you end up trusting not just them but their “partners”. And their partners’ partners…
• Speaking of which, now you’ve put another device on the Internet, and it’s your responsibility if that device ends up in a botnet. You may or may not be able to figure out how to firewall it and still have it work, and that may or may not help.

Basically, “cloud” is a brittle architecture. It gives you no assurance that your equipment will work from day to day or from hour to hour.

[jrnelson]

@jbash

No Internet connection for an hour? Your device doesn’t work, so I guess you’re not going to be filling that hour by using it.

yeah, i know people keep pooh-poohing this, but it’s honestly my singular concern. i live in a modern canadian city and i still experience dropped internet connections fairly regularly.

i mean, it’ll all probably work out and i’ll be fine and dandy, but always worth questioning.

@jbash

Don’t want the world to get your design? You’re trusting Glowforge not to let the world get it. Security is not a core competence. In fact, I bet they use cloud infrastructure, meaning you end up trusting not just them but their “partners”. And their partners’ partners…

its all running on googles platform iirc

[Tom_A]

@jrnelson

i still experience dropped internet connections fairly regularly

Aside from the extremely rare power failure (which has its obvious drawbacks in this application), I haven’t had an internet outage in… just about forever. I recall one years ago. In that case I just setup a hotspot on my phone. We were even able to stream at 3G! I can honestly say, Comcast has done quite the job of keeping internet up in my area. (And that’s coming from somebody who is generally unhappy with Comcast and would switch to FiOS in a heartbeat.)

[kennethclapp]

Maybe I’m just remembering this differently, but then again I was a little later to the party. The cloud computing aspect was right there in the front of my decision making, I didn’t feel like they tried to hide it at all, in fact, it felt more like they were trying to tout it as an advantage. As someone who lives in rural Texas, my internet is not always the best, so this was something I had to weigh, but in the end, I decided the risk was worth the potential reward. If I was that scared of the company going under or the machine being bricked in the first few years I would not have purchased in the first place. If it happens, lesson learned and I’ll probably be more skeptical of the next product, but I’m not going to sweat it right now or worry about a future that I can’t guarantee or even predict. I’m also not going to borrow trouble. Once the product is out we’ll see if Glowforge releases their FW and what that entails, I’m sure not going to argue about what’s missing when we haven’t seen it in the first place. There’s my two cents…no refunds accepted.

[jrnelson]

which is great and how it should be but doesn’t invalidate those of us with different experiences and expectations

[Tom_A]

@jrnelson

doesn’t invalidate those of us with different experiences and expectations

Not sure why you inferred that, but there was certainly nothing in my statement to indicate it. I’ve shared my experience. That is the end of it.

[jbash]

Maybe I’m just remembering this differently, but then again I was a little later to the party. The cloud computing aspect was right there in the front of my decision making, I didn’t feel like they tried to hide it at all, in fact, it felt more like they were trying to tout it as an advantage.

I ordered the thing on something like day 2, certainly within a few days of the opening. And there was a big flap when people realized that it wouldn’t work without an Internet connection, so I was definitely not the only person taken by surprise.

I’m sure they did start talking about it more after that. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they do think the cloud is an advantage in itself… probably because nowadays people don’t even consider better ways to get the same actual advantages that the cloud gives you. Anyway, if you’re selling the device, the cloud truly is mostly an advantage for you, so that colors your thinking.

If I was that scared of the company going under or the machine being bricked in the first few years

“First few years”? I’d be surprised if the tube lasted many years, especially in the non-Pro model. That’s not Glowforge’s fault and it’s not a defect in the product; that’s just the way these things work. And I doubt it will be worth replacing the tube in a first-generation device after it wears out, either. So I’ve never thought of this thing as having more than a few years of life, which is one reason I didn’t cancel. I just want to get that out of it, and be able to play with it.