I will respectfully disagree with you about the feature/scope creep. They’ve said that the first (or nearly the first, can’t remember off hand) Glowforge that they showed publicly had a version of the removable head. I’d bet you that those initial investors (the 30-whatever-million dollar folks that are paying for day-to-day operations at this point, not us pre-order people) have known about this since the machine was first presented to them even though we haven’t. It cost them millions to be privy to that information, though. I suppose all this reveals that I still trust the company at this point.
I don’t think it’s strange to imagine that this has been there the whole time for the reasons above. Like you, though, I can’t wait to see some of the features yet to be demonstrated. I think the difference is I’m still excited in my waiting. To be honest, I’ll admit that Dan and co. waiting to reveal this now has helped keep me excited in light of the bad news. I credit that as good business strategy. That and the shiny other gifts help. The delays, not so much. But I don’t think Glowforge believes that’s good business either.
[quote=“dan, post:8, topic:3683”]
If it’s any consolation, it has - my cofounder built a combination laser, CNC, plasma torch, 3D printer in his garage with an interchangeable head before we started the company. It was in there from the start.
Great point. Thanks. I’ll have to withdraw my concern about feature creep on this point— but I think still is errant timing for a confirm-reveal when there is so much that has been explicitly promised that still have poor communications (and apparently planning) with nothing demonstrated in the wild. (Even less when it comes to we Pro supporters.) But I suppose the severity (or not) of that will play out in how many retained or canceled orders after this third major mea culpa.
I always took the we’re going to focus on the delivering the product we promised mantra to mean that they’re going to work on the features that were advertised. The removable head, while a potentially cool feature, was never promised to us.
Addendum: Getting unpromised features is a good thing in my book, but many good ideas have been dismissed because they weren’t promised. As long as we’re welcoming unpromised ideas, like a removable head, I think we ought to release a few of the better ideas from the hopper while we’re at it.
All a matter of perspective.
I’m pleased that the machine will have potential increased capability beyond what I expected. A bonus.
Difficult to describe as dubious before we even know what the features may be, or their potential value.
I cleaned the window on the head this weekend. I just plucked the head off. It snapped back in when I got done. Powered back on and cut and engraved with precision.
I go to get my daughter glasses and the place tells me 7-10 days. I leave and go to Lens Crafters with their inhouse lab and it’s over 3 times the price. Back to the original place I go and to my daughter, I say, “Sit in the front of class this week.”
I get all my glasses from Zenni online. Takes about 2 weeks but they’re far cheaper than Lenscrafter (order of magnitude) and work fine even though I’m getting high-end progressive lenses. I tend to spend less than $100 for my glasses so now I have a bunch
Lenscrafter prices are what they are because they are a near monopoly. They keep buying their competition and they’ve bought the entire supply chain on the frames side - they own all of the “designer” frame makers they carry. Ray Bans are a Lenscrafter house brand. As are almost all other “designers”. They have design facilities in Italy I think that do all the design work and then they fab out the manufacturing.
60 Minutes did a story on Lenscrafters a few years ago digging into the whole supply chain side of things
Zenni (zennioptical.com) works as do some of the other online ones in terms of very low prices (single vision glasses for under $20) because they don’t have the designer frames. All of the ones I’ve gotten (and the kids too) have been fine - quality is as good as far as I can tell and a fraction of the price. Some of the other online eyeglass makers can save you money (20-30%) over Lenscrafters but simply due to distribution cost advantages - they don’t have stores everywhere and they’re maintaining only a couple of very large lens grinding centers. But because they offer the “real” Armani frames, they have to pay their vig to Lenscrafters and there’s a pretty big cost there.
At Lenscrafters my frames used to cost me about $250-300 and then lenses were another $450-500. I was an AAA member for years simply to get their discount at Lenscrafters (4 kids & a wife who wear glasses).
i quite like zenni although i will say i don’t think hunk their quality is nearly as good as some place like lenscrafters. it’s so cheap, though, that i don’t really care.
i have some freakishly wide head and hard time finding good options at most online places. clearly had some nice wider ones, though.
It’s hard to tell. My lenses from LensCrafters always seem to scratch but the ones from Zenni don’t get nearly as bad. I usually wear a pair for 2-3 years before my prescription changes. The online ones seem to last fine. I don’t buy the $10 frames though - I’m usually in the $30 range. I also usually wear metal frames vs plastic ones. On the other hand I can get new ones every few months for the price of LensCrafters. Don’t get me started with why my optometrist thinks I should buy them at his office and wait two weeks and pay as much.
BTW, my brother in law ran LensCrafters labs for years. If you remember they had a commercial about their great anti-scratch coating where they used steel wool on some lenses and no scratching. One of his stores ran out of the steel wool that corporate sent them all so they could do it in front of customers. They were going to go to the hardware store for some more. They were told absolutely no - it was special steel wool only available from LensCrafters corporate
sorry, i should clarify that i was only talking about the frames. i found the lenses a bit easier to scratch but otherwise had no real issues with them.
