Silhouette does this with locking SVG imports behind a payment. Would definitely be uncool of Glowforge.
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To be fair to Glowforge, charging for features that were in addition to those documented as being part of the original product offering would not be unreasonable. However, I would not include tweaks to functionality such as improving image handling, etc. as chargeable enhancements, but rather fine tuning to get the product into a functionality level that should have been in place at time of shipping.
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I agree, I can handle being charged for new stuff, but fixes should be free. Filling a hole in the featureset would be a “fix” in my book.
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We are definitely on the same page here.
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I’m with you guys. I think everyone’s line is drawn different places for what is a fix and what is a major new item but at least in concept I agree.
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The good thing is there is competition in the market eg Full Spectrum Laser Muse.
Much of the hardware is becoming common (although camera’s etc are still not on all systems).
That means in the future the differentiator between systems will be brand, design and the software… hopefully it results in higher functionality and improvements rather than charges per feature!
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We haven’t decided the right way to share new features yet - email? user interface note? @Tony’s been thinking about it. We’ll make sure you know, though! Great meeting you too.
No promises, but we definitely pick up “bonus” features from time to time. For example, we’ve got some really cool functionality coming if you have access to more than one Glowforge. We built it for practical reasons - we need it to test effectively at the office - but it’s going to be super helpful for some of our users who can access more than one. [quote=“Jules, post:125, topic:2952”]
The only people I have seen this truly benefiting in that way are the ones that really have never done any vector type work, who will be able to have simple drawings converted for them into something laserable.
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While we only demo pen-drawing functionality for practical reasons (need to do something repeatably hundreds of times a weekend), keep in mind that 95% of printing is from design software, and we’ve done an immense amount of work to make it work well. If you’re used to a traditional laser, you’ll be surprised and delighted how much easier it is!
Noted! It’s in the hopper already (was an internal idea) but things that you all want get prioritized above ‘woudn’t it be cool if…’. (Or they will be, when we get to the hopper!)
They’re good - I’ve posted some pictures of Pro doors already.
Yeah I spent way too long figuring out how to explain that. I want to be clear about our commitments, but make really sure I neither make promises I can’t keep, nor equip the delightful Other Companies Who Like To Talk About Us with interesting quotes that they can pull out of context. It sounds like the results came out mealy-mouthy, so I apologize.
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Give Dan a break, crafty carries a slightly negative nuance, and afaik he is not a lawyer. Also he is “juggling precious eggs in variable gravity”. (Jerry Pournelle). There was good info that I wanted in his post.
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I can attest to this statement…the Glowforge does much more. Like I’ve said in the past…traditional lasers are like an attached printer…design via computer software and send to print…
The only “editing” I can do on my $15k machine is move the image to a different location on the bed. I can’t resize or change orientation using the laser interface let alone scan and trace. I also can’t redefine function to lines from vector cut to raster engrave once its sent from the computer, only adjust the power levels or skip a color.
Its like expecting someone to appreciate a smart phone when you’ve never HAD to use a dumb phone…lol
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Thank you for that valuable perspective!
No substitute for an objective evaluation from more than a decade of experience.
So glad you have hung with us @smcgathyfay!!
If I find myself passing through Oklahoma, I will route my journey accordingly.
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This is exciting to think about, even never having used a traditional laser! Can’t wait to see it. 
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The only thing I can think of is a long chain of Pro units all working on different segments of a single large pass-through item. Then you bump the piece forward to get the space previously in between machines. Complete a 20 foot board in two cuts (given 20 machines perfectly aligned with one another…)
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Ha! No, more like with a dozen Glowforge printers in the lab, which one can I print to.
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I don’t know how many of your sales are multiples but I can see how that could be very useful.
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We built now because we needed it to manage our own fleet of printers for testing, but it’ll be a great feature for those who need it eventually.
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Of all the services I use, I would say Plex does the best job keeping me up to date on their feature additions. I recommend their model…whatever that may be.
Stick it in the UI for sure. Give people the option of notifications via email in settings. it would be nice to have a running log somewhere that contains all of the patch notes for each release in case someone is running into an issue after a new version is released. What would also be beneficial in that situation is the previous version they logged into.
e.g. User running batch engraves on version 1.4. User goes on vacation for 2 weeks. Comes back to finish running the rest of the engraves and something goes wrong. User can see last version they used that worked and relay both version numbers and the issue at hand to support.
Another question to follow this: Inventables displays a “how did this operation turn out” after the operation ends, allowing you to say it ended well, had issues, etc, and then allows you to leave comments related to the outcome you chose. This seems it could be very helpful in gathering results. Are you guys planning on implementing something of that nature?
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I could see this being very useful for printing from the catalog.
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IMO the absolute ideal would be a little Envelope icon (titled News or Messages maybe) which gets a standard numeric badge to let you see there are new things.
Click on the icon, it expands to show what all has changed. Super brief bullet points style thing.
Click on any one bullet point, and you get a larger description of what has changed, ideally with the option to get a video tutorial if it involved new GUI elements.
This avoids the hair-trigger popup dismissal that most of us have developed, and allows users who know precisely what they want to do to still get in and do what they planned on with zero interruptions. But at their leisure, review changes which likely had minimal impact on their workflow.
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Could be great for projects on proofgrade materials.
Begs the question will there be any warranty or guarantee if we bought a plan used a known proofgrade material and did everything properly, yet ended with a failure, could we submit for replacement?
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