I want people to pressure the vendors, like Joann. Wake them up to how THEIR customers are being cheated by the products they rep.
They may have backed off but it is going to come back up at a later date. The problem being their customers see them as a hardware company and they see themselves as a subscription service company. I personally would never buy something that required me to upload my work to print that is just a formula for disaster and a walled garden. Also I am not someone who cares about sharing patterns or seeing others work.
The challenge here is that Wall Street values contracted future earnings more than historical sales. They GREATLY award subscription services as it effectively guarantees that the company is viable for the foreseeable future. We are VERY likely to see pretty much every company try to move to a subscription model for this reason. I for one hate it.
The great Farming of America. Everything is a service. Everything is a fee. Nickle and Diming people to death.
You’re not a fan of American Capitalism™? 
One of the things I hate is the automatic renewal of subscriptions. There are some services like Amazon’s Music service or Prime that make sense to me, but others are just stupid. Why do I need to pay Microsoft for Office use? All of the work is my own and the applications run perfectly fine on my own computer. I hate Ring even though I have 6 of their devices. I would prefer not to have the subscription and will likely walk away as soon as I find a viable alternative. I used to have ADT security but now I have my own Hubitat security system and use Noonlight as the notificaton service.
Wall Street will react only when the investor public or the public at large says NO and starts to do without the service or pick a competitor if one is available.
As far as Cricut I say pick a competitor, post on Reddit and elsewhere about your dislike and intent to leave them and let the investors see the IPO will be a failure.
Sort of like when Coke changed the formula for the Original. Pissed off the buying public and the decision was reversed.
As I’m fond of saying, “The most powerful force in the world is economics not military power” I’m a big fan of capitalism as long as it benefits everyone- stockholders, employees and customers. One doesn’t have to be screwed to benifit the other.
Subscription service models are the wave of the future, but you can never predict the future.
Devices like Ring need a cloud back-end, mobile apps, etc. and the average consumer isn’t going to create or maintain them. Someone has to pay for it.
Plenty of open-source options (Pi Zero W with camera, etc.) for those with the wherewithal to do it.
I guarantee there will be someone reverse engineering the cricut USB. All this is doing is artificially creating a rush to buy hardware before a deadline. Most crafter hobbyist probably buy the cricut for a hobby then seldom use it (the small card sized cricut for $175). Hardware as a service is the same reason I would think twice about buying a Tesla if I could ever afford one.
I’m fully aware of the “why” a subscription service is needed, I just don’t like it. I have plenty of storage space personally and I am running other cameras elsewhere so I’m aware of my alternatives. I know how to build a private camera security system too, but the convenience of Ring was just too tempting initially. I will likely move away from Ring in the future it is just a matter of the getting “round-to-it”. Half the time the Ring service isn’t really able to permit conversation with anyone at the front door. The responsiveness just isn’t there and I have a high speed network, added repeaters, a network mesh and the latest iPhone.
Still, I’ve limited my subscriptions to Amazon Prime, Amazon music (alexa) and that’s about it. I have a free Apple TV subcription I got with the phone, but it is pretty useless to me.
I absolutely concur that subscriptions are healhty for corporations because they represent a recurring revenue stream. As a consumer though I don’t like them. It is an interesting paradox.
I heard a pretty good theory about why they did this that I think holds water. If its true, its pure psychological genius. They wanted to switch from cane sugar to corn syrup but the taste difference is noticeable, so in a weird campaign to make the change and not lose a lot of customer base, they came up with a reformulated “new coke” that they knew would piss off their customer base. After a few months, sure they lost sales, they decided to come back with an apology and promise to go back to coke classic. However, when they switched back is when the changed the cane sugar to corn syrup. Because they had an interim flavor to cleanse customer pallets the change went mostly unnoticed. Is this a conspiracy theory? Sure, but its a fairly plausible one. They took a short 2 month hit to profits in order to make the change and get most of their customers on board making them think it was their voice that won the day.
Unconditional surrender?
Bow to consumer pressure and outrage! Bwaahaaahaaahaa!
More like this was planned all along vis a vis their IPO.
I get they have been designed for it, but do they really need it? They leverage a wi-fi network to then communicate with some 3rd party cloud service…why not provide the option to upload from wi-fi to the owner’s local server or PC storage?
If all you want is to save the video, sure you don’t need a server. If you want an app that notifies you that something moved on your porch, you need a server, and I know my octogenarian mom ain’t gonna know how to set up a server to do that.
People are trading their privacy for ease of use. They may not understand they bargain, but that’s the dealio.
Agreed a server is needed, just saying that the server can be local. My back-up software emails me when it is done…the install took care of it.
The overall point being that all the Ring/Wyze/Nest/etc. stuff could easily offer, and install locally, the software needed. They don’t…not because they need to be pointed to the cloud but because that tech and business model is what allows such companies to harvest their customer’s information and cash and keep control over what does and doesn’t happen within their tech & service eco-systems.
Tell your mom to learn to code ;–)
I’m a good 20 yrs younger than his mom. Think WATFIV will work???
lol…that was the language I learned on in college. You haven’t lived until you’ve dropped a program on a stack of a couple of hundred punch cards at 11pm…and the ops center closes at midnight.
I was trained as an analyst in the Army and know that pain all too well.
One of the unlisted benefits of keypunch cards was the unlimited confetti provided by the chip tray. Buddy leaves his sunroof open? Big mistake…