You can print of an SD card without any special software or online services, the same as you can on Prusa printers. It's just the server/internet stuff that's locked down. Which I wish was open too, but it's still has fully unrestricted local printing functionality.
From that link if you continue reading, commenters in the thread point out that LAN mode didn't even exist when the printer came out, and that it's more flexible now than when they first came out on the market.
My other comment on this thread contains the rest of my thoughts. Overall, I think this outrage is overblown.
Yeah this looks to be the case. All of this change was prompted by the fact that malicious software was triggering prints over the network. So now they have locked it down so the printer can verify prints came from the actual account owner.
Printing directly from SD cards via the little touch screen is unchanged since networked computers can’t do that.
> So now they have locked it down so the printer can verify prints came from the actual account owner.
This is inaccurate, the printer already required authentication using an 8 digit code. What they're trying to do now is verify that the print has been started using official Bambu software, i.e. software-only DRM.
I really really hope people saying this is a nothingburger is actually right, because I do have a P1S, use orcaslicer, and would like it to continue to work. Hoping this is just a miscommunication.
Bambu Connect is explicitly about allowing you to continue to use your favorite slicer. They make it less convenient (instead of pressing print you now have to save, load the file in Bambu Connect and then press print), but they don't prevent you from doing it.
Once the update actually rolls out to the P1S obviously. Which may not even happen with the current backlash
> Bambu Connect is explicitly about allowing you to continue to use your favorite slicer.
For now. They're putting themselves in the middleman position where they get the final say over what we can print on the printers that we supposedly "own".
It's naive to think that they won't try to extract revenue from that privileged position, they wouldn't have spent R&D resources on it otherwise.
