I've been dailying a pixel fold 9 pro for a while now and love the thing. Seeing Apple finally join in is exciting as heck. I wouldn't hold your breath for a non visible crease though, nor for it to necessarily be class leading in its screen tech. I doubt any of it matters though, the Pixel Folds aren't exactly class leading in these regards either and the fold is just not a concern at all once you're using it. it's practically invisible from head on, and the "plastic screen protector" worries are really not an issue either. The durability of the inner screen is actually much better than you'd expect since it spends most of its pocketed life protected from external scratches. Mines still in great shape, even though I do not use a case nor any other form of protector.
Where apple has a significant opportunity here is the software side though. Google unfortunately doesn't seem to be too interested in exploring UI concepts with the Fold, leaving that to OnePlus and Samsung, both of which have imo better multitasking experiences than the Pixel Fold. Apple making an iPhone that becomes an iPad would probably be enough for them to win significant marketshare, but I hope they use this opportunity to do some interesting things with UI beyond what the iPad can do.
I have a Pixel 8a, and I have to use a case for it, because it appears to be designed to be as slippery as possible. Every edge is round and there's nothing to grip - it feels like an aluminium/glass bar of wet soap.
The 10 feels like it should be more slippery, but for some reason, it isn't. It stays stuck in your hand like glue, despite the back feeling like another glass screen. Something special in is coating
Yeah, it's one of those things that's hard to describe, but the 10pf, despite being thicker and heavier, seems to be easier to hold
Since I sometimes like to walk and browse, I ordered one of the Qi rings that goes on the back of the device, since it's just magnetic, I can remove it for pocketing and such
Yeah I use a case with a magsafe compatible ring embedded in it and I have one of the magnetic popsockets on there for extra ease of grabbing. Glad that's showing up in the next gen of pixels maybe by the time I upgrade it'll still be there or in way more phones too.
I have a 9 pro and it was very slippery at first. I put it face down on a slanted table and it slid right off once.
Anyway, I took the case off after a while. It's not new anymore. Your mileage may vary, but despite dropping it a bunch, it hasn't shattered and the edge only shows some slight marks from falling.
My Oppo Find N6 has a near invisible crease. Technology has come a long way and Chinese manufacturers are leading in components selection (best camera sensors and lenses, best silicon-carbon battery tech, good amount of memory, newest SoCs etc) with Google, Apple and Samsung catching up.
Good post. I switched from Bitwarden to KeepassXC / KeepassDX / Syncthing across my Android phone, Linux PC, and Windows PC. This was the setup I had prior to using Bitwarden for the first time. The Keepass experience is significantly better these days! Importing from Bitwarden is trivial too. Recommended!
I was using this but when I switched to iOS I switched to Bitwarden.
What are you using for Syncthing on Android? There used to be an official Syncthing app for Android but then they stopped maintaining it. There was a popular fork but then that person stopped as well.
I looked into using Syncthing on iOS but there was only Möbius Sync and it didn’t run in the background. This is was made me finally switch to Bitwarden. But of course now I need figure what to do next.
I have had an excellent experience with Sushitrain/Synctrain on iOS [0]. It’s honestly the nicest Syncthing client I’ve used, although to be fair desktop-oriented clients have different design goals than mobile clientsm
Can I ask questions about your setup? I don't intend to grill you on it or pick it apart - I would like to go down this route further, but find myself gradually moving away from it. I switched from Keepass to Bitwarden in 2020, knowing it was just a move towards convenience.
I suppose you realised you could protect against the scenario where you run outside without any devices, by just having a copy of the encrypted data sent to some cloud service, e.g. iCloud/OneDrive/Google Drive, but decided you couldn't trust any?
I know everyone's threat models are different, but I'm still curious to know your thoughts. There's no one you would trust with an encrypted copy?
Do you have any automated backup of your phone to a cloud service, or only local? If a cloud service, do you make sure it excludes your password manager? If no cloud backup, then do you make sure you have a copy of your data outside the house?
I have incomplete thoughts about the robustness of my password/OTP code backups. It is the 2-factor codes, which one day in the distant future, when I am overseas holding a new replacement for a lost phone, looking at the text "Enter the 6‑digit verification code", I will wish I'd thought about more carefully.
>>> by just having a copy of the encrypted data sent to some cloud service, e.g. iCloud/OneDrive/Google Drive, but decided you couldn't trust any?
False sense of security. As proven countless times in these forums, a ban on 1 product or 1 account on Google, is a ban on all of Google for that device and linked devices. I dont think you have factored in this risk. Or that commercial products get discontinued all the time. Open source (syncthing) doesn't have that issue. And we haven' touched billing yet.
>>> There's no one you would trust with an encrypted copy?
Doing password backups is particularly tricky. Commercial vendors are robust and depend on local circunstances. They do have changes in ownership which do change security priorities. Its a bit of a moving target whether they can be trusted or not. For non password needs, the answer is much simpler:No. They will sell data, at a minimum.
>>> o you have any automated backup of your phone to a cloud service, or only local?
Only local. I have 1 device parked in a relative's house that gets updated everytime i am there. That's my remote backup. But its not a daily backup, but i can live with that.
>>> I am overseas holding a new replacement for a lost phone, looking at the text "Enter the 6‑digit verification code", I will wish I'd thought about more carefully.
This is, indeed, the most important thing you must resolve. How urgent you need access to X ? Maybe you should solve for that separately. Everything else is much simpler and done.
For myself, i keep an encrypted usb disk with rsynced backups at my parent's place. Office drawer is another popular option. Another drive at home. Swap them every so often.
Full disclosure: I've never owned a Bambu because I've never loved the idea of a "closed" ecosystem 3D printer, however I have used them, and am very familiar with the 3d printing space beyond Bambu.
For anyone considering alternatives: You should know that almost all other 3D printers expect you to know a little more about how they actually work than Bambus. Bambus are as close as you can get to a "just works" type experience, but modern alternatives from others are nowhere near as hard as they used to be.
The closest "easy" alternative is probably Prusa, but you'll pay significantly more for a Prusa machine than you would a Bambu. They're an excellent company, and the complete opposite of Bambu when it comes to Openness. If money is no object, Prusa is highly recommended.
I personally run an old Elegoo Neptune 4 pro - but my needs are quite low. If I were buying today, a Snapmaker U1 or the Creality K2 Plus is probably where I'd end up going.
Prusa are pretty much plug and play these days, especially the Core One line-up.
You're right that they're expensive but you get free human support 24x7, you get an open platform, lots of contributions to open source (even Bambu Studio is a fork of Prusa Slicer), and they pretty much go on forever.
My Core One+ started its life as an original MK3 and went through each iteration of upgrades, and it works like new. I'm now waiting for an INDX upgrade for it.
IMO the main drawback of consumer Prusa offerings is the lack of good chamber heating for more advanced materials. I can print PC on my Core One+ in the summer with the chamber at 45℃ (good enough for most uses, but 60 would be better), but in the winter it becomes a lot harder.
The Core One L is supposedly better in that regard but I've seen reports that it's still not ideal.
Other than that, I feel the extra cash pays itself back in the long run.
Is there any guidance on improving the Core One chamber? I would like to add some thermal insulation around the chamber, but I'm not sure if the firmware will properly detect unexpected thermal insulation in problematic scenario's, if it blindly assumes its a stock Core One... the more you modify a printer, the more it operates in terra incognita.
Could too much thermal insulation cause the bed temperature to lower (to avoid overheating chamber temp) to the point the print no longer adheres? etc.
If you could recommend some articles on the subject I would highly appreciate it.
> Could too much thermal insulation cause the bed temperature to lower (to avoid overheating chamber temp) to the point the print no longer adheres? etc.
I've insulated my Core One specifically to reduce noise, vibration, and improve high-temp printing and learned that:
1. When printing at high temperatures, you don't have to worry about overheating. Chamber fans are plenty capable of cooling the printer down.
2. There are so many nooks, crannies, thermal bridges, and gaps that modifying the printer to add insulation is a fool's errand. You will spend a lot of effort for little gain. If I were to buy another Core One, the only thing I would do again is damping pads in a couple areas to reduce resonance caused by the flat steel panels.
3. That being said, insulating the core one externally by covering it with a "jacket" of insulation or placing it in an enclosed(ish) space is very easy and effective. In an enclosed space, you need to make sure the chamber fans exhaust out, so they can retain control of the environment. You don't want it to be a fully closed system.
For point 3, these days I literally throw a beach towel on my Core One when printing high-temp filaments. It covers the top, front, and sides. This is enough insulation for 55C printing (the maximum allowed by hardware/firmware) and is easy to remove when I don't need it. Of course there are plenty of more suitable materials you could use, from textiles to foamboard insulation. But the concept is the same.
> Could too much thermal insulation cause the bed temperature to lower (to avoid overheating chamber temp) to the point the print no longer adheres? etc.
That would depend how much "safety" is built into the control system.
The simplest solution I've seen is taping up the edges of the enclosure where you find gaps, to prevent heat escaping.
If it's only PID-ing the bed, the ambient temperature shouldn't matter. Less work to do for the bed heater. On the nozzle, it's similar. A 40 C increase in ambient temperature isn't much compared to the 150 C+ that the control system is maintaining. Since the active parts of the printer must be capable of running at the target chamber temperature, there should be no risk unless you exceed it. The question is really, is the printer designed to operate continuously with a chamber of X C?
However... the risk would be that if it's too well insulated there isn't a good way for the system to cool quickly if it needs to, or if it somehow messes with what the control system is tuned for. On the older printers you could re-calibrate the PID loops to your specific hardware and environment. The newer 32-bit firmware seems to not require user tuning at all. Similarly with full enclosures, you might worry about the power supply or other electronics which aren't meant to be run at high ambient (maybe fine though).
You could also look at a separate solution like enclosing the printer in well-insulated chamber, and aiming to keep that outer space above ambient. That would be a good option if you're expecting a big thermal gradient to your workspace, like an unheated garage in winter.
But lots of questions really. Do you want to run at a high chamber temp? Are you running in a cold environment and having problems? Trying to save power? These are different scenarios.
Yep - indeed one important issue people often forget with enclosures is that any non trivial components that end up inside the heated enclosure need to be able to safely continue working at the increased air temperature inside + any heat they or other parts of the printer generate that affects them.
If you steppers are already hot at 22 degrees of room temperature, they might end up damaged if air is at 45 degrees + are in use and generate their own heat.
Mine is more or less stock. I've been searching for an existing mod but haven't really found one. A good start is probably to plug all the little leakage points around the corners and unused rivet/bolt holes.
The main issue is how close the walls are to the bed, which makes a lot of insulation projects dead in the water. If a radiator reflector foil [0] can be made to fit, it might help quite a bit as well.
Other than that, proper active chamber heating is really where we should be heading. When I have the time I might attempt to replace the left panel with one.
You can insulate the chamber. That works fine. There is a vent on top which is open in case the printer needs lower temps. For everything else it will turn on the chamber fan. The parameters are tunable in the menu (or via G-Code).
We could search in the source, but I’m 99.999% sure it is a PID, because of course has to work in different environments. So I do not think it should be a problem.
I am still a bit iffy about the whole sending out fleets of 100s of printers to influencers during the pandemic while also increasing the price for their entry lineup.
You upgrade the Mk3 to a Mk3s, upgrade the Mk3S to the Mk4, upgrade the Mk4 to the Mk4s and the Mk4s to the Core One.
Prusa sell upgrade kits for each generation of printer.
If you were to do it all in one go it would require replacing the same components multiple times and would be insanely expensive and time consuming but if you upgrade as the product evolves its not a big deal (I recently upgraded my Mk4 to a Mk4s and I'll probably jump to the Core One in the coming year if I have some free time).
Prusa is still the most 'open source-ish' choice, but they're no longer a polar opposite to Bambu, in 2023 they started making efforts to stop commercialization of their designs, stopped sharing source/design material for their PCBs, etc.
Then in 2025 they changed their 'open community license' to say users may not:
“Sell complete machines or remixes based on these files, unless you have a separate agreement…” and “The Restriction: You cannot commercially exploit the design files…”
Maybe this is more a comment on how open source has had to change in the face of commercial exploitation of the vulnerabilities traditional open source licenses create for the businesses doing the R&D.
I've been a Prusa defender for a long time, including when they added the break-off tab to enable custom firmware which caused a lot of upset.
They're doing what it takes to be a business. I was glad when they moved to more injection molded parts instead of trying to 3D print their own parts. It was a cool idea at the start but the time for that was long past.
My only slight objection is that you can tell they're trying to have it both ways: They want all of the good will and reputation of being open source, but they're also trying hard to put as many limits on this as they can. Like all projects trying to walk the line between open and closed source, I think they're at their best when they're honest about what they're doing. The moves they made with their open license are completely reasonable and I support them, but that blog post was a bit of a letdown when they tried to make it about fighting patent trolls for the community or something. When you reach Prusa scale you have to be honest that you're no longer one and the same with the community. You are the medium-ish size business that people rely on. Taking away the right for others to sell the products is a reasonable business move, but please be honest about it rather than trying to tell us it's for our own good.
Josef clearly cares about being as open as possible, but has bumped up against the fact that companies like Bambu can just take their designs and extend them with things they don't share, and sell a product with more features and a lower price.
Unfortunately, it seems like the fully open source business model doesn't work well when you can be undercut by extremely cheap labor from another country and a company that doesn't share or reciprocate your values.
Share what? Nothing what Bambu is doing is remotely secret. There are no mystery sauce to figure out. Prusa genuinely got outflanked by Bambu when it comes to designing a printer.
They forked the slicer, and then put the networking part in a plugin that gets downloaded after you open it purely so they don't have to share the source for it as the rest of the slicer is GPL.
I still remember running Red Hat Linux when it was free and open source, before Red Hat Enterprise Linux, before Fedora, before CentOS, before RockyOS...
It's tough to build a business around a product that takes a lot of capital to build, and you offer for free to your competitors...
They were so deeply undercut by Chinese clone vendors that buying Prusa made little sense to consumers. They couldn't survive without banning them. The situation was similar to IBM PC, but Prusa Research was no IBM.
You can be entirely in favor of the open source ethos, even as a commercial entity, but then certain actors can take advantage of that ethos and just directly commercialize your R&D investment and take all the proceeds of your investment, whether or not they comply with attribution or share-alike requirements.
It’s tough seeing an open source project you’ve poured tons of care and effort into (and WANT people to share and remix and build cool things) get more or less “extracted” for profit without contributing back (code or money).
At the end of the day, none of it really matters unless you’ve got money and time to actually try to enforce your licenses, or have enough customer mindshare to effectively change the behavior of bad actors without needing legal action.
I’ll probably use licenses like Prusas in the future for similar reasons, even though I generally prefer to use less restrictive ones. Bad actors, or even just non-benevolent actors, can really sour the open source ethos, and it sucks but there’s no way to legally enforce “don’t be a jerk” without restricting a legal document in slightly unpalatable ways.
Nothing in Prusa's OCL stops anyone from cloning and selling their printer.
It only stops the honest people from doing that (and possibly much more, like manufacturing and selling replacement parts or mods).
Creating 3D models from existing products is relatively fast and easy. The hard parts have always been the actual design process, materials selection, and setting up the supply and manufacturing chain.
Prusa took what was practically a non-issue (cloning of their modern printers which have multiple custom parts and are overall not easy to clone cheaply anyway) and used it to restrict the freedoms of end users and small businesses while crying about how they are the victims.
I lost a lot of respect for Prusa when they came out with the OCL.
A damn patent would have been both more effective and less restrictive for reasonable commercial purposes.
Can you explain how releasing model files under a restrictive license vs not releasing model is a net restriction of the freedoms of end users and small businesses? The impression I'm getting is that if they locked away those files and never released them, you would have nothing to complain about.
This is like complaining about Valve letting game developers generate free Steam keys (=Valve doesn't get fees) that can be sold on other storefronts with the caveat that the developer must sell the keys for at least the same price he set on steam. Being allowed to sell those keys is a sign of goodwill, but the goodwill is conditional upon the source of goodwill not destroying itself. If you buy a game on the Humble Store, Valve won't get a single cent, most of the money goes to the developer, and yet Valve still has all of the ongoing infrastructure costs.
What you’ve said is true but also misses the point. Licenses have never been about stopping bad actions because a bit of text can’t prevent someone from buying materials and building things, just like a speed limit sign has never stopped someone from speeding (unless they crash into it).
They ARE however deterrents to bad actions from less-than-scrupulous entities, and enforcement mechanisms against fully-unscrupulous entities.
I suspect (but will admit I am just guessing here) that Prusa would prefer not to get to the enforcement stage because it is both costly and annoying, but having that in your back pocket is, sadly, necessary in a litigious society with some number of unscrupulous actors, and the deterrent effect alone is likely enough to achieve most of their goals.
Even if the unscrupulous entities cared about the license, they would just get their (already paid for) CAD person to reverse engineer every single necessary model over the course of a week. If an amateur like me can reliably do that in his spare time, imagine what a professional could do during an 8 hour shift.
But it doesn't matter either way because no unscrupulous entity is going to be dumb enough to publicly announce that they used the models to produce their clone.
If I manufacture a clone of a Prusa, there is no way for anyone to prove that I used the original 3D models. If it were possible to prove that, it would also be possible to "prove" that I copied 3D CAD models that I've never seen, which could put me in legal trouble. Reverse engineering is not a crime, and reverse engineering (and all the costs associated with manufacturing and prototyping[0]) likely _can_ reproduce a near identical Prusa printer.
As an aside, if you've seen the average Prusa clone, it's often quite far from the original design. Almost nobody 1:1 cloned Prusas back when that was a thing, because the Prusa design didn't cut corners. Those clones would often use designs which were probably derived from the original, and were unpublished. Why didn't Prusa go after them for this? He should have had just as much luck given that those manufacturers were potentially in breach of the GPL.
In summary, the OCL cannot actually stop clones, because if it did, we'd have some serious problems with our legal systems, prohibiting perfectly legal reverse engineering (irrespective of if the cloners did the reverse engineering or not).
It _only_ stops people who are honest enough to state that their designs are derived from Prusa's models. People who weren't a threat to begin with, and who now are voluntarily subscribing to legal issues if they ever felt like selling a Prusa modification without Prusa's approval.
The real deterrents are:
* Design complexity
* Extreme amounts of competition (almost nobody would buy a prusa clone these days unless they _wanted_ to have an almost broken printer to force them to learn how to make it work reliably). We have cheap, good, first party 3D printer designs.
[0]: To clarify, when I say prototyping, this needs to happen irrespective of if you reverse engineer or not. Once you have the models, which will be true to life, you still have to "reverse engineer" the tools/dies/materials/etc, for which Prusa sensibly does _not_ offer the models.
So you want European companies to keep being nice and "open", do all the research and invent new technologies and products for the chinese to copy and sell cheap clones of!
It's what the chinese have been saying for decades. More to make themselves feel better than anything else, yet Europe, Japan, or the US are constantly fighting with their infinite spies, and even though they are more than capable to 'outclass' everyone as you say, for whatever reason they never do. Even local Japanese strawberry farms are having issues with chinese spies for decades now (source: widely known, and personal experience).
They don't out-innovate anyone, they copy and use infinite slave labour to flood the market with cheap inferior products. Pretending otherwise is disingenuous.
Basically every "AWS ate open core company lunch thread" is filled with people arguing that releasing your products under an open source license is immoral because the company didn't foresee that a hosting provider is going to swallow them in 8 years to the point where the project would have to be abandoned. However, the immorality doesn't lie in the death of the project, no. The immorality lies in the continued existence of the project under a slightly more restrictive license.
It's always a headscratcher when you try to eeke out a living and are told that you have to work for a company writing proprietary software to have the right to work on an open source project. Wouldn't it be better if you made your living off the open source project? Apparently not. If the project was proprietary from the start, there would be no complaints.
This hardliner stance basically means there is no continuum between proprietary software and open source software. That lack of continuum will mean that the vast majority of software will always be 100% proprietary.
Voron isn't a company, nor are they after a profit, all designs are 100% opensource. Sovol runs on a profit and uses opensource designs to run their products.
It’s not problematic to restrict people from selling the thing you designed, made and sell without permission.
If I make an open source car, I don’t want someone else taking my design work, and then selling a cheaper version of my product, I want my consumers to build their own parts.
Maybe you should make a source-available car, or a car with select portions of CAD available, or something else that fits your intended business model better than open-source.
Sure, but you're comparing morality to the legal definitions in software licenses.
Different licenses are build around different philosophies, and the common open source definitions allow commercialization as long as the source & modifications you make are freely available to others. Prusa is breaking from that tradition.
If you decide to get a Bambu anyway, let me heartily recommend against an H2D.
It did "just work" for a while, but then the print cooling fan went bad. On my home Voron, this would be a 5 minute fix. On the H2D, it is this [0]. You basically have to take the entire toolhead apart, removing the mainboard inside it with no less than 11 very tiny and fragile custom ribbon cables that connect to it, plus 5 more connections on a second board that goes on top of it. Most minor fixes are like this. Another time, I had to remove a stuck piece of filament, which involved taking apart the whole front of the toolhead and dealing with even smaller and more fragile flex PCBs.
This is like complaining that on your dirt track racer it's a trivial process to swap the rear end spur and change final drive ratios. Someone who has their dealership do the oil changes on their leased BMW does not care.
Maybe they should care a little, because the long-term repairability of their BMW or Bambu is going to put a real dent in their resale value. But they're not the ones dealing with tweezers and ZIF connectors and flex PCBs, so it's mostly just not their problem.
3D printers used to be exclusively the domain of people who enjoyed doing all this work themselves, who loved a well-designed machine that was a joy to work with like a Voron. That's no longer the case, Bambu is offering unrepairable black boxes that "just work" for enough time that some people can afford not to think care how it's made.
>Someone who has their dealership do the oil changes on their leased BMW does not care.
We wouldn't really care either, but alas, there is no 3D printer dealership service center (unless you count 1 month round trip to ship it back).
I'd argue that my workplace who bought the H2D is exactly Bambu's target market. Most of us have personal printers we tinker with, but for work projects we need something that is mostly hit print and wait. We aren't really running a print farm, but we do a lot of iterations and make prototypes constantly. This is what the H2D was purchased for (specifically, the heated enclosure to better print ASA parts). Being hard to repair isn't really a problem, it's that it broke at all. And after it does break, changing a fan or clearing a jam should not be overhaul grade maintenance.
We also have a couple of P1Ss that are very solid, the one H2D has all the problems.
Sounds like RC quadcopters society -- everyone knows DJI, but they make fan guards a part of the frame. Guards and props are the most fragile parts, a consumable really. Something an enthusiast often carry spares for, to quickly swap on the field for any other RC quad, but with DJI you need what, send the whole frame to factory?
I like my H2D, but it definitely hit a brick wall. I replaced it, and had the same issue with one of the nozzles not printing consistently.
This was after around 700 hours, which isn’t terrible, but working with their support is exhausting. I don’t think I’m going to touch it again until winter, unfortunately.
I don’t know if bambu is easier than Prusa. Bought myself a Prusa core one, having absolutely no idea whatsoever what is 3D printing, plugged in, the included filament in, just as the 10 pages manual says, click click, and I made my first print (no internet connection, no wifi, no registration, no app).
Then I installed the app (open source in github) and started using the “cloud” services. I consider myself pretty stupid with such things, and it was absolutely the easiest thing I’ve done in 10 years.
The price is very high though. But at least you OWN the damn thing.
If you can afford to pay more for less printer, get a Prusa Core One. I almost did, but at the time the cost would have included four months of waiting, and that was just too much.
But the Qidi Plus 4 has been just a beast for me. It had some growing pains, and the Internet is forever, so if you read up on it you'll see some scary-looking problems involving the heating element which have been completely fixed for more than a year. From everything I've been able to determine, the QC issues with the Plus 4 are over, and the newer printers like the Q2 and Max 4 have never had them.
I think the intersection of "reads HN" and "needs that tiny delta of convenience between Bambu and Qidi" is empty, basically. Qidi are good open source citizens, and you get a lot of bang for your buck, especially handling high-temp filaments. It's _possible_ to print nylon and ABS on Bambu hardware, but realistically you want something a little better.
Also they're cheaper than Bambu. Thought that was worth mentioning as well.
I'd seriously consider the Snapmaker U1 also, but not the K2 Plus. For one thing, Creality has had to be bullied several times to meet GPL obligations, and I don't like to reward that kind of behavior. For another, the Qidi Max4 is bigger, prints hotter, is more precise, and costs less. Pareto improvement on the K2 Plus.
I'm holding out on the Snapmaker because a) my Qidi Plus 4 is a great piece of hardware and at only 700 hours it's got a lot of life left in it, and b) The Prusa + Bondtech INDX is right around the corner. That's probably going to be my next printer. I find the waste and extreme slowness of AMS-style multimaterial too distasteful to invest in, and I think that entire paradigm will end up in the dustbin as tool-changing consumer FDM matures.
I'm mostly happy with my Qidi Plus 4. It's pretty much plug and play. They are sometimes a bit rough around the edges, but mostly good. I'd say don't buy the newest model at launch because they tend to beta test at the customer.
I have an Elegoo Centauri Carbon which is cheaper than Bambu Lab's and it has been plug and play so far. I have no experience with 3D Printing and I've been printing on it without any problems so far.
I got the V2 and same - no fuss, especially if I stick to Elegoo filament. Multicolour worked out of the box, to the point where it's difficult to think it was a Big Thing until recently.
Given how I'm not sure there are 2D printers that really "just work" and don't throw opaque hard to track down errors at random - I actually like open 3D printers that do break, but you can be sure any issue is fixable & you will learn something new in the process. :)
I know it's popular to shit on 2D printers, but other than very often being very slow and running out of ink (or rubber rollers hardening after 20 years of use) - I actually didn't have any issues with them? But then I actually didn't really use them for 20 years either.
* one day remote printing no longer works, you need to set it up again or even get into prolonged debugging session
* remote printing works one ane device but not other
* one color toner cartridge on a color laser printer is empty or near empty, printer refuses to print without all manners of overrides on the local control panel, making it unusable for non-technical users
Well, the last point is basically sabotage by the manufacturer to make you buy more stuff, as it can print B/W perfectly fine or with slighly less quality until that one cartridge is replaced. But I guess that kinda proves my original point. :)
I stopped buying cartridge-based inkjets years ago. I'm happy with my Canon G3020, which uses ink tanks (built into the printer, not a third-party addon that the manufacturer will claim voids the warranty).
And it's impressive how long those ink tanks last: I printed out 400 pages of full color and the ink tanks went from 80% full to about 50% full. (There's a clear plastic window in front of the ink tanks, with a "refill when ink reaches this level" line on it — a raised line of plastic, not something inked or painted onto it that could rub off — so you can glance at the printer and see what level the ink is at). The ink bottles cost me about $12 each if I remember right, and each one will fill the ink tank from the "refill here" line to more than 100%: I had to stop filling, then wait until I had printed a few hundred more pages, then refill the rest. Rough back-of-the-envelope math says maybe 1200 pages from a full ink tank. The C, M, and Y bottles will cost $36 total (the K bottle will last a lot longer so I'm not counting it in this math), which means 3 cents a page for full-color, ink covering nearly the whole page, prints. Considering the cheapest print shop I've found would charge me 20 cents per page (and I've seen 50-cents-a-page quotes for full-color printing), the $200 printer will have already paid for itself by the time you run through one ink tank (17 cents saved times 1200 pages is $204).
This is turning into an ad for Canon, but seriously, it's a great printer. The only thing I don't like about it is that it doesn't do automatic duplex printing (I have to pull the pages out, flip them over, and put them back in), and I knew that when I bought it (the model that did automatic duplex was $450, and I chose not to buy that one). Oh, and I am not affiliated with Canon in any way: considering how glowing a review this is, I should probably say that explicitly.
But the best part for me was that it's not an Epson. I previously owned an Epson ink tank printer, and it was great... until the ink sponge filled up. Did you know that ink jet printers, at least the ink-tank variety, have a sponge inside them? When you do a "clean clogged print heads" routine, the printer moves the print head over to the position of the sponge, and pushes ink through the print heads until it's moved enough liquid to hopefully push the clog out. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But the sponge can only absorb so much ink before it fills up. And on an Epson, the sponge is not a user-serviceable part. They want you to send it to one of their official repair shops to get it replaced, costing I don't know how much because I refused to do it. I found an unofficial way to wipe the printer's internal counter that kept track of how much ink was in the sponge... and when the printer died about a year later (for unrelated reasons), I went shopping for another brand. I'll never buy an Epson printer again. Canon, on the other hand, will sell you a "maintenance cartridge" (a large sponge mounted in a plastic tray of the right shape to slot into the printer) for about $10 plus shipping. When the sponge gets full you can just swap in a new one. Dead simple.
Enough gushing from me. The point that I spent way too long getting to is, ink-jet printers don't have to use cartridges. Ink-tank printers used to only be available in the Asia/Pacific market, but they're available in the US now. A couple years ago I helped my parents (in the US) buy a Canon G3020 and set it up for them. So far their experience has been positive, too.
I have a P1S. Putting it together and running it was about IKEA level of difficulty. Very easy. If money weren’t a problem, which Prusa printer comes closest (assuming we’d want something like the Bambu AMS2)?
Isn't this just a Bambu marketing point? I have a Prusa MK4S and a Centauri Carbon - they both print without any fuss and can be operated without any deep technical understanding.
Im not sure what problems people are even envisioning having. I got a diy Anet8 that was badly assembled by somebody else years ago that they gave to me for free. I tightened up some fittings and strapped down some loose wires and it still just works. If newer and supposedly better printers were more difficult I would consider them junk, in operation they aren't that complicated of machines. The most complicated thing I gotta do is usually change the print temp up or down 5 degrees for different company filaments.
Ender 3 V2 that I paid <$250 for about 5 years ago. It paid for itself on the first print job where I repaired some Samsung stove knobs where replacements were $400 a set.
I'm now considering an upgrade and I'll likely just go with the Ender 3 V3 Plus (bigger bed, auto leveling, still an offline printer) and < $450 for cost.
It's been a fantastic printer for me.
I use Cura, stick with standard settings, use Sun PLA+ for all my prints, and the only thing I really need to do is level the bed sometimes.
I upgraded from the 3 to the 5, and had some great experiences with it. My Ender 3 was such a Printer of Theseus; I think I'd replaced everything except the extruded aluminium frame by the time I upgraded.
But that's part of the hobby, surely? Like, just having a printer and having it print things first time, and never taking it apart or replacing chunks of it to see if that would work better, seems kinda dull to me ;)
Surprisingly for me I have only replaced the magnetic mat and the hot end - mat was magnetized the wrong way so I had to cut it with a razor but yeah
I'm bad though, I have the nozzle run into the bed as there is noticeable sag/difference at the middle of the bed, but it's good enough for me there is some elephants foot going on but not crazy
yeah I had that, and got the auto-levelling kit to fix it, which worked. Luckily the Ender 5 didn't have that problem (it had others!) so I now have an auto-levelling kit sitting in the bits box. I'm sure I'll end up using it for something :)
Maybe it's a hobby for some, for me it's just a tool.
It's like bikes - someone rebuilds theirs in their garage, I take mine to the dealership for the service. For me, mine just works. I don't have endless hours for tinkering with everything I'm using.
Creality has printers that are straight-up clones of the Bambu printers and are just as easy to use, but they've historically been somewhat okay at working in the open source ecosystem, unlike Bambu.
Prusa is, of course, the gold standard, and their more recent printers are super easy to use, too.
There are a bunch of these I’m my local makerspace and they generally work great, and are often easily used by members on the more ‘craft’ side of things who’d never hang out here. Was surprised not to see them mentioned more in the discussions around this.
I have no first-hand idea of they’re ’morally’ better than Bambu - I haven’t looked into it - but I think the folks in charge of buying them considered that.
The "middle ground" is fairly split amongst different manufacturers like Creality, Anycubic, Elegoo, and even Anker now so it's hard for a popular one to emerge.
Having experienced both Prusa's prices (not just the machines, but also parts like nozzles and thermistors -- there's no way Prusa's thermistors should be twice as expensive as Bambu's) and Bambu's shenanigans, if I ever need a new printer, I'm very inclined to start my search with those smaller brands too.
Last time I checked you don’t have to pay that much more for a Prusa than a similar spec Bambu printer.
And in any case, Bambu’s well-publicized abuse of open source has driven me off of ever using their printers. I know that only nerds care about this, so I hope Prusa keeps pushing to build a straightforwardly better product.
I’ve gotten some really good prints with a Qidi Q1 Pro. Have read good reviews about some of the other/newer versions by the same brand as well. They are very cheap for the features they have, and excellent quality
The first year was rough, from what I've read. Mine arrived March 2025, it has taken no work to print excellently, and at about 700 hours I have lubricated it every 200 hours, and I just tightened the belts about 50 hours ago. That's it. If it's less than $100 a roll I've probably printed it. I have no complaints.
From what I've gathered across Discord servers (QIDI official, QIDI unifficial and Team 7 mostly), there is a decent percentage of machines that more or less just work, as has been your experience. For the less lucky ones, it's a lifetime of tinkering. I'm on the latter cohort, unfortunately.
Not to mention that out of the box you need to lock the printer in a cabinet as its printing. It used to give me headaches to be close to it for more than a couple minutes.
are they making their own actuators that communicate with some encryption?
if i buy a bamboo and i dont like it, can i not just cut out all the electroincs and put whatever the new dev board of the day is and flash standard 3d printing firmware on it and send it through a calibration run?
Chinese printers, like Chinese drones, Chinese PV equipment, and Chinese electric cars are inexpensive but that's because the Chinese Communist Party loves to pick winners.
They subsidise the living heck out of designated national champions, dump oceans of cheap product onto the international market, kill off international competitors, and then seize control of markets. It is neither legal, nor morally defensible.
Want a printer that happens to not be made in China? Good luck. Pay more, or knuckle under, and accept Chinese control of your technology, and increasingly, what you are allowed to say and think.
Actually try building something somewhere else - here's the process Smarter Every Day went through for a VERY simple item, nowhere the scope or complexity of the 3d printer: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY
I don't think Prusa and Bambu compare well. Prusa printers aren't as cleanly designed as Bambu and they are more than twice the price. I consider them really poor value for money. And Bambu printers aren't clones. The AMS is something they came up with.
Also, Prusa copy from Bambu too. Like their own material switcher (much less sophisticated than the AMS) and the new Core printer is really more a Bambu copy than the other way around, honestly. In fact other brands are copying Bambu too.
I really like them, they are fair to me as a consumer. Spare parts are cheap, there's no consumable restrictions or subscriptions for their cloud service.
And they're really as plug and play as you can get right now. I don't really need that, I've owned printers since the first generation so I know how to deal with issues. But really they happen rarely. The worst I get is stuck filament in the AMS and I found I can prevent that by removing the bit of filament with gear bite marks after it's been through. It absorbs more water then and gets brittle.
Also I've learned from earlier printers not to mix materials in the same nozzle so I switch them too.
Core XY didn't exist in consumer printers outside of Vorons that took hours to build. If all a new company did was take an obvious concept and make it accessible, then that just reflects poorly on the previous market leaders.
Vorons are not consumer printers. They are enthusiast DIY projects.
That aside, sure, maybe Bambu were the first to make an affordable core XY machine. But, outside of China, we still don't have an affordable core XY machine by this definition.
So Bambu were the first Chinese company to take advantage of cheap Chinese manufacturing to stop making crappy Prusa i3 clones, crappy other things, or v slot Bowden crap (Ender 3, etc.).
They were the first to "clone"[0] some existing core XY designs and make a polished and affordable product.
Cool.
I am not saying its a bad thing, but do we need to applaud it when China repeatedly undercuts the rest of the world by not playing on the same playing field?
[0]: I say clone only because many of the "clones" Prusa complained about so much were only visually similar to the uninitiated and were otherwise quite distinct (and also much lower quality). The Bambu core XY designs look a lot like other more expensive core XY designs of the time. But really core XY isn't hard, the hard part is all the fine details, which every "clone" maker has to deal with inevitably.
Again, the predecessors also looked like bambu printers, I don't know what to tell you. There are not that many ways to design an enclosed core XY machine.
I have about 15,000 hours on my Bambu x1c, and it's been fantastic. Their customer service has been great, too; the couple of times that I've had service issues, the tech genuinely worked with me to solve the problem. They were a lot nicer about it than the times I had to contact prusa about my older i3. FWIW.
I think the Bambu social contract is pretty clear:
- they benefit from open source software work
- we benefit from their dirt cheap top performing machines
As long as they remain the lowest priced and the best, they can do whatever they want if you ask me. They provide insane social value through accessibility. Before them, it was Creality with the Ender 3.
My problem with Pruša as an European is that it turns us into the equivalent of being a Chinese citizen who can't afford the Temu product they make at work. Their machines are priced more or less only for US export, and not really something most people here can reasonably buy. They even refuse to use injection moulding out of some self righteous principle, which drives the price per unit up further all the while selling less durable machines cause they're half RepRap. I take it sort of as a personal insult and I will never buy one even though I can afford it, I see it as bad value. Like buying a gold plated watch or something.
>As long as they remain the lowest priced and the best, they can do whatever they want if you ask me. They provide insane social value through accessibility.
This is how you end up with overpriced "3D print cartridges", unfixable printers that fail at warranty + 1 day and control software that goes "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't print that."
> As long as they remain the lowest priced and the best, they can do whatever they want if you ask me
Are they actually still the best on price/performance? There are now dozens of Bambu clones at lower prices, I'm wondering how much worse those are (for example, a printer like the Elegoo Centauri Carbon 2)?
Lower prices? I'm seeing the Carbon 2 priced 12% more than a P1S and 60% more than an A1. The base A1 goes for like 270€. I'm not sure if that's possible to undercut without losses if you sum up just the price of the hardware.
I just finished building a Core One+. It has a number of printed parts, but it also does have a bunch of injection molded ones, and they've just replaced another printed one with injection molding. Most of it is metal though, with the printed parts mostly used as relatively simple brackets to hold stuff in place that doesn't need great precision, and replacing those probably wouldn't save much on cost. I think these days they do the printed parts thing mostly to dogfood their print farm solution and I wouldn't be surprised if the next generation had only one or two printed parts for bragging rights. I wasn't a big fan of that either, the Mini I got in 2000 had a few critical parts printed and that did impact performance somewhat, but the Core One+ is fine in that regard.
From a hobbyist perspective, I find it's a much better designed machine than a friend's Bambu that recently broke down and turned out pretty much unfixable. Performance is at least on par, but the entire Prusa can be taken apart with basic hex and torx keys, it's highly serviceable and repairable, lots of fairly standard parts, not very highly integrated. I consider that a feature, but that will cause higher sourcing and assembly costs. It's built like a tank, lots of attention to detail, I expect it to last for a long time with minimal servicing.
That also means it's not targeting the same niche as Bambu's printers. That's not a personal insult, that's just a consequence of how things are right now. No European company is going to undercut a ultra high scale Chinese market dominiation vehicle, that's just not happening. Prusa is doing lots of R&D on much lower sales, they don't have the kind of access to Chinese industry that Bambu has, obviously the Bambu will be cheaper even if Prusa tried to compete in the same segment. But once the market domination thing is far enough along I expect Bambu will disallow non-chipped filament, lock everything into their cloud and jack up their prices. That's how these schemes usually end if they work out, but if they did that now, companies like Prusa would see record sales, so they don't do that just yet.
I'm pretty happy we still have some trace amounts of viable B2C tech industry in Europe. Companies like Prusa provide insane social value too by keeping skills and production in the EU. That's something we sorely need more of (not that companies are to blame, but we still do). Not sure how things will play out, and I'm not too optimistic, but perhaps with everyone else going all-in on dark patterns and pumping out disposable low cost crap, there is an emerging niche for reasonably open high-quality products that serve the owner first and don't data mine them for every last private detail.
Sure I'm certain that is the endgame for Bambu, but I'm also sure that people won't stand for it as long as there's any kind of competition (of which there's currently loads) and will move to the next best thing. They've come out of nowhere and captured the current gen, for the next one we'll probably see someone new.
I don't really buy the longevity angle for something that's moving so fast in terms of tech, my old Ender 3 lasted long enough to make itself obsolete in practically all aspects with practically zero maintenance. I had to junk a perfectly working machine because it became something not worth putting filament into. With such improvements each gen I'd rather have a cheaper machine that runs for a few years. Maybe we've already peaked but I seriously doubt it. I wouldn't be surprised if we see non planar antialiasing as stock at twice the speed and half the loudness, making what we use today once again become a waste of filament. Disposable low cost crap makes a whole lot more sense imo.
Remember the first gen Makerbots? Horrid overbuilt machines with glass beds, mandatory raft, quality barely worth a mention. They cost 5k and were obsolete in like two years tops. That's roughly how I see Pruša's approach as well.
If we actually valued local skills in the EU we'd have subsidies that make them competitive, ergo we do not. Personally I don't really see any for-profit surviving past going into the dark pattern hole eventually, there's too many incentives. Best just take what's best and least locked down today and run with it, assume it will vanish tomorrow. Forget long term support. Luckily there's always someone else willing to burn VC money in the initial market flood phase lmao.
I reckon until the recent ai-gobbles-everything-up phenomena, this was mainly an Apple problem. Even fairly budget PCs come with at least 1tb of storage. Considering much beyond 2tb NAND gets scary pricing wise, I'm not that surprised we don't see much beyond that.
Yes, but I don't think it was just Apple. The switch to charge trap based SSD storage set all pre-built consumer computers back a full decade in terms of storage size. We were only just getting back beyond 2010 levels when the megacorps started buying up all the flash fab capacity and now even most of the HDD plates are going to enterprise.
A full decade is a bit of an exaggeration. Not just in terms of storage capacity but especially when you consider than switching from HDDs to SSDs was a massive leap in performance for PCs and laptops.
There's no debating the performance. Charge trap flash makes computing so much better. It's just a shame things went SSD only. It really isn't an exaggeration when it comes to actual storage space available per prebuilt.
I don’t know what pre-builts you’ve seen, but when I bought 2 middle-range laptops 5 years ago, all the models were between 500GB to 1TB of storage.
And it’s not a trap when most people aren’t going to fill 5TB of storage with their accounts spreadsheets but they are going to notice the performance difference between an SSD and a HDD.
Yep. 500GB-1000GB is 2010 level of storage. And I in my experience they fill it up with photos and videos and then move onto unreliable, expensive, slow externals.
You can get two in one out kvms for pretty cheap these days. I got mine which is a three in, one out KVM with support for three displays all at 4k120hz along with 4 usb ports for about 20 bucks (although that was at one of those Amazon returns stores. New it would have been around 120 bucks, but totally worth it. I have my work mac and my personal laptop on the left/right of a 4k144hz monitor (although as others have noticed usually you're limited to 120hz through a KVM, but that's fine for me), along with my home server connected for the odd time I need a direct connection to it. Would recommend.
I got caught out by exactly this, and I'm not exactly tech illiterate. what made it even more annoying is by the time I'd realised what had happened, it was practically impossible to get the files back out of OneDrive (since I decided that this was enough Windows for me, and went back to Linux), since the webui does NOT handle downloading lots of small files well, and you just end up getting a partially complete zip file. I gave up in the end as nothing in there was particularly important. This is an incredibly annoying default.
I had same exact experience with macOS and iCloud. macOS by default enables offloading Documents to cloud, transparently. Problem is if you try to get those files back to store them offline, it gets very tricky very quickly with ambiguous verbiage and lengthy process that you never actually know status of. I ended up losing some files as a result, which came as a total shock to me. I was already in the process of moving back to Linux (hence downloading of the Documents) and this was final straw.
The point is it didn't work, my files were never getting downloaded in full, the process was stuck with pie chart icon stuck. Debugging this is not easy.
Wdym, I never had any semblance of iCloud offloading my documents to the cloud?
Are you all clicking "yes" on every prompt you see? So many people saying MacOS does this or that, but these are never the default behavior on a fresh install.
The vagueness is by design, it’s another dark pattern. “Delete all photos from icloud? [are we gonna delete the ones that we only keep compressed versions on your phone? Iono ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, you wanna find out? Yea, didn’t think so...]”
These is some weird bs there and it automagically sends everything up.
Despite stuff being placed on the drive, it decides to upload them and only have a cloud copy. I thought maybe it was me that caused this, then it happened to a family member overnight.
Oh and another fun thing! I eventually just emptied the OneDrive so Microsoft would stop bothering me. This was maybe six months ago or so. Microsoft confirms I am storing nothing there. Just a week or two ago I got yet another email begging for money because my OneDrive was apparently full. It was a genuine email, I went as far as checking the headers for SPF/DKIM. When I signed into onedrive, still empty!
Anecdata, they might have had a system error. My Microsoft account that I use the free tier OneDrive on had the same email sent (you're over x% full, consider upgrading!). I suspected everything you did - eventually I logged in after verifying the email - nope, 5% usage or so.
I then went and deleted more stuff, but my money would be on a reporting glitch than a malicious money campaign.
Myself–and many redditors–got this erroneous notification too. I don't think Microsoft ever sent out an "Oops, sorry, you don't actually need to pay us" correction though.
I wouldn't use the webui for that. Getting rid of onedrive in favor for a self-hosted nextcloud, I used the native client to download all the files on the machine and then moved them out. This also removed them from onedrive after acknowledging the "A lot of files have been deleted from your onedrive account" warning. Actually deleting the onedrive application was also not as straight-forward as some other users may want you to believe. Even now, I'm not sure it won't just pop-up one day once again.
I setup cloud sync on my nas to sync my dropbox, google and onedrive accounts... I only have dropbox actually installed anymore as it's just what I mostly use.
I mostly tend to keep some important information synced to the others, for multi-access in case of emergency. I also have a bitwarden account for secrets.
I have a grandfathered outlook.com custom account that I still use for MS stuff on occasion, but I switched off windows for my personal use a few years ago now, when they put ads in the start menu search on insiders.
From their point of view, that's the product working correctly. The whole point of all these consumer cloud storage products is to make it easy to upload your stuff and impossible to download it. (impossible - 1u to be precise, for legal purposes).
iPhoto does this the best. Its default is to upload every one of your photos to its cloud and delete the original from your phone. Then if you want it back, you can just click on the one photo you want and like magic, it's back on your phone. Want it on you PC? No problem. Open the web interface, click the one photo you want, and there's even a download button.
Want all your photos? Oh. Well, you can just click each one of them then click the download button.
I mean, sure, there's also this icloud app that will slowly download your entire photo collection into a single folder on your computer, slowing down the entire time before eventually grinding to a halt by the time it has put 10000 of your 250,000 photos into that folder. Of course, you can restart it, but it'll start again at the beginning.
But yeah, that's the business model. Put your stuff on the cloud, make it hard to get it back, charge you to keep it there.
Sorry if I'm reiterating known point, when the storage is full, API will stop working, so you won't be able to download files at all.
So you are completely stuck if you have too many files. Like I had. I used to keep pictures on onedrive, and used 6 user license. When the license expired, they locked me out completely. I couldn't download my own files! And the web UI is a crap.
So had to pay again for a year, this time I backed up all files locally.
you mean Microsoft is a menace. Microsoft has been tricking generations of people into using OneDrive. I hope nobody is dumb enough to pay for it and I'd create a ton of fake emails and fill it up with junk.
Thundermail is a great idea! I'd be more than happy to switch over assuming the migration path from say Gmail, Fastmail, etc was easy enough, and it supported custom domains.
I think the synergy part is what is great here. Imagine thundermail is a FOSS server app. Imagine they implement things like proof-of-work for senders, and no PoW means the mail goes into a quarantine instead of directly in the user's inbox. That could fight spam, without the centralization and loss of privacy we've had in email. That hasn't happened now, because of the chicken-egg problem. There's no client that supports it because there's no server that supports it because there's no client that supports it.
Thunderbird is a very big client. It could push email forward like nothing before. I may give Thundermail a try. I'd much rather self-host a Thundermail server... one that works around the port 25 block on every residential IP. Maybe my self hosted instance could receive messages relayed from the "real" thundermail server on something other than port 25.
The few times I've needed support, Fastmail has responded nearly immediately with the exact info I needed. So Moz would need to demonstrate excellence in customer service before I would consider any migration.
(I know that doesn't directly answer your question, but it does articulate a necessary pre-condition, and one that is hard for businesses entering a new line of service to deliver--although not impossible, of course.)
JMAP is a bonus (other fastmail user here) bjt if I can do custom sieve rules and or unlimited aliases created on demand at (somestring)@customdomainiown.com thst I can then use the sieve rules to put into a folder of the same name as that email address, I would rather give my money to support Thunderbird. Fastmail is fine and all but they are in australia so they live on spyware island and they dont have good native clients in the works like thunderbird does.
Unlimited aliases at custom domains are a part of the offering. Technically, Thundermail supports sieve rules, we do need to come up with UX to expose it to users for management.
Recently built https://entrycast.com/ - there are other products kind of like it on the market already but I had some specific use cases I wanted personally, and decided rather than making it just for me, I'd for the first time in my life make it something others could buy too. No customers so far, but I don't really mind, to be honest!
I would argue that we shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Adding a cost to commenting that requires aging accounts I think might discourage fly by night operations and "experiments".
Gnome Shell in particular offers a ridiculously coherent, sane window management. Nobody agrees with all the choices the Gnome Team took to get here, but it sure is nice there being one way of doing everything that makes sense contextually.
I don't even know if Gnome and Gnome Shell are the same thing. One thing I do know is the default install of Gnome on Debian 13 leaves you without a dock, without a system tray, and without minimize/maximize buttons. They purposely remove the three most important tools the average user relies on for navigation.
It's like trying to make a car without any round edges because "square edges are better". Good luck with the wheels!
I can fix that somewhat with extensions, but every normal person I know will take one look at the defaults and abandon it. That's a reasonable choice in my opinion. Why use something where the first interaction gives you a clear indication you're going to be fighting against developer ideology?
If you want to customize your DE a lot - Gnome isn't for you.
If you just want a clean and productive environment by default... Gnome is great.
Once you stop fighting it, sigh, and go with the flow... modern Gnome is genuinely pleasant in that I spend almost zero time thinking about it, and shit just works.
I still run other DEs for some specific purposes where "general use" isn't the goal, but I can reliably hand non-technical family members a machine with Gnome and they don't have to come ask me a bunch of questions.
My problem with GNOME (after having used it as my main desktop on my Linux systems for many years) is that it removes some really useful features and they are not just expert features, but also features that non-technical users are used to, such as system tray icons and menu bars. You can bring them back with GNOME Extensions, but for instance, the system tray icon extensions are very buggy.
KDE on the other hand just has these and is also great out-of-the-box (I pretty much run stock KDE).
Where apple has a significant opportunity here is the software side though. Google unfortunately doesn't seem to be too interested in exploring UI concepts with the Fold, leaving that to OnePlus and Samsung, both of which have imo better multitasking experiences than the Pixel Fold. Apple making an iPhone that becomes an iPad would probably be enough for them to win significant marketshare, but I hope they use this opportunity to do some interesting things with UI beyond what the iPad can do.
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