[rsync]

It's not just disappointing, it's stupefying. Why would my drill (or my compressor or my band saw) need to be on the Internet in order to function ?

Also, there's a lot of overlap between people who have the extra space/building/shop to properly run equipment like this and people that have spotty rural Internet.

[stbtrax]

It probably has to do with how people/VCs don't see selling hardware alone as a super profitable model on it's own, and want a cloud dependence to sell you more stuff or to sell your data.

[lairdpop]

The things that they show (running a web site with lots of UX, slicing, image processing, materials data, catalog of customizable designs, etc.) fit pretty well into a powerful web site/service with a small CPU in the laser cutter. Adding a powerful CPU, etc, would add to cost and complexity - it is much easier to run a web site than to support thousands,of users' local installs, etc. Though i agree that makes the device dependent on their service, that's becoming a pretty common tradeoff these days.

[quaunaut]

Probably has to do with how it analyzes the object it's cutting on, and determines what's suitable from there.