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by criddell
560 days ago
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> I would guess most will force you to… They don’t. These days most people are printing pages from their phone and printer companies don’t get deep access to iOS and Android like they do with Linux and Windows. The printer counts the pages and sends the page count and ink levels to the mother ship and ink just shows up exactly when you need it. > massive profits These companies don’t have rivers of cash flowing into them. Selling and supporting printers and ink isn’t a great business. The software and hardware is expensive and hard to make. The ink is the only thing with a good margin on it and people just don’t use all that much of it. Lots of businesses operate like this so I’m not sure why people are so upset at printer companies. When I buy a game for my PS5, I get about $2 worth of plastic and cardboard and they charge me $60 or more. Obviously it costs money to make the game and they spread that over all the copies. Well, same goes for printers and their consumables. If you want cheap ink, buy a printer with cheap ink. They are out there and they are great. If you want to spend as little as possible on a printer, that’s out there too. You just pay more down the line for consumables. |
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So is the printer running secure (ie libre) firmware so I can know it's not also backhauling the content of what is printed for some imagined "legitimate" business purpose? Or are you saying that I am just supposed to trust the printer manufacturer based on their marketing? If I am supposed to be content just trusting them with the content of what I print, then I might as well dispense with "owning" a device that requires (space, supplies, maintenance) and just pick up prints at Staples.
> Lots of businesses operate like this so I’m not sure why people are so upset at printer companies. When I buy a game for my PS5, I get about $2 worth of plastic and cardboard and they charge me $60 or more
Because it's straight up anti-competitive bundling that would be taken to task if there were any semblance of anti-trust enforcement. Printers and ink for printers should be separate markets. A manufacturer should not be able to abuse their market share of printers in order to make people buy ink from them as well.
People are also most certainly concerned with proprietary locked down platforms (eg PS5, iDevices, web services). The topic of printers is just especially galling because it was an industry that got along just fine before using technological and legal restrictions to kill competition. Newer markets have been locked down from their creation, so people have a harder time imagining better. That anti-competitive arrangements have been allowed to fester across our society is a major problem, not some kind of perverse validation.
(Your example of game pricing also drags in the deliberate monopoly of copyright, but I addressed the substance of the anticompetitive bundling/subsidizing consoles with games)