If someone created and sold a printer that did not care about the ink that was used, the people of the interwebs would go crazy in the forums when the shitty ink they used did not work correctly in the printer.
This is not a defense for DRM'd cartridges, but just an honest look at how people will behave. The support for the company with a open ink policy would be astronomical for the complaints they will receive. Sometimes, people/users are the problem but there's no way to tell that to the customer without you being the dick. "the customer is always right" is such a bullshit fallacy that makes operating a business near impossible.
> If someone created and sold a printer that did not care about the ink that was used, the people of the interwebs would go crazy in the forums when the shitty ink they used did not work correctly in the printer.
There's no need for hypotheticals. Such printers do exist. People on the Internet tend to praise them (see this very thread). I'm sure people have had bad ink experiences, and if I search for it I will find them. But I highly doubt they'd blame the printer or the concept...
> If someone created and sold a printer that did not care about the ink that was used
Why would anyone do that. Sounds like a strawman.
All printers I've seen specify precisely what ink they need. And then you look up which 3rd party inks are compatible, so the printer gets what it want.
It's the 3rd party inks that I'm talking about. Who is verifying they are compatible? The Chinese company selling on Temu? Why would the 1st party verify a 3rd party? Licensing fees?
The point is that companies don't want/need to support 3rd party, and by allowing 3rd party opens their devices up for complaint when 3rd party doesn't work.
Is this an age gap situation? What you're describing as difficult used to be the norm. You could go to the print shop with a cartridge and they'd fill it with whatever they had for a reasonable price. No one had to support third party cartridges (you'd refill the first party cartridges and third party cartridges were designed to be compatible). It was a perfectly acceptable system for everyone except the manufacturers, who weren't happy with consumers that would buy loss leader printers and skip the ink.
I feel like the overlap of people savvy enough to want re-fillable carts and people not understanding what "only fill with high quality ink" means so they jump to blame the company is pretty small.
I see you haven't met the moms of the interwebs just yet. People will see something at the Dollar [Store|General|Tree] and think/expect it will work. People will buy things on Amazon/eBay/Temu/etc and expect it to work.
I think your expectations of what people in the world will do is way too high
> the people of the interwebs would go crazy in the forums when the shitty ink they used did not work correctly in the printer.
They definitely wouldn't, because this is a case of corruption being taken to the extreme. Official ink costs more than printers. If I bought awful bootleg ink three times and the last fake cartridge melted the printer into a smoldering pile of plastic, I could buy another printer and still break even.
This is not a defense for DRM'd cartridges, but just an honest look at how people will behave. The support for the company with a open ink policy would be astronomical for the complaints they will receive. Sometimes, people/users are the problem but there's no way to tell that to the customer without you being the dick. "the customer is always right" is such a bullshit fallacy that makes operating a business near impossible.