Wait, that’s still just about their phone app. When you disable the cloud features, you lose the phone app, but otherwise the printer is fully usable. You can still connect to it through Bambu studio, you just have to roll your own networking (e.g. a VPN), right?

Yes and no, it seems. Yes in Developer Mode. With that configuration, which confusingly requires you to turn on LAN mode first, you can use your own software to control all features of the device.

In LAN mode it’s more complicated. LAN mode requires you to still use their slicer because the majority of functions beyond the extremely basic are still restricted by their authorization layer. This means using their SDK/network plugin for anything you develop, effectively coercing developers into their ecosystem for use-cases by the majority of users.

It seems pretty clear, in my opinion, that what they’re trying to communicate by using the “developer mode” language is that owning your device end-to-end is big, scary, and only for professionals. Oh, btw, developer mode leaves your device completely open and introduces various UX friction points to the experience related to constantly needing to rebind. Effectively it’s malicious compliance on their end. They’re giving the middle finger to anyone who wants to cut them out, and it’s hard to say anyone who feels that way is imagining it.

You can only connect to it from the same LAN, yes, except you can't connect locally to it unless you disable the cloud features first.