Getting the unit to work again in the Cricut "ecosystem" just means Cricut can disable it later when they catch on.

Companies that "lock" or otherwise brick viable hardware as part of the business model (I'm thinking about Sonos here, too) are really terrible. People shouldn't be rewarding them by buying their garbage to begin with.

They are cool machines mechanically, but the software is an absolute nightmare, DO NOT BUY.

Source: i bought one. Regret sunk in the moment i tried to do anything even slightly interesting. This isn’t a bambulabs situation where it’s mostly a philosophical objection to a closed ecosystem. It’s bad software that makes it hard or impossible to use the machine except in a very narrow set of ways.

I’ve not firsthand used any of the competing machines (silhoutte, et al) but i hear they are a bit better - and i don’t know how they could be worse.