Microsoft Reveals Its 3D Printing Strategy For Windows 8.1

colinneagle writes "At the Inside 3D Printing conference in Chicago, Microsoft senior product manager Jesse McGatha discussed why Microsoft recently announced that Windows 8.1 will support 3D printing, even giving a demo of a sample app for printing a design file. But in the presentation it became clear that Microsoft is capitalizing on the recent hype of 3D printing and positioning itself to capitalize on the future consumer markets for 3D printing. However, a Gartner analyst recently warned that 3D printing may not become the household consumer item that some are making it out to be. So, by capitalizing on the buzz, Microsoft may attract makers, innovators, and even enterprise customers that use 3D printing, but avoids any risk if the consumer market fails to reach its potential."

I don't even, what are they, what?

[slashmydots]

I'm confused. Everything supports 3D printing. There's probably a Linux application for it. You just have the company write a driver, install 3D software that works with it, and hit print. The operating system is irrelevant. All they're doing is putting a big "sue me, I have the most money" sign on them with a picture of a 3D printed gun under it. Now they're just getting desperate. I thought 8.1 was a rush fix like Windows 7 from Vista but nope. Hopefully THIS TIME heads will roll and they'll replace clueless morons with reasonable design leads at MS.

Re:Scratching my head and...

[Voyager529]

...I seriously doubt the home market for 3-D beyond cheap plastic birthday party trinkets is going to take off any time soon.

You then underestimate the potential market for cheap plastic birthday party trinkets.
There's already a company [cricut.com] making a fortune off a paper cutter, because they've learned how to correctly market it to the craft maker segment. The cutter is $200 or so, then you have the rest of the ecosystem: the mats, the different cutting blades, and the patterns. How much does all this crap go for? Usually the pattern cartridges cost some $30 a pop,give or take. Go to your local craft store, they will have a huge section full of them. My aunt loves all this stamp and calligraphy stuff, but any slashdotter who believes they have the patience of Gandhi can swing by any day and teach my aunt how to do 'conventional' vector illustration and how to generate an EPS and then send it to a professional-grade paper cutter. It's at best impractical, and certainly wouldn't achieve a critical mass.

However, if there's a company out there that can make a mint off an ecosystem designed to make patterns on paper, you can't possibly convince me that there's no market to do the same out of plastic, if not a bigger one - ever been to a hobby store and seen all the plastic models that can be built? Now you've got the bored housewives' craft market and the nerds' model building market, and yes - a DIY-spare-parts market for certain things where such pieces could be made out of the correct plastic effectively.

As a blank slate that requires the 3D version of PostScript written in LaTeX? yeah, not much of a market. As a machine that allows birthday trinkets with a point-and-click iPad interface? someone's gonna get rich off that.