First: Kudos to snapmaker: They have learned from the communication hickups with Artisan and make people aware that plan to buy a dual extrusion module that another product is due that might address the buyer’s needs better - I think that is fair and an improvement!
That said, a bit of information can be found in the Artisan thread: Snapmaker Artisan: A New Generation of 3-in-1 3D Printers - #52 by Hauke (and follow up replies)
Long story short:
- Some Snapmaker engineers seperated from Snapmaker and started the Jadelabo J1 project via Kickstarter
- The campaign was successful, but the engineers returned to Snapmaker
- So the now nearly finished product will be sold via Snapmaker
It is a completely different concept from Artisan or SM1/2 - it has a Core XY base and two somewhat independent toolheads. Products for the J1 will most likely not be compatible with Artisan/SM product line - the only exception I can see potentially would be the hotend modules, since the J1 has similarities here, but if they really aligned the designs here is difficult to tell.
When I see screenshots from the Touchscreen UI of Artisan and J1, my impression is that they look very similar, so perhaps there’s some shared UI elements, but due to the different aspect ratio of the screens I do not see that this will come to the SM2 screen - and I don’t see a problem here. I would not be surprised if J1 runs on Marlin like Artisan and SM, so potentially the firmwares will merge to the benefit of all three products.