5 ms·

I bought a Remarkable 2 myself, and I have to say I'm really happy with it. The built in e-reader was a bit mediocre, but a quick SSH session and a couple commu

I bought a Remarkable 2 myself, and I have to say I'm really happy with it. The built in e-reader was a bit mediocre, but a quick SSH session and a couple community scripts later and with just a long swipe across the screen I could access Koreader whenever I wanted.

base698 5y ago
Link?
d4rkp4ttern 5y ago
I have an RM2 and use it a lot but the jagged lines bother me. I got the Onyx Boox and returned it, the software was just too clunky and did not have the paper feel, instead felt very plasticky
mstipetic 5y ago
I don’t understand how they put so little effort into software compared to hardware. They raised money recently they should be able to hire a decent software team, but I’m afraid they’ll start pushing towards subscription only features now
- Deukhoofd 5y ago
  The software is fine for note taking, and reading and annotating PDFs, which is what I mostly use it for at work. The reader does however not feel set up for reading books. With it being fairly trivial to install Koreader however this turned into a non-issue to me.
- michaelmior 5y ago
  I only have the reMarkable 1, but I've actually been pretty happy with the software on the device on the constant upgrades. What has been really disappointing is the clunky desktop and mobile apps and the fact that there's no Web app. Personally I wish they would just abandon the desktop and mobile apps and build a great Web app that works OK everywhere.
- gspr 5y ago
  > but I’m afraid they’ll start pushing towards subscription only features now Considering the hackability of the device, and how all the cloud services are opt-in, I don't see how that would do them any good.
- fouric 5y ago
  "so little effort into software"? Quite the opposite, it seems like they've put a lot of effort into the software. Everything "just works" and is polished, unlike almost every other piece of software I've ever used. Don't mistake a lack of advanced features for a lack of software effort. reMarkable is making an intentional trade-off - more feature quality, less feature quantity. See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27516894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27516894
  - Arainach 5y ago
    I'm all for fewer polished features - but we don't get any of those. Prior to the latest updates I actively regretted my reMarkable 2 purchase. Now it's back to "a decent device that I would never recommend anyone pay full price for" Let's start with eReading: Hyperlinks in ePub and PDF didn't work. As such, your table of contents and index are worthless, you don't have quick access to footnotes, and so on. They only very recently finally added this in the 2.6 update. If links don't work they must have some way to jump between pages easily, right? No, wrong again. Jumping to a page number is 3 clicks deep (pretty sure it was 4 prior to 1.17): Upper left corner, page overview, "Go to page". You then have to move from the top of the screen to the bottom to enter the page number and then back to the top since they couldn't be bothered to put an enter/OK button with the other buttons. Then there's the controls in general. To switch between writing utensils, you need the left menu. This covers your document content and there's no way to just scale the content into the remaining space. This means that to work on an entire document you need to be constantly opening and closing that menu. There's not even a way to have the button backgrounds be transparent so you can read what's behind them without interacting. Search is very slow. It takes FOREVER to index a book, and you're given no indication of if it's done. Instead, if I open a large PDF and search, I will be told that there are no results rather than that it hasn't finished looking yet. If I wait 15 seconds, things may magically appear on my screen unexpectedly. eBooks are slow to load, and changing text size requires you to wait while the entire book is rerendered (losing your notes in the process since they're image-based rather than proper annotations) This is primarily a drawing/creation device. A basic tool that would help here is stroke-based erasing. They have stroke knowledge since Undo supports that, but the eraser is a clumsy mess that reminds me of the worst cheap elementary school supplies. While we're on basic UX, why is the entire device in "light mode" except for the settings app which is inverted into dark mode with no way to change it to a normal UX? Those are all off the top of my head. I have a much longer list of thoughts in a document somewhere. My overall point is that my expectations a full Android device with fancy editors. My expectations were an optimized focus/creation device, but the software lets the hardware down in a bad way even for their core scenarios of reading, annotating, and drawing.

base698 5y ago

Link?

d4rkp4ttern 5y ago

I have an RM2 and use it a lot but the jagged lines bother me. I got the Onyx Boox and returned it, the software was just too clunky and did not have the paper feel, instead felt very plasticky

mstipetic 5y ago

I don’t understand how they put so little effort into software compared to hardware. They raised money recently they should be able to hire a decent software team, but I’m afraid they’ll start pushing towards subscription only features now

Deukhoofd 5y ago
The software is fine for note taking, and reading and annotating PDFs, which is what I mostly use it for at work. The reader does however not feel set up for reading books. With it being fairly trivial to install Koreader however this turned into a non-issue to me.
michaelmior 5y ago
I only have the reMarkable 1, but I've actually been pretty happy with the software on the device on the constant upgrades. What has been really disappointing is the clunky desktop and mobile apps and the fact that there's no Web app. Personally I wish they would just abandon the desktop and mobile apps and build a great Web app that works OK everywhere.
gspr 5y ago
> but I’m afraid they’ll start pushing towards subscription only features now Considering the hackability of the device, and how all the cloud services are opt-in, I don't see how that would do them any good.
fouric 5y ago
"so little effort into software"? Quite the opposite, it seems like they've put a lot of effort into the software. Everything "just works" and is polished, unlike almost every other piece of software I've ever used. Don't mistake a lack of advanced features for a lack of software effort. reMarkable is making an intentional trade-off - more feature quality, less feature quantity. See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27516894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27516894
- Arainach 5y ago
  I'm all for fewer polished features - but we don't get any of those. Prior to the latest updates I actively regretted my reMarkable 2 purchase. Now it's back to "a decent device that I would never recommend anyone pay full price for" Let's start with eReading: Hyperlinks in ePub and PDF didn't work. As such, your table of contents and index are worthless, you don't have quick access to footnotes, and so on. They only very recently finally added this in the 2.6 update. If links don't work they must have some way to jump between pages easily, right? No, wrong again. Jumping to a page number is 3 clicks deep (pretty sure it was 4 prior to 1.17): Upper left corner, page overview, "Go to page". You then have to move from the top of the screen to the bottom to enter the page number and then back to the top since they couldn't be bothered to put an enter/OK button with the other buttons. Then there's the controls in general. To switch between writing utensils, you need the left menu. This covers your document content and there's no way to just scale the content into the remaining space. This means that to work on an entire document you need to be constantly opening and closing that menu. There's not even a way to have the button backgrounds be transparent so you can read what's behind them without interacting. Search is very slow. It takes FOREVER to index a book, and you're given no indication of if it's done. Instead, if I open a large PDF and search, I will be told that there are no results rather than that it hasn't finished looking yet. If I wait 15 seconds, things may magically appear on my screen unexpectedly. eBooks are slow to load, and changing text size requires you to wait while the entire book is rerendered (losing your notes in the process since they're image-based rather than proper annotations) This is primarily a drawing/creation device. A basic tool that would help here is stroke-based erasing. They have stroke knowledge since Undo supports that, but the eraser is a clumsy mess that reminds me of the worst cheap elementary school supplies. While we're on basic UX, why is the entire device in "light mode" except for the settings app which is inverted into dark mode with no way to change it to a normal UX? Those are all off the top of my head. I have a much longer list of thoughts in a document somewhere. My overall point is that my expectations a full Android device with fancy editors. My expectations were an optimized focus/creation device, but the software lets the hardware down in a bad way even for their core scenarios of reading, annotating, and drawing.