[HN Gopher] Our new Connect subscription service
___________________________________________________________________
Our new Connect subscription service
Author : gapo
Score : 54 points
Date : 2021-10-26 14:15 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (support.remarkable.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (support.remarkable.com)
| kweks wrote:
| User and avocate of the rm2 here; it completely replaced my
| notepad/s in and out of the office.
|
| Worth mentioning that they have given lifetime access to existing
| customers, but I had been planning on giving devices to staff at
| the end of the year, this announcement has significantly cooled
| my enthusiasm.
|
| If Remarkable staff are reading and are willing to extend the
| lifetime offer to existing clients for new purchases, feel free
| to speak up..
| wingmanjd wrote:
| $WORK allotted each employee a $500USD stipend for our at-home
| office space. I was just about to buy the rm2, when this change
| occurred. Instantly soured me on the device.
| cge wrote:
| >Worth mentioning that they have given lifetime access to
| existing customers, but I had been planning on giving devices
| to staff at the end of the year, this announcement has
| significantly cooled my enthusiasm.
|
| Notice that they avoid saying 'lifetime' anywhere, or saying
| anything about how long that access will last in their
| announcements and communications. They do discuss the length of
| the access in their FAQ, where they say that they plan to offer
| the free access for 'as long as we're able to', but that 'there
| are things we can't control that might affect this', along with
| a number of other vague statements. The terms of service, even
| for the free subscription, has you agree that they can start
| charging you at any time after 30 days notice, with no other
| consent or acknowledgment from you. Everything seems to be
| written with the expectation of removing the free access after
| disappointment with the new subscription service subsides.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Sigh. I really love my reMarkable 2 and recommended it to a
| number of people. Moving unlimited cloud storage behind a $5/mo
| paywall is the end of that. Deleting anything you haven't updated
| in 50 days means you have no backup for those notes if your
| device gets dropped. (Which happened to me.)
|
| Even if I was okay with this, it makes me worry about the long
| term survival of the company.
|
| For myself, I have my own backups from installing rsync with
| toltec. It'll be a few years (hopefully more if the hardware
| lasts) before I need to find an alternative.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| They sent new features over the years (i own one since they came
| first to market). I do think it's better to pay for subscription
| and get updates to your device than be forced to buy a new device
| every two years to get new software (aka Android business model).
| Tsiklon wrote:
| The user group on Facebook did not take the news of this new
| subscription well at all.
|
| Personally I'm on the fence about it, I got my remarkable 2 last
| year and I've been very pleased with all the updates and features
| they've added to it, I'm also pleased that existing purchasers
| and users are grandfathered in to the new plan.
|
| What I'm less enthusiastic about is for the potential of new
| features being exclusive to a higher tier plan than the
| grandfathered connect plan.
|
| I'm less enthusiastic about recommending the system to new users
| as well because of the initial expense of the tablet and the
| ongoing increased costs to ownership that new users will face.
|
| I know many creative types who would love to use this solution,
| but the expense of the subscription on top of the cost of the
| device means that it's prohibitively expensive for them.
|
| I wish remarkable well with this venture because it was probably
| a difficult choice to make, the risks of potentially closing the
| door on some new users must have potentially outweighed the
| revenue gains on new customers. It can't have sat well with
| everyone at the organisation, given how they've been so good with
| new features and updates to both versions of the hardware.
| selykg wrote:
| Going to tell my story, again, as I think it's important.
|
| Remarkable seem like the type of company that are pouring money
| into marketing and not much else. To their detriment.
|
| I bought a Remarkable 2 in September. Realized I did not want it,
| because it was missing a core feature I needed (the ability to
| search hand written notes, which Goodnotes does, Remarkable does
| not). Remarkable sends their products via DHL. Who, separately,
| are an awful shipment carrier.
|
| I called DHL, to have them return to sender (requested by
| Remarkable). DHL, after 2 days failed to do this... they kept
| trying to contact whomever had the shipment... why they can't
| just mark it as return to sender in their system? No one knows.
|
| The product arrived at my doorstep, no signature, just dropped on
| the porch. Okay.. great. I start the return process. It took
| Remarkable 4 days to get this process done. First day they email
| with a return portal, it couldn't find my purchase. Second day
| they finally respond to my plea for help and send a second
| portal. That one worked, but the Remarkable support team are
| terrible and sent incorrect instructions. 3rd day I finally got
| it squared away and they approved my return the 4th day, which I
| got shipped out on the 5th day (again via DHL). Oh, and one other
| mark against Remarkable, they kept referring to my return as
| "return for replacement" instead of "return for refund" so I had
| to correct them about 8 times to make sure they were actually
| going to refund instead of send me a replacement.
|
| It arrives at a local hub. Where it is stuck for 30 days.
|
| During this time, I call DHL to start an investigation as to why
| it's stalled. They spend 4 days unable to come up with an answer.
| Reach out to Remarkable again, they start their own investigation
| and say repeatedly that it is "on it's way." Meanwhile it doesn't
| move.
|
| Now DHL is only Remarkable's problem in so far as they choose who
| their carrier is. I didn't get to choose to send it differently.
| So they can't control what DHL does, but they do need to take
| ownership of their terrible choice. IMO anyway, it's what I'd do
| as customer support.
|
| While all this is happening, I'm asking for a refund because the
| product seems lost in shipment. Around day 20 I ask for a
| supervisor.
|
| Supervisor responds twice, first time "we're issuing your refund
| and you should see it in 24 hours." then an hour later "We'll
| immediately issue you a refund when we receive the product which
| you'll see in 24-48 hours after."
|
| After day 30 the product finally arrives in Hong Kong, they said
| 24-48 hours for a refund. 5 days later still no refund.
|
| I thankfully, filed a dispute and it's being taken care of now.
| But my advice is avoid these clowns.
|
| The product is kind of cool, but their support is awful. Their
| team is inept. They can't take responsibility for their
| shortcomings.
|
| This was for a return, imagine dealing with this for an in
| warranty repair/replacement? Ugh. Awful.
|
| To be clear, we're nearing 45 days from original cancellation and
| still no direct refund from Remarkable.
| abyssin wrote:
| I've had a similar experience with my RM1 that had a broken
| screen when I started it for the first time. It literally took
| months before I could get a replacement. Their TrustPilot page
| is a stream of horror stories.
| mushufasa wrote:
| The terms of service are unclear for existing users. Can anyone
| on this thread add clarity for
|
| 1. How long is the term of the 'free' offer for existing users?
| No term is specified. Does that mean they will attempt billing
| (or cutoff service) after a year?
|
| 2. What exactly will happen to the existing online services, and
| when? They mention this is a transition but there's no timeline.
| Is this a new platform from scratch or just a paywall on what
| already exists?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| When assessing e-book / e-ink options earlier this year, what
| soured me on reMarkable was its anaemic onboard storage (16 GB)
| and lack of extensibility. I'd written the company regarding
| plans for expansion. When reMarkable II was announced ... and
| continued to have only 16GB storage, I passed. Note that the
| price differential between 16 and even 128 GB storage is only a
| few tens of dollars.
|
| The notion of a Linux-based tablet was appealing. I hugely
| dislike Android. However I purchased an Onyx BOOX with 64 GB
| onboard storage. It is a fairly customised Android build (and
| largely de-Googled). This provides access to several useful apps
| (Firefox, Pocket, and Termux most notably), as well as built-in
| Bluetooth support meaning external keyboards can be used.
| (reMarkable supports this only through a hardware connection.)
|
| I'd really like a viable Linux tablet. I'm keeping an eye on
| Pine's offerings. But reMarkable appear to be headed in an
| unfortunate direction.
|
| My interpretation is that reMarkable are crippling onboard
| storage (much as Google have on Android devices) to drive
| adoption of cloud-based services, whether for surviellance (in
| Google's case) or subscription revenues (in reMarkable's).
| dmitrygr wrote:
| What an absurdly idiotic thing to do. You can try this when
| you're WhatsApp or Google, and you have stickiness and network
| effects, but here? If you have more and more competitors every
| day (boox, kobo) and no serious moat, it is no time to turn into
| dicks (subscription for basic features).
|
| I've recommended rM2 widely, and know of > 30 sales reMarkable
| made due to my recommendations. I will not be recommending it any
| longer.
| vtail wrote:
| I'm a very happy ReMarkable 2 user, and I have pre-ordered it
| more than a year ago which means I don't have to pay anything.
|
| Yet I think the linked page is an example of a _terrible_
| marketing: instead of highlighting the benefits of the premium
| service, they are emphasizing how horrible your user experience
| will be if you don't buy one.
|
| Regardless of your stance on their pricing action, that's a grave
| marketing mistake. I hope they will fix that.
| AstroDogCatcher wrote:
| This has soured me on reMarkable, and probably means that I won't
| buy the gen3 device when they get to it - despite me having been
| a big advocate for them until now.
|
| Not everything needs to be a subscription. I don't care about
| your cloud storage (in fact, I would prefer to just use my own),
| and the other "features" should be table stakes for something
| which costs so much to buy in the first place.
| branon wrote:
| Yeah at first glance this service's rollout seems terrible. You
| are dogged all through the checkout process with dark patterns
| and threats that your device will cost more while doing less if
| you don't subscribe... why would I buy this at all then?
| zzless wrote:
| Indeed. I truly hope that PineNote takes off:
| https://www.pine64.org/pinenote/
| MisterTea wrote:
| I am not crazy about the PineNote design as the SoC and
| memory are well beyond what I would consider efficient for an
| eInk tablet who's primary role is to replace paper and
| pencil.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| No subscription is an option. I'm not sure how much of your own
| sync you could setup, but the subscription isn't forced upon
| you.
| AstroDogCatcher wrote:
| You can do your own sync in a hacky manner - but if I were
| going down that route, I'd just choose one of the more open
| (and cheaper) alternative devices.
| dabedee wrote:
| Pray do tell of those more open (and cheaper) alternative
| devices?
| Uberphallus wrote:
| Not sure it's any open (Kobo devices usually are
| hackable), but Kobo Elipsa[0] is feature par with
| Remarkable 2.
|
| [0] https://us.kobobooks.com/products/kobo-elipsa
| nottorp wrote:
| A friend of mine uses an Onyxbook (not sure what model)
| extensively for note taking and he seems pretty happy
| with it. Software developer with a bit of math thrown in,
| to get an idea of what he writes on it.
| charbuff wrote:
| I have a BOOX Max Lumi, it has all those features, for
| free. Plus is a fully functioning android tablet.
| AstroDogCatcher wrote:
| I'm being a bit future-looking here and considering
| alternatives to the gen3 reMarkable, not the current
| hardware. Specifically, the PineNote seems like it could
| fill the niche for me.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I'm in the market for alternatives. What equivalent devices
| are both cheaper and more open? I haven't found any. :(
| slightwinder wrote:
| My impression is that the reMarkable has pretty poor hardware,
| and a rather exotic software (for a tablet). Which means they
| are limited in what they can do on the device, and the support
| they can harvest from community. Which also means, outsourcing
| stuff to the cloud is a natural effect, which means demanding
| money for running the cloud is also natural.
|
| For similar reasons the device is expensive and still has a
| rather poor situation because it's quite special, with a
| relative small market. Which means it's trapped in a situation
| where it needs more supporting customers to deliver a good
| device, but to gain more customers it needs to deliver a good
| experience.
| syshum wrote:
| I like hardware. Love it infact.
|
| For me the subscription service itself is not the issue, it
| is far far far too expensive for what they offer in it, and
| they have broken my trust.
|
| The first thing I did after their announcement was disable
| auto-updates, I dont really use their cloud services anyway
| prefering to interact with the device either with SSH or a
| 3rd party tool (RCU), my fear now is a future update will
| disable SSH and the ability for people to opt-out of their
| cloud.
|
| I am grandfathered in, so I get it for free, but I have no
| intention of using
|
| Today if I needed to replace my device I would buy a
| SuperNote A5X
| COGlory wrote:
| disabling ssh would violate GPL licensing, right?
| Fnoord wrote:
| No, what makes you think that? OpenSSH isn't even GPL.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| Excerpt from my reMarkable - settings - Help - Copyrights
| and licenses - General information:
|
| > _The General Public License version 3 and the Lesser
| General Public License version 3 also requires you as an
| end-user to be able to access your device to be able to
| modify the copyrighted software licensed under these
| licenses running on it._
|
| > _To do so, this device acts as an USB ethernet device,
| and you can connect using the SSH protocol using the
| username 'root' and the password 'hunter2'._
|
| (Incidentally, "an USB"--are they pronouncing "usb" as
| one syllable or something?)
|
| So COGlory is actually roughly right. They could disable
| SSH, but would need to replace it with something at least
| vaguely similar for GPLv3 and LGPLv3 compliance for
| _other_ parts of the software.
| AstroDogCatcher wrote:
| I actually think the hardware (at least in gen2) is pretty
| good, and the software has progressed from "OK but a bit
| rough" to also being pretty good. I can accept the high
| device price given what a niche market they have, but the
| subscription prices are a massive over-reach relative to the
| value delivered. Charging business customers (eg for more
| flexible isolated/shared storage accounts and other
| collaboration features) would have made sense, but the
| current model feels like they just plucked a number out of
| the air based on what other subscriptions cost, with no
| reference to the consumer value delivered.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| The hardware for the gen 2 is pretty good in my opinion. The
| only "exotic software" is the notetaking app, the rest of the
| system is linux. The device is running ssh and the root
| password is in the licenses file.
|
| That's a lot more than you get from most devices of this
| type.
| slightwinder wrote:
| > The hardware for the gen 2 is pretty good in my opinion.
|
| My 5 year old android-tablet has more ram and cpu than the
| gen2 remarkable. So I assume they outsourced parts to the
| cloud simply because it's not running well enough on the
| tablet itself.
|
| > the rest of the system is linux
|
| Linux, especially on tablets is very exotic. There is no
| way to benefit from the big ecosystem on android or iOS.
| Everything must come from the users, the company or
| regulary desktop-linux, which is not optimized for tabled
| or eInk. Linux is a good selling point for hackers and
| nerds, but irrelevant for casual users.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I think you have an issue with the entire class of eink
| notebooks because both of these points are completely
| immaterial to their designed purpose.
|
| You want a general purpose eink tablet. The reMarkable is
| most definitely not.
| AstroDogCatcher wrote:
| I assume the hardware targets battery life rather than
| performance; the lack of on-device features is quite
| deliberate. As far as cloud offloading goes, the only
| thing which seems to match that framing is the
| handwriting recognition, which is honestly pretty rubbish
| and I'd happily live without.
| burkaman wrote:
| The reMarkable is not supposed to compete with an Android
| tablet, think of it more like a Kindle you can write on.
|
| The hardware is perfect for the target audience and there
| are very few comparable products, but the software is
| pretty bare-bones and most people have issues with it.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| It's also worth noting that unlike the broader tablet
| market, eInk readers commonly use Linux. Kindle and Kobo
| devices are examples.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| What Android tablet with eInk did you buy that can
| display A4? Id be interested.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| There is one actually.
| https://shop.boox.com/products/maxlumi2
| macjohnmcc wrote:
| I got the e-mail to grandfather me in due to my recent purchase
| of the second gen device. It was a tough sell for many due to
| price before a subscription may doom it further.
| outworlder wrote:
| > Not everything needs to be a subscription.
|
| Everything needs to be a subscription, according to Wall
| Street.
| threefour wrote:
| There's a saying that for every trend there's an anti-trend. I
| do wonder when we'll reach a critical mass of subscription
| services such that a preference against subscriptions in
| general becomes a trend.
| emsy wrote:
| I don't care about subscriptions in general and why should I?
| Netflix adds new content and my VPS is also a subscription,
| it just doesn't call itself that. They have running costs and
| I'm not dependent on them. But there are services where the
| sole intention of the subscription is to generate a steady
| cash flow (almost all software, things like ink catridge
| subscriptions), subscriptions where the platform prohibits
| alternatives (iCloud) and bait and switch offers like the
| remarkable. These should be better regulated.
| ghaff wrote:
| In general, I don't mind subscriptions for the streaming
| services (so long as they're easy to cancel). I get a few,
| keep my eye on how much I'm using them, and cancel any that
| aren't giving me value. I can always get back in if I want
| to some day.
|
| My philosophy is that there's pretty much no content I
| can't live without and the amount I save from canceling my
| cable TV pays for the other subs and more.
|
| Software subscriptions I'm much more leery of. I do get
| Lightroom/Photoshop but I use LR a lot so don't really
| mind.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Already passed that point for me. Netflix, Hulu, Disney+,
| Cable TV, Spotify? Nope.
|
| I pay for larger iCloud storage and I have a library card.
| kfprt wrote:
| Nothing is quite so toxic to my willingness to part with money
| that the term 'subscription'.
| exyi wrote:
| This does not make me very happy. I already own the tablet, so I
| get the service for free, but I can't recommend it anymore. For $
| 100 per year, it's fairly expensive just to own. And without the
| service... I mean it's usable, but not something I'd recommend.
| reMarkable does not support USB mass storage, but it has a pretty
| buggy Web UI over USB - which will be your only choice if you
| choose to go with the No Plan route (as far as I understand it).
| I'd be fine if they were charging for "premium features", but the
| file synchronization PC - tablet is a needed feature.
| mikestew wrote:
| $100/year or else I "won't unlock the full potential of (my)
| paper tablet" that I just paid $400 for? $60/year for cloud
| storage? What happened to connecting to the
| Dropbox/OneDrive/iCloud storage I already have and calling it
| day? Oh, right, recurring revenue. (EDIT: OIC, 3rd-party cloud
| storage is in the $100/year tier. But then WTF would I need your
| unlimited cloud...oh, never mind.)
|
| I've recently been trying to talk myself into a remarkable. Now I
| don't have to. Thanks, Remarkable.
| jmacd wrote:
| I have a ReMarkable 1 and II (which I bought for my partner as a
| gift). They are nice e-readers that are well built. They really
| do fail on their key promise as a paper replacement however. The
| one saving grace of having spent so much money on the device is
| the "Send to ReMarkable" extension in my browser.
|
| I received the email a few days ago telling my that those cloud
| based services, which were advertised as part of the product when
| we purchased it, would be switching to a subscription service.
|
| Thew new service appears to be offered for FREE to us because we
| already purchased the devices. Phew!
|
| That said, I think this is going to tank their sales going
| forward. The TCO on the device has now increased dramatically.
| AstroDogCatcher wrote:
| I'm in the same boat. I use the rM extensively for meeting
| notes, but I have never been able to give up on having a paper
| notebook as well. The problem is mostly the ease of page-
| flicking; skipping forward and backward on an e-ink device is
| an O(N) operation, while in a physical book it is O(1). The
| same problem has basically forced me towards using a Kindle
| only for fiction where the content is linear - for technical
| material, I still buy physical books.
| throwanem wrote:
| Not that I'm going to buy a reMarkable, but I do wonder what
| kind of organization tools it provides. Being able to tag a
| given note with arbitrary categories and have the device
| produce a date-ordered index on any category seems like it
| would help with this a lot.
|
| (I use a similar system in my paper notes, with a topic index
| mapping to page numbers. A few minutes of grooming a day
| suffices to keep it up to date, and it speeds lookups
| enormously.)
| [deleted]
| cge wrote:
| The new service is _currently_ offered for free to people who
| purchased a device from them before October 12, 2021, _if_ they
| accept the new terms and conditions. I have to wonder how long
| that free subscription will last. There is nothing in the
| notices they sent about how long the subscription will last.
| There are FAQ entries, which, rather than making any concrete
| promises, have statements like 'We plan to offer free access
| to Connect for as long as we're able to. There are things we
| can't control that might affect this', and 'If we do make any
| changes, we'll strive to give you free access for as long as
| you want it'. This type of change seems vaguely familiar, and I
| would not be surprised if 'things we can't control' will happen
| to arise about one or two years from now.
|
| When the change does happen, the new terms of service require
| you agree that, by them sending you an email with 30 days
| notice, you'll be deemed to automatically consent to any new
| charges and fees if you continue to use the service, so you'll
| probably want to keep a close eye on your inbox:
|
| >reMarkable reserves the right to change the subscription fees
| or applicable charges and to institute new charges and fees,
| upon thirty (30) days prior notice (which may be sent by
| email). Your continued use of reMarkable Connect after the end
| of the notice period of the aforementioned changes to fees or
| charges constitute your consent to such fees or charges.
|
| None of this affects me too much, as I've never used their
| cloud services, use syncthing for synchronization, and bought
| the device for its (partial) openness, even if that openness
| appears to have been forced on them by GPLv3 requirements.
| monkmartinez wrote:
| Totally lame. I have tried so many note taking services and apps
| that my head spins when I think about it. Notion, Notability,
| OneNote, Evernote, Apple Notes, Google Keep, Squid, and more...
|
| At this point, I am 100% OneNote and a physical paper notebook. I
| use OneNote on every single device I own including a Raspberry
| Pi. I use the handwriting features of OneNote with an iPad pro to
| sketch ideas while researching. I can also keep handwritten
| todo's for bigger projects organized with OneNote. I use klipper
| from my Desktop and Laptop to capture websites into OneNote books
| all organized by topic. I can get these on my iPhone and iPad. My
| garage houses my CNC and 3D printers running on Raspberry Pi's. I
| can look up settings and configurations for my machines inside
| the notebooks and modify them as needed or just copy and paste
| from notebook to commandline... all sync'ed to EVERY.DEVICE.I.OWN
| with a browser or native support in most cases.
|
| These walled gardens are sooooo tired. My paper notebook is the
| backup and used when I want to sketch or think without
| distraction from the internet's ubiquitous pull. I take pictures
| and post those notes into OneNote every now and then to develop
| the idea further. OneNote on the iPhone makes that super simple
| and the friction is literally two clicks.
|
| Sometimes, my handwriting will be legible enough to strait OCR
| into a notebook! I find the OCR to be remarkable for most things,
| but its not perfect and fails too. However, the whole ecosystem
| is very much worth the price!
| NullInvictus wrote:
| Not at all surprised. This is pretty much the fate of all
| "minimalistic" devices like this (the freewrite comes to mind as
| well). Minimal just means that they reserve the right to put
| necessary features behind subscription walls.
|
| What this also means long term is that any openness of the device
| is under a Damocles sword and will be actively expanded except
| where GPL demands it. The benefit of openness does not appear
| directly in a spreadsheet like a subscription service does, and
| if people start trying to supercede the subscription service,
| they will attack it.
|
| Or just not continue it into the next iteration.
| zwaps wrote:
| Man I have been a Remarkable user since the initial crowdfunding,
| but I feel like they are about to throw it.
|
| Many of these features were free up until now. Yes, we get
| grandfathered in, for now, but you gotta agree to a new TOS which
| I am sure makes this a time limited offer if they so choose.
|
| These niche devices need their community, people who are not only
| taking a lot of notes, drawing a ton or annotating many pdfs, but
| are willing to invest in this particular platform.
|
| These people you probably want on your side as a company. And
| yet, look at this lackluster announcement.
|
| Who is to read this and come away with a positive opinion?
| Current users don't gain anything that wasn't already free or
| announced. They just face the danger of eventually having to pay
| for what they thought was free. And new users? 8 bucks for yet
| another cloud storage and little else.
|
| I mean, I appreciate that we now teach revelation principle and
| two part tariffs in intro econ and mba classes, but you can also
| blow it in other ways, exhibit A: this announcement.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Sounds like they recently hired their first MBA.
| krzkaczor wrote:
| I am surprised to see no mentioned of Onyx Boox Air in this
| thread. I bought it recently instead of Remarkable 2 and it's
| amazing.
|
| You simply can't beat open ecosystem like android with some
| proprietary crap (unless you're FAANG). Having chrome browser
| fully in-sync with desktop one is a killer feature for me.
| echelon wrote:
| Onyx is knowingly and willfully violating the GPL and claiming
| detractors are showing an "anti-China bias".
| rta5 wrote:
| I went ahead and bought a boox air within a week of the
| original connect service announcement (yet to arrive). I
| originally wanted a RM after trying a coworker's RM1 but the
| connect announcement pushed me away.
|
| With supernote currently giving a roadmap that improves
| handwriting recognition and boox allegedly having the ability
| to convert and search handwritten notes already, the remarkable
| connect plan is very unattractive.
| jtbayly wrote:
| I've been somewhat interested, but you can count me out now.
| dabedee wrote:
| From their announcement to existing customers:
|
| Dear reMarkable customer,
|
| We're excited to be launching Connect, our brand new subscription
| service.
|
| Connect replaces our existing cloud service and its associated
| features moving forward.
|
| We want to offer all our existing customers full free access to
| Connect. Our way to thank all of you for believing in us right
| from the start.
|
| All you need to do is log in to My reMarkable to view and accept
| our new terms and conditions.
|
| Accept new terms and conditions
|
| To ensure you can continue storing all your notes in the cloud,
| using our desktop and mobile apps, and enjoying features such as
| Handwriting conversion and Send by email, please accept our new
| terms and conditions.
|
| Your free access to Connect includes all new launch features,
| such as integration with Google Drive and Screen Share, and
| applies regardless of if you own a reMarkable 1 or 2.
| wtf77 wrote:
| Luckily I sold mine before this scam
| tenpoundhammer wrote:
| There 3 Options: 1. Connect: $7.99 per month 2. Connect Lite:
| $4.99 per month 3. No Plan: but the device costs more
|
| I dug in deep to find the prices so others don't have to.
| Personally, I'm fine with this model a lot of the great features
| are probably supported by doing compute in the cloud and there
| are also huge advantages to having storage in the cloud.
| null_object wrote:
| I think a lot of people were turned-off by:
|
| 1. the device _without_ subscription is crippled in unnecessary
| ways (access to third-party cloud-services like Dropbox, for
| instance)
|
| 2. the already high cost of the hardware relative to other
| options.
|
| I've been looking at ReMarkable since I saw a prototype that a
| friend was using. But in the end I just knew it would join the
| pile of unused gadgets (with good intentions) that litter my
| home.
|
| A subscription service really is the nail in the coffin for me.
| syshum wrote:
| Outside of Cloud Storage (which is is not worth $8/mo) and
| handwritting there is nothing in their services that require
| cloud..
|
| The storage integration should be on the device, they choose to
| make it via the cloud service. There is no technical reason
| they could not have made it work directly on the device.
|
| Further their 2 largest competitors in the Space, SuperNote,
| and Boox all seem to be able to offers these features and more
| for free.
| sabauma wrote:
| The cost for the connect plans is what confuses me. For what
| you get, $5-$8 per month seems oddly expensive. I don't
| really use any of the features in the full connect plan. The
| cloud syncing is convenient, and I'd be willing to throw some
| money their way for it, but $5/month is a lot for what
| amounts to 8GB of storage.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Especially considering Dropbox is $10/mo (Annual billing). If
| you're in Apple's ecosystem, you can get 50gb iCloud storage
| for $1/mo.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Handwriting also does not require a cloud. My 2002 Sony Clie
| TH55 (with Decuma handwriting recognizer) and 2003 WinMo
| devices (block recognizer) did it just fine on the device, on
| terrible (~200MHz, < 1.0 IPC) CPUs.
| [deleted]
| tenpoundhammer wrote:
| Agree with this I think the other thing to consider is that
| this is probably a long term fee to help keep a niche
| business afloat. They probably can't keep enough revenue
| coming in to support the business long term just by device
| sales. I think it's hard for a business like this to survive
| long term without a recurring fee model.
| syshum wrote:
| Based on tax filings other users have posted on reddit,
| they are a profitable company, now their level of
| profitability is probably not enough to satisfy the venture
| capital they took though.
|
| The issue here, with niche products you must interact with
| the community, you must listen to the users, you must have
| a good communications team to show the users what is
| commming, what your plans are, etc..
|
| Remarkable does none of that, they act like they are apple,
| but they neither have the marketshare, the deep pockets,
| nor the cache that Apple does.
|
| Hell I would be more than happy to donate cash to fund
| features but they do not even have a public roadmap, or
| uservoice, or any indicate they give a shit at all about
| what their users want.
|
| hell one of the most basic features, 3 years running, has
| been custom templates. Which are literally just a PNG file
| background layer. No official support but several 3rd
| parties have filled this gap very well.
|
| Remarkable is remarkably bad at customer service, and
| communications. Which is more likely to be their downfall
| than the subscription service. Niche product live and die
| by their community, remarkable ignores the owner community
|
| One of the reasons I selected the SuperNote a5x as my
| target replacement if/when I need to replace my Remarkable
| is the fact that the developers of the SuperNote are very
| active in the community, on reddit, and publish roadmaps
| which they deliver on...
| Jhsto wrote:
| I hope this won't undermine the openness of the device. It seems
| quite apparent that someone will use the root access of the
| device to implement the paid features on their own and package it
| as an alternative UI. And at that point, reMarkable has no other
| way to prevent that than by locking the device.
| nottorp wrote:
| So, some people recommended this thing to me for note taking.
| However, there was VERY aggressive marketing for it on my
| Facebook. I tend to react to aggressive marketing with an equal
| and opposite reaction so I don't have one.
|
| And now... they want you to pay a subscription to access _your
| Dropbox_ ? I 'm guessing they spent too much money on marketing
| so now they need to recoup it somehow.
| gnicholas wrote:
| When I see a hardware company shifting toward subscription
| revenue, it makes me wonder if they see decreasing revenue
| opportunities for their hardware business. Apple has shifted
| toward subscriptions, undoubtedly in part because they could see
| that iPhones are no longer changing significantly from year to
| year.
|
| Could this be one of the reasons Remarkable is launching this
| service? Or are they just trying to get more revenue (and higher
| profit margins) out of their existing business?
| clairity wrote:
| > "When I see a hardware company shifting toward subscription
| revenue, it makes me wonder if they see decreasing revenue
| opportunities for their hardware business."
|
| it's almost never because of a revenue decline. it's almost
| certainly revenue plateauing that's seen as a problem, in a
| political economy that simplistically only values 'more'. i'm
| sure remarkable could be a good niche business (where niche is
| many, many millions of dollars), but that's clearly not enough.
| diverting limited resources from developing better on-device
| software to cloud-based software is the telling move here. many
| companies are capable delivering enough incremental value over
| time to create a (more slowly) growing, sustainable business
| without instituting a subscription model (logitech or even pre-
| itunes apple, for instance).
| leff_f wrote:
| as an existing customer, happy they didn't force us to buy
| subscription. Overall fair game. Happy to have a reMarkable!
| dmitrygr wrote:
| yet...
|
| read the terms carefully. They make no promises how long you'll
| get this for free...
| ThouYS wrote:
| ridiculous, as if the device wasn't pretty expensive already.
| laughable price for the pens as well
| paxys wrote:
| Charging for cloud storage is fine, but gating features like
| Dropbox sync, handwriting recognition and _sending emails_ behind
| the "premium" tier monthly subscription is ridiculous. If a $50
| tablet can do all this out of the box, a $450+ one should as
| well, especially when it is sold specifically for the purpose of
| note taking.
| nicolaslem wrote:
| Yet another example showing that if you don't control the
| software running on a device, then it's not really your device.
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