[HN Gopher] Notes on my Remarkable tablet
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Notes on my Remarkable tablet
Author : topcat31
Score : 76 points
Date : 2024-02-11 19:58 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tomcritchlow.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (tomcritchlow.com)
| shinycode wrote:
| Anything an iPad can't do ?
| echelon wrote:
| Freely install software on it and hack the device, for
| starters.
|
| There's an incredible amount of clarity and focus around the
| device, which lends itself to productivity and mindful
| relaxation.
|
| The e-ink screen is brilliant and non-taxing, too. And the
| battery lasts forever.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Hold a charge for weeks of use.
| shinycode wrote:
| It was a legitimate question. I saw the price of the last
| remarkable and its pricetag is quite high compared to an iPad.
| Given the context in which I use tablets, 2 weeks battery seems
| not that important to me given all the things the iPad can do
| and Remarkable can't.
| fragmede wrote:
| In today's attention economy and digital distraction landscape,
| the appeal of this product is in what it can't do and doesn't
| have. There's no web browser to get distracted with Reddit/HN
| on, there's no Facebook/TikTok/Instagram/YouTube app to
| doomscroll and waste away time with. it's a digital piece of
| paper, without the distractions of candy crush.
|
| When you open a new tab in your browser, what do you get? This
| gives you a blank piece of paper to draw on. A blank canvas of
| infinite possibility, not suggestions from the latest news.
| bawolff wrote:
| Have an eink screen? I know not everyone cares about this, but
| for me that is the biggest selling point.
| wslh wrote:
| Using it without the need of recharging continuously.
| caseyf wrote:
| Offer a big canvas for writing and drawing while weighing 400
| grams
|
| (I have both)
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Yup, require an expensive cloud service that offers no data
| protection to do its primary advertised function.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Hi Tom, I'm a big fan of my rm2, too -- and am writing to respond
| to this:
|
| > "I'd also love a more formal diary / daily entry system. Kind
| of like Obsidian's daily notes. Some kind of date-based notebook
| inside the Remarkable would be rad (even if it doesn't sync with
| your actual calendar!). A daily journaling / diary / planning
| format would be great. (Yes, right now you can select a day-
| planner template, but you can't then see them in a calendar view
| - the date isn't a foundational element of the note)."
|
| Take a look at https://hyperpaper.me which has been
| transformative for me. Instead of using a static background
| template, it generates a (customizable) interactive PDF. This --
| crucially -- means it supports navigation, eg jump from the month
| calendar view to your daily note page.
| ace2358 wrote:
| Is there something like this for iPad?
| tinix wrote:
| It's just a pdf, so yes. The only difference is"paper size".
| layer8 wrote:
| This _is_ (also) for iPad.
| mikestew wrote:
| There is Goodnotes, which supports such functionality for
| PDFs. I've purchased such PDFs (bullet journal
| calendar/notes) and, without trying it, I think it a safe
| assumption that Goodnotes could consume what is generated by
| the Hyperpaper link above.
| funksta wrote:
| It'll work just fine on an iPad, several folks are doing so
| (Goodnotes and Notability are the most common apps people use
| for loading and annotating the pdf). I've done a little work
| towards color themes to better support the iPad, but for now
| it's just black & white since most customers use eInk
| tablets.
| topcat31 wrote:
| Oh so this is just a pdf with links embedded so you can jump
| around? That's pretty neat (and a very slick UI for creating
| and buying them!)
| funksta wrote:
| Hey, hyperpaper creator here! That's exactly what it is- a
| pdf planner that you can customize to your own needs, with
| lots of contextual links.
|
| Happy to answer any questions, and thanks chrisweekly for the
| kind words and shoutout
| dboreham wrote:
| I'd buy one if it supported reading books from the two platforms
| I use: Kindle and O'Reilly.
| tinix wrote:
| There's an app that runs natively on RM2 that supports Zlib
| downloads. You'll have to tweak the source to work with your
| personal domain.
|
| I buy physical books and then get digital copies from Zlib (if
| publisher doesn't offer digital downloads that is...)
|
| You can also just use Google Drive or SSH to copy books from
| another device like Kindle, Android, or a laptop.
| stop50 wrote:
| I use calibre for managing my ebooks, syncthing for transfer
| and koreader to read them. I removed the DRM from buyed books,
| since koreader can't decrypt them.
| tinix wrote:
| There are sellers on Etsy that make Remarkable templates (ex,
| navigable daily planner with monthly/weekly views). I've been
| using one for years. They will customize if you ask nicely...
| tinix wrote:
| https://www.etsy.com/market/remarkable_2_templates
| porcoda wrote:
| I was a big fan of my RM2, but found the move to the subscription
| service a couple years ago to be off putting. Sure, I can turn
| off WiFi, or just use the network to ssh into it, but it felt
| less than great. I recently got a Supernote to replace it and so
| far love it. The company seems a bit more open and less likely to
| try to push me to some kind of subscription/cloud thing. They
| promote the "works great offline, no subscriptions" stuff right
| up front. Plus their pens are great - the one I got feels like a
| real pen.
| novalistener wrote:
| I'm really excited for the upcoming Supernote A5X2. So many
| smart and community-friendly decisions in the design and
| software. My reMarkable 2 is still holding up, but I'll be
| giving it a close look when the time comes for a replacement.
| jadbox wrote:
| When is the A5x2 coming and what exactly are you excited
| about it?
| novalistener wrote:
| End of Q1 2024, according to the Supernote website.
| Presumably it's going to be very similar to the recently
| released A6X2, just larger. The specs are great (300dpi
| display and performance bumped SOC), the design is
| expandable and repairable (SD slot, replaceable battery,
| easy teardown), and the OS is based on Android (so you can
| install the Kindle app and more if you want).
| TheFreim wrote:
| I have never tried a RM product, but when I was originally
| searching for an e-paper tablet I passed over them in favor of
| the Supernote A5X and it has been great. The software has been
| continually improved since I got it, I don't regret the
| purchase at all. Once the A5X2 comes out I might upgrade,
| especially because, if my memory serves me, it should have a
| user-replaceable battery.
| squarefoot wrote:
| >... but found the move to the subscription service a couple
| years ago to be off putting
|
| This is so common these days. I'm still waiting for the
| PineNote to become stable enough to be usable by non
| developers. It's FOSS, so it would be immune from the
| subscription service plague, but they're progressing really
| slowly.
|
| https://pine64.com/product/pinenote-developer-edition/
| crabmusket wrote:
| I'm exactly the same. I'd really like a large format e-ink
| reader for papers, notes etc. But at that point I don't want
| to pay for a closed-off locked-down device I can't control.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Since I am a happy user, I will mention rcu[1]. It is paid, but
| it makes remarkable more what it should have been ( no subs
| stuff ). To be fair, I never tried Supernote.
|
| [1]http://www.davisr.me/projects/rcu/
| BHSPitMonkey wrote:
| If you have somewhere you can run a Docker container, just spin
| up an rmfakecloud server and ditch the company's network
| altogether. Works really well.
| whatisyour wrote:
| For this exact reason, I decided to instead buy Surface Pro 9
| and installed Ubuntu Linux on it. It works amazingly well.
| Moreover, all my notes are automatically converted to PDF and
| syned to my gitlab.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| ooo, tell me more. what is your workflow like on the surface
| to enable this?
| hecanjog wrote:
| I really liked my remarkable2, but I eventually got the issue
| where it just stops charging and now it's effectively a brick.
| Tried all the known workarounds I could find with trickle-
| charging etc. Someone had tracked the issue down to a
| malfunctioning temperature sensor preventing charging but I have
| no idea if that's the problem with mine.
|
| Remarkable support would like me to create videos showing every
| workaround I tried and I'm not totally convinced anything will
| happen if I do that... (seems like others jumped through those
| hoops without any success.)
|
| It's a bummer because besides the annoying push to the cloud
| recently I really liked the device.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| The issue is actually that your usb-c receptacle broke free
| from the PCB inside. Open and you'll see. I emailed them about
| it a while ago. They majorly fucked up the design. The
| connector is on the very edge of a very thin finger of a thin
| PCB. There is nothing holding it to the case, only the few
| solder points to a thin PCB. They did not care. I sent photos,
| explanation, and a rather long essay as to why this should
| never be done on a product that expects contact with the real
| world, and how it should be done.
|
| I'll try to dig up my photos and post them here. It is a
| pathologically bad design.
|
| I fixed mine by replacing the usb C socket, adding a few blobs
| of epoxy to hold it, and wiring the USB data and power lines
| across the cracks in the PCB
|
| EDIT https://photos.app.goo.gl/eu4P8fnaNtV9vhMo7
|
| the video in there, via microscope, you can see how the
| contacts peeled off. Larger photos show the PCB and how the
| connector is "affixed". Final photo is after it was fixed, but
| before the epoxy
| tinix wrote:
| If you use a case or folio, i recommend a wireless charger
| receiver that you just permanently leave in the port, no plug
| fatigue to worry about then.
|
| something like this: https://pakshwe.com/product/type-c-
| bottom-left-top-right-sid...
|
| Otherwise there are magnetic usb adapters that let you charge
| or transfer data with a cable still... while avoiding plug
| fatigue.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| mine is now bulletproof. epoxied into place forever. it'll
| survive doomsday
| hecanjog wrote:
| Thanks for sharing that. It's disappointing to hear, but that
| makes sense. (Edit: your analysis makes sense, not
| remarkable's response to it...) I'm hopeful it can be
| repaired. (But not by me!)
| novalistener wrote:
| I love my reMarkable 2. I use it daily. It helps so much with
| productivity, and it's a UX delight.
|
| That said, the company has made some remarkably (sorry) user-
| hostile and concerning decisions. In particular, two things.
| First, they tried to paywall a bunch of important features behind
| an expensive subscription service. They rolled back the worst
| changes after a backlash, but damage done.
|
| Second, they've been aggressively marketing the RM2 tablet, even
| though it's outdated 4-year-old hardware. They hired some YouTube
| influencers to put out paid promotions disguised as reviews, and
| now they're trying a big push in India. My assumption is that new
| hardware is imminent (it really has to be), so they're using
| these underhanded tactics to dump inventory and have return
| periods expire before the new release.
| nanna wrote:
| Any Emacs integration?
| stop50 wrote:
| There are a few terminals for the remarkable.
| calamari4065 wrote:
| The RM homebrew community has answers for some of the problems
| the author poses. I haven't tried it personally, but there is a
| VNC package that will let you use your tablet as an auxiliary
| screen.
|
| The hacking community is small but pretty dedicated. There's a
| few exciting projects in the works, like a complete desktop
| interface called Oxide.
|
| The RM tablets are kinda neat in that you get root access out of
| the box. You have a lot of power to write or isntall custom
| software.
|
| That said, Remarkable the company has been fairly shitty. They
| removed the links to the dev tools, and don't really respond to
| requests for source that they are obligated to release under the
| GPL in any reasonable time.
|
| They also made the inexplicable decision to ship a keyboard case
| for the thing, but the only way their software supported it at
| launch was a fixed textbox in the middle of the screen. You
| couldn't move or resize it, so it was basically useless.
|
| Fortunately, homebrew has your back. There's an app that just
| gives you a terminal with keyboard support. You can ssh to
| another machine or write in vi or whatever you do with a normal
| terminal
| terminus wrote:
| > That said, Remarkable the company has been fairly shitty.
| They removed the links to the dev tools, and don't really
| respond to requests for source that they are obligated to
| release under the GPL in any reasonable time.
|
| Which project did they not release GPL'd code for? They do have
| the kernel source available:
| https://github.com/reMarkable/linux/tree/zero-sugar
|
| The top level github page also lists their trees for other
| projects.
| pjerem wrote:
| I actually have a hard time loving my remarkable.
|
| Such incredible ergonomics wasted by poor software.
|
| It could be such an impressive device with some extensions (not
| even apps) marketplace.
|
| I don't want it to be another tablet with YouTube but I want to
| be able to scribble on my daily calendar and boom, with OCR it's
| now on my caldav. I want to be able to make LINKS between pages.
| Like, let me write an index. Let me write summaries. Let me
| receive and send emails.
|
| I agree with the design choice that remarkable is just a digital
| notebook and not another generic device. But I do believe that a
| digital notebook can be smarter than a piece of paper.
| derriz wrote:
| I had a similar experience. When I had one, I used it
| frequently but when I lost it, I never felt inclined to buy a
| replacement. I never loved it.
|
| I feel that this _type_ of device may have a mass-market future
| but we are a few generations away from a device which could
| have mass-market appeal. The software is clearly not good
| enough but even in terms of hardware, the slow e-ink refresh
| rate makes for a painful UX. So despite all the technology,
| doing anything more than using it as an etch-a-sketch was
| irritating.
|
| Also what I came to realise is that most of the stuff that I
| fill the many half-used notebooks lying about my home is of
| very temporary value - often only useful for an hour or a a
| day. When I switched to using the Remarkable, the issue of
| losing information went away but not in a good way; I now felt
| burdened with keeping the Remarkable "organised" - trying to
| categorize pages, de-duplicating notes, "garbage collecting",
| etc. Paper notebooks, which you fill and toss away don't burden
| you with this task.
| janice1999 wrote:
| I would love something like the Remarkable tablet. However I'm
| not buying a niche hardware product to have my data held hostage
| by monthly cloud sync fees. Let me use Nextcloud or a service
| I've already paid for.
| supersparrow wrote:
| 100% this. If someone can come out with a product I can sync to
| my own service, I'm buying it.
| BHSPitMonkey wrote:
| You can self-host rmfakecloud, an open-source
| reimplementation of the reMarkable cloud. You just ssh into
| the device and use a DNS trick to swap it out.
| supersparrow wrote:
| Oh! Awesome! I'll check that out, thank you.
| Skywalker13 wrote:
| The cloud is optional and you have a root SSH access to the
| tablet. It's possible to impl. your own service for syncing or
| just sync via SSH with scripts.
| paulcole wrote:
| They don't want a solution. They want to hate on a
| corporation.
| greatgib wrote:
| I love my RM2 for the incredible hardware and the very good
| "paper like" experience. Reading and annotations of PDF is really
| great.
|
| But as other have said, I would not recommend it because the
| software is quite "user hostile". It could be so great with a
| little bit more freedom, but now it is quite expensive for what
| it is.
|
| For example, easy sharing or loading and "copy/paste" with copy
| are probably one of the main thing that anyone would want to do.
| But for that, the only solution, and not very convenient is to
| use shitty things with the premium subscription.
|
| Why isn't there an easy permanent and public way to load and
| unload documents? There is a very very shitty kind of web browser
| "web interface" that is available, but it will only work when
| connected to a computer through "usb", and each time usb cable is
| unplugged, you would have to re-enable the feature. I hate that
| soo so much.
| geor9e wrote:
| Soon after Remarkable 2 was released, a hacked version of
| Remarkable 1 was released that added pretty much all the feature
| upgrades. You needed to buy a new stylus (to use the new eraser
| end), but you could choose from dozens of brands since it's a
| widely used standard. The hardware looks slightly different and
| might have clock speed differences, but is essentially identical.
| And you don't have to deal with the silly subscription model of
| the 2. I use it to jot my thoughts down on PDFs in direct
| sunlight at the park. My macbook/ipad is pretty unusable in
| sunlight, unless you like squinting and straining. I also bought
| a smaller Mobiscribe (same thing but small), but I prefer the
| Remarkable still.
| graypegg wrote:
| I got an RM2 last year, and it's been the only product I've ever
| used a satisfaction guarantee on to return. I was looking to
| replace paper, which is basically always around my desk in sticky
| note or free-relator-notepad form.
|
| The RM2 didn't have a great way to just give me a blank note
| right away. It had the quick notes journal, but that was still
| its own notepad you had to open up. Everything was slow to get
| to. A physical button, screen clear, start writing. That's what I
| was hoping for.
|
| The lack of a backlight was surprising, it's easy enough to turn
| on a light, but when everything else seems to have one, it was a
| little annoying to have to turn it towards a window to read a
| note because it's a little later towards dusk.
|
| The note parsing was unforgivable, literally writing a whole new
| page rather than indexing your own handwriting. Search was
| abysmal, since it only seems to search these notes that have been
| transcribed, and turned into a new page of just text.
|
| It's a lot closer to an e-ink typewriter. I think they should
| market it like that. Had a lot of trouble using it as a notebook.
| (YMMV, I know a lot of people love it, though they tend to
| replace the software on it.)
|
| Everything was clunky. Back to my notepads!
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| It is positively bizarre that HN will scream blue bloody murder
| about "the apple tax", "apple spying", "poor repairability" and
| so on, and yet _cannot shut up_ about a device that:
|
| * REQUIRES a cloud subscription and active data connection to do
| its most core functionality: OCRing text you write on it
|
| * costs more after a year or two than an iPad with Apple Pencil
|
| * is completely unrepairable; no parts availability, no service
| options, etc and has no warranty unless you pay extra
|
| * depends on a cloud service run by a company located in a
| country infamous for both state and commercial espionage and
| intellectual property theft
|
| * has no theft protection, no on-device encryption, no end-to-end
| encryption, etc.
|
| An iPad can do everything the Remarkable can do, _on device_ , no
| connection or cloud sync/service required, has infinitely larger
| accessory and software ecosystem, can be repaired at almost any
| corner phone repair shop and major electronic store chains, and
| has best-in-market security from the hardware itself to end-to-
| end encryption for its built-in cloud sync functionality.
| kseifried wrote:
| I love the hardware and the feel but the software is terrible and
| the difficulty of putting templates on the device (you hack
| around and use ssh to copy a file in) really limits the
| usefulness. The subscription model is also pushed heavy with
| basic functionality you would expect not working unless you pay.
| Overall I regret buying one and I almost never use it.
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