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
"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.
If a guy could create amazing ux improvements without access to code [1] and by binary patching I’d assume a vc funded company could also. I consider this patch to be essential for my sanity
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.
> I'm all for fewer polished features - but we don't get any of those.
I don't think that the rest of your comment substantiates this. You don't have any arguments that the core functionality is lacking in some way - everything you say seems to be about non-core things.
> Hyperlinks in ePub and PDF didn't work.
Note the "didn't", and also PDF hyperlinks is not an "essential" feature for the purpose of the rm2, which is writing and annotating.
> If links don't work they must have some way to jump between pages easily, right?
Not core to writing and annotating. You're looking for a document-navigation system, which the rm2 is not.
> Search is very slow.
See previous comment about the rm2 not meant to be a document-navigation system.
> 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 might be the only valid complaint here, although it's still a non-essential feature. An essential feature is the ability to take notes, which you can.
> This is primarily a drawing/creation device.
That's literally how it's marketed - "Writing, reading, and visualizing only".
> 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.
The eraser tool is perfectly functional. I use it continually with no problems. Could it be better? Yes, like almost every piece of software ever written. Is it "a clumsy mess"? Not even close.
> 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?
That's a single UX issue, among many things that they got right, that has little impact on the usability of the device.
You neglected to mention how the drawing, cut/copy/paste, convert-to-text, eraser, templates, and almost every other feature "just work". You do get all of those "polished features" - your stretch goals are not core functionality.
>That's literally how it's marketed - "Writing, reading, and visualizing only".
>Not core to writing and annotating. You're looking for a document-navigation system, which the rm2 is not.
Document navigation is absolutely a core part of reading. When I read a book, I page around it because that's how books work. When I reference a book I've already read, I want to look in the index or the table of contents and go there.
There are 6 things that reMarkable claims the device does on their homepage. "All your notes, organized and accessible on all devices" and "Take handwritten notes, read, and review documents" are two of them. Reading and searching are core scenarios.
I don't personally own a reMarkable, so I have no idea if this is related to what you're mentioning, but version 2.7 does seem to have added improved navigation of the sort you're describing: https://blog.remarkable.com/software-update-2-7-small-steps-...
> Document navigation is absolutely a core part of reading.
This is a stretch. "Reading" means reading. You open a book and read it cover-to-cover. "Document navigation" is extra stuff beyond reading - it is not core. When you read a novel, you are not expected to jump back and forth between different chapters or sections, and the vast majority of people don't.
When you teach your child to "read", you don't teach them to click on PDF links (that's "web searching" or "computer literacy" or whatever) or to flip to arbitrary pages as fast as possible, or to search through a file - you literally teach them the English alphabet, how to parse words and sentences, and that's it - they know how to read. One knows how to "read" even if they've never seen a computer in their life, and if they don't know how to cross-reference books and articles, and if they don't know how to use an index.
> When I read a book, I page around it because that's how books work.
That's irrelevant. You can write on the margins of a book "because that's how books work", yet that's totally unrelated to "reading". I can clip out fragments of a book and put them on my refrigerator - that doesn't mean that a core part of reading is the extraction of inspirational quotes.
> When I reference a book I've already read, I want to look in the index or the table of contents and go there.
And yet, that's not a "core part of reading", and doesn't need to be optimized as such. The core parts of reading are reading words and flipping pages. Indices and tables of contents, while important, are not a core part of reading - they're important, sure, but if you remove them, you can still read things. That's what "core" means - "core" means "without this element, you cannot do the activity".
Let me repeat that again - if you remove the ability to flip to arbitrary pages (but keep the spot you were last reading in - which the reMarkable does), remove the table of contents, and remove the index, you can still read a book.
Will you be able to perform research effectively? No. But that's not what the reMarkable is for. I'll be the second to admit that the reMarkable 2 is terrible at research - but it's not meant to be used for research, it's meant to be used for simple reading, and note-taking while you do research on another device.
> [...] searching are core scenarios.
False. Their homepage literally never mentions "search" or "index". It's simply not there. Would search be useful? Heck yes. Is it necessary for reading? Absolutely not, see above.
As feature-limited as the reMarkable is, it is upfront about those limited features, and it executes on the features that it does promise at least better than most other pieces of technology.
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.
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.
