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Comment by bipson | Hacker News Reader

E-Mail and Python notebooks? I don't think they these are the primary use cases for a "digital paper" device.

What you consider an "overengineered piece" of paper might be intentional. Maybe you don't need paper - some people do.

I think that as e-ink gets better and better refresh rates, that having it as a grayscale monitor for things like textbooks/markup and browsing the web will make sense. Having an e-ink tablet to browse HN, check email and read the morning paper sounds pretty nice. I used to get the NYTimes delivered to my Kindle each morning.

That's not this product. The point to a device like the Remarkable is that it can't do those things. I could have an iPad Pro with a better pen, the full power of OneNote, etc., but it's way too easy to go get distracted by HN or email or a news flash. The Remarkable is a focus device.

Forget grayscale, E-ink is going color. Early color devices are on the market already. And there are displays in the works that are fast enough to render video.

I'm really looking forward to the future of e-ink displays.

yeah, call me in 5 years when those devices are no the crap they are today with their own subpixel problems where everything is blurry unless you use giant size font's .

> I think that as e-ink gets better and better refresh rates,

Could you clarify your meaning? Because as far as I know, there hasn't been any improvement in "refresh rates". Typical update times are still around 600ms. Unless you mean tricks like A2 as used by vendors like Dasung which aren't real completed updates.

But should a more modern, digital paper, not enhance the human intellect? Why should I not be able to jot down a math formula that the computer then solves for me? Why cant I draw a triangle and let it compute the sides? Why not write a letter to a friend and send it directly to them and also read their answer on the same device?

This would be enhancing paper for me. Combining the at this point pretty natural way of writing on paper with many of the modern computers amenities. Sure, you might not need all these, but paper is also cents if you really need "Not features". Minimalism and focus on core features is fine, but artificially limitations in this way does not seem to help remarkable to deliver good software. So what does it achieve?

> So what does it achieve?

Sustainability. The device isn't for everybody. The constraints are features.

Sounds like you want something more like an iPad.

Except e-ink, and ultra-low-latency pen input, and ssh-able...

I think the "interactive paper" vision is very different from the "ipad" vision.

The RM2 pen latency (20 ms) is double the iPad's (9 ms).

I wouldn't call the RM2 interactive paper. It's digital paper. Remarkable has focused their device to that niche and I think that was very smart of them. It's all about e-ink, crazy battery life, no distractions. I know a lot of people want more functionality - especially in the reader area, drawing apps, and calendar functions. So far Remarkable has managed to stay focused on the core functionality and I think the longer they can remain focused, the better off the company is. Every feature they add is something they have to test and maintain forever and that's a lot for a small company to do and still sell the device for about $400 (which is a bargain IMHO).

What I'd like to see is a bigger option. It would be nice to have at least a full A4/letter size screen. It would make dealing with PDFs a much better experience.

With any newish onyx boox you can do all that and more.

I wonder if people happy with their Remarkable had seen what onyx devices are able to do.

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