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Comment by Naac | Hacker News Reader

Looks like a direct competitor to the Remarkable[0] which I own, and is a great device. The Remarkable is also "mostly" open. The main binary running the UI of the system is proprietary, but the Linux system underneath is ssh-able, and the hacking community of the device is pretty active and large [1].

Looking at the announcement page of the PineNote I'm very excited! I'm hoping the open software running on the PineNote will be comparable to the Remarkable, and if it is I'm definitely going to be making the switch.

As a side note, I'm hoping maybe this encourages the Remarkable team to open source their proprietary binary. Their advantage here is definitely the hardware not the software.

[0] https://remarkable.com/

[1] https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable

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> As a side note, I'm hoping maybe this encourages the Remarkable team to open source their proprietary binary. Their advantage here is definitely the hardware not the software.

I dunno, reMarkable’s low pen-to-screen latency is an important part of the device’s experience, and they’ve historically mentioned that as a key factor in not open-sourcing it, because they reckon they’ve done some fairly clever stuff in it.

The reMarkable experience is very much a combination of hardware and software.

Seems fairly different from reMarkable; they both use e-ink displays and they both support pens, but I’d say that’s about the extent of the similarity.

reMarkable has focused very tightly on its writing niche to the exclusion of other things, and it shows: the pen-to-screen gap is small, the surface is pleasant to write on (not paper but not awfully far off it and certainly not glass), pen-to-screen latency and performance is finely tuned throughout in the software and hardware (for writing, it performs better than competitors with double the single-core performance and quadruple the cores), it doesn’t have speakers, the processor isn’t very powerful at all, it has very little memory or storage by current standards, that kind of thing. They’ve done a good job with the experience; I really enjoy using my reMarkable.

Meanwhile, PineNote has a hardened glass surface (leaving achieving a paper-like surface to third-party films), is at 7mm thicker than the reMarkable (6.7mm) and reMarkable 2 (4.7mm), has speakers, has lots of storage, has a powerful CPU, has lots of memory, has a frontlight (yay!), has a bigger battery (4Ah, against reMarkable and reMarkable 2’s 3Ah) supports a pen but in a way that feels like an afterthought, and isn’t concerning itself with the software side of things at all. They’re producing a device for developers to see what they do with it, and maybe the developers will help them turn it into something suitable for normal humans.

I suspect I’m still going to get one.

The reMarkable also uses a glass surface with a plastic film providing the texture. Don't pull it off!

reMarkable 1 doesn't have any glass, although they changed to a glass display in reMarkable 2 for some reason...possibly to reduce the effect of scratches https://support.remarkable.com/hc/en-us/articles/36000263439...

IMHO, the huuuuuuuge Achilles' heel of the ReMarkable is no Bluetooth, which means no Bluetooth keyboards.

I want a pen about 10% of the time, for doodles. The rest of the time, I want a keyboard and mouse, or at the very least a keyboard and touchpad, and an e-ink tablet is just a low-power way to achieve that. ReMarkable is sort of famously hackable, but the Bluetooth chip is physically not wired.

PineNote has a sane pathway to being a low-power tablet with both Wacom and captouch input, and proper keyboard support. The only way to attach a keyboard to the RM2 is with a USB OTG dongle and external power pack, which is just bonkers.

I'm keenly aware that PineNote is a few steps beyond a figment of a designer's imagination, but still far far far from a finished product; they only just got the screen working to display a static image. It's not going to do everything the ReMarkable does for a long time yet.

But it's already as useful _to me_ as my RM2 is _to me_. And unlike the RM2, it's going to get better over time. I'm absolutely getting one.

I preordered the new Remarkable and ended up having to re-gift it

Tablets used to suck, doubly so when using them with pens. The screens were low res, low brightness, they were slow to respond to pen strokes, battery life sucked, I could go on.

So e-ink digital notebooks made a ton of sense. They solved a lot of these issues in exchange for some limiting general utility.

Now fast forward to 2021 and a $300 iPad has one of the fastest responding pens in the industry, the screen is bright enough for daylight, it comfortably does a full day of work without charging...

It's an amazing piece of tech with huge amounts of utility, incredible drawing and plotting apps.

I feel like that muddies the waters for digital notebooks.

I know it used to be taboo to say that ("Tablets are tablets and eReaders are eReaders!!!") but I don't know anymore.

If you're someone who will tinker with your Remarkable (or PineNote), I seriously recommend trying an iPad.

The Remarkable still wins for distraction-free work in stock form, but if you're one to tinker for utility, the utility is just there with the iPad, and doesn't sacrifice that much in the writing department

You've described why iPad doesn't suck terribly compared to the Remarkable but I didn't see you mention any of its advantages. Are there any?

Is much more utility not an advantage?

Like I said, for some people it's not an advantage. They want something that is about as "dumb" as a stack of papers and so the iPad is not even an option.

But once you get into people who tinker and want to add features and integrations, like I imagine many PineNote owners might skew, well the iPad does that a lot better.

It's also just a generally snappier device. In theory being barebones should make the Remarkable faster, but between the limitations of eInk and the low power hardware (which yes, I realize come with some great benefits) picking up the iPad for a quick thought always ended up feeling more fluid.

Also while the Remarkable is better in daylight the current iPads are much more usable than used to be. Meanwhile the iPad is useable in little-to-no light but not the Remarkable.

(side note on screens: pen feel is also a little oversold imo. A random matte screen protector made my $20 Apple Pencil knock off feel 9 tenths as the $99 stylus I got for the Remarkable and improves daylight performance too.

The 1 tenth is down to personal preference, I'd say the iPad felt like a nice pen, the Remarkable like a nice pencil.)

This seems right to me. I had an iPad Pro and it was kinda meh. Basically just collected dust. Got a remarkable 2 and basically use it every day for note taking and sharing between it and my computer. Annotate PDFs, make drawings like in a notebook. It’s so lightweight and hassle free, battery lasts ages, super easy to have alongside my MacBook to get stuff done. I’m super happy with it, haven’t touched my iPad Pro since I got it.

The only thing I would like on there remarkable, which seems to be more of an eink limitation, is the ability to create multiple colored highlights. I find myself drawing a lot of graphs and often need the ability to create different lines that can be distinguished when the graphs get complicated.

But other than that, remarkable has been basically a dream as a replacement for pen and paper (which I didn’t use that often anyways).

Thanks, you just confirmed to me that I want a Remarkable. This looks like it was written by future me.

I need a no-hassle, no-distraction, no-fiddling paper-on-steroids replacement. An iPad just seems like it is too much for this. I like that the Remarkable is "limited" in this respect.

For me it is the distraction free environment. I can deep dive into the material. It also feels a lot like real paper. Having all of my thoughts on various topics, school notes, books I've read, therapy notes, etc.

> but if you're one to tinker for utility, the utility is just there with the iPad

Listen, I think the iPad is a pretty versatile little piece of hardware. The amount of work required to turn it into a decent writing experience is almost comedic, though. I know a few artists who use iPads, and they cannot use it without the basic accessories: matte screen-protector, proprietary $100 pen (of course), battery bank, etc. On the other side of the spectrum, I see Mac users frustrated by how unintuitive their desktop is compared to their iPad.

If you want to fight your hardware to get it to do what you want, get the iPad. If you want to tinker, look elsewhere.

You realize I'm comparing it to my Remarkable right?

The Remarkable a digital notebook, not an alternative to a Wacom tablet.

Like if you think iPad drawing tools are bad... the Remarkable didn't even have layers until the new model

To get my iPad to where my Remarkable was cost $25:

- $20 pen (which is a proper active pen, not a weird stylus)

- $5 matte screen protector.

That's $325 all in vs $450 minimum for a Remarkable (I think mine was a little cheaper with preordering, but the upgraded pen and case make it a wash)

Battery life without a battery bank has never been problematic. Even forgetting to charge it overnight is fine. It doesn't barely loses any battery in standby, and charges quickly enough.

It sounds like you have an ax to grind against the iPad for other purposes, which is fair. But for an alternative to a Remarkable, there's just not that far to go, it's a low bar that's been set.

Meanwhile, if what you want is a thing that will let you read ebooks and comics while maximizing value per dollar, I recommend Amazon's Kindle Fire HD10. For just over $100 when it's on sale (several times per year), you get a perfectly serviceable Android tablet with a 10.1" 1900x1200 full color screen, a WiFi connection, some storage, and enough processor and memory to run a comic-book reader, an ebook-reader, a web browser to control your music system, and Netflix if for some reason you really want to watch on a tiny portable screen. Add a bluetooth remote control and a stand that mounts to your headboard, and you have the perfect device for reading in bed even when you've got a fever and have difficulty turning pages.

As a gaming device, terrible. As a device to take around the world, mediocre -- it's not built particularly well. As a device to entertain yourself with in one spot, pretty much optimal right now.

I bought the earlier edition and I couldn't say enough bad things about it.

- interface wasn't snappy

- screen was merely ok

- can't use Google apps

- can't use third party home screen apps and the Amazon one is the worst one ever created for Android

- hassle to root

I agree on all points. The newer one bypasses most, possibly all of them.

> read ebooks [...] Kindle Fire HD10

Kindle Paperwhite is a much better book reading experience, IMHO.

(For comics, a large non-eInk tablet is probably better. The experience of panning around on small slowly-updating screen was not good for me, and you probably want colors too for comics.)

>If you're someone who will tinker with your Remarkable (or PineNote), I seriously recommend trying an iPad.

Like you rightly stated in the previous para, I cannot disagree more with this statement.

eInk like passive displays are in a league of their own compared to active displays even if it is Apple who is making those.

eInk displays are "in a league of their own" compared LCDs in very specific ways just like LCDs are "in a league of their own" in others.

It's fine if you strongly prefer one, but it's kind of weird to strongly disagree with recommending looking at another option.

Like I said, once upon a time I believed that it wasn't worth trying. On a whim I did, and it turns out it's great.

The point of my comment is to show what changed without prejudice, but apparently that's quite an inflammatory thing. I guess forgot about the "I'd replace every screen in my life with e-ink in a minute" cabal, which does tend to be pretty sure their opinions are The One True Way.

Yeah, I hear you. I got a Remarkable 2, but I just couldn't justify owning one besides my iPad Pro 12.9 inch, so I sent the R2 back. Didn't regret it. As an ereader the iPad Pro is superior in every way, it has a great screen, color, and can display PDFs comfortably. And I don't take handwritten digital notes, I prefer either keyboard or paper.

> And I don't take handwritten digital notes, I prefer either keyboard or paper.

Kind of hard to see why you’d buy a Remarkable in the first place then.

It's called curiosity. Maybe the R2 would be so good I would start taking notes on it? But the entire interface threw me off, it is just not nice and functional enough (for me).

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