This is pretty refreshing to read. "Its just linux", seems to ship with SSH/root terminal enabled (over USB at least, with a simple way to enable networked access), built in webserver, just uses systemd for service control, etc.
Maybe other tablets are like that too, to be honest I'm too poor to swing the 700-1000$ for what I can cover with an paper note pad (with the bonus of being able to comfortably sit my coffee cup on it, use any pen or pencil, rip pages out, drop it, forget it somewhere, etc etc) to buy one but at least it seems like a product I would support.
> Maybe other tablets are like that too, to be honest I'm too poor to swing the 700-1000$ for what I can cover with an paper note pad (with the bonus of being able to comfortably sit my coffee cup on it, use any pen or pencil, rip pages out, drop it, forget it somewhere, etc etc) to buy one but at least it seems like a product I would support.
I have good news: they (RM2s) are often available on ebay for much less. People buy them thinking they're getting something like an android tablet, but they do nothing out of the box apart from showing docs and taking notes. Sometimes they're returned immediately for a full refund, but often they sit in a drawer, untouched, till they get offloaded on ebay for - comparatively - peanuts, letting us scoop them up and breathe new life into them (koreader rocks, to start with).
Yeah, koreader is great. As long as you're fine with greyscale, the rm2 size is great for comics and textbooks. Most ereaders are way too small for both.
I have a Kobo that was kept unused in a similar state for a few years until I decide to build an SDK platform to develop and deploy apps on it. My Kobo does not support apps on its Linux platform.
I have been using it to read HN, as an RSS reader over my news and blog sources, generate audiobooks on topics I want to understand with ElevenLabs, Exa and OpenAI and listen via connecting its bluetooth to my speakers and even as a remote Claude Code & Codex approval sidekick.
It is amazing that a $100 device with a single core and 512mb RAM can do so much and run for so long.
NickelMenu is fantastic for adding custom buttons and some extra. We use it to display the Cobalt entry button on the stock Kobo interface.
This SDK provides more of an android/iOS type framework to use underlying hardware like bluetooth, wifi, battery and a bunch of UI components for creating complex apps with eink rendering, notifications, managed windows, OTA updates, a simulator, a sidekick mode for your apps and more.
Manually updating a config file to enable the web server was a wholly unnecessary step as that's just a toggle in the "Storage" section of settings.
reMarkable software has its faults, but I keep coming back to them for the best-in-class hardware, developer-friendly platform, which itself spawned an active developer community. Could it be an easier platform to develop on? Sure. But that hasn't stopped a huge number of supported mods being made available
Any device that powers off fully functional should be able to power on fully functional barring hardware failure. That these steps were nessecary is a stunning indictment of remarkable, even if your tech geek can ssh in and fix it.
After all, my notebooks are perfectly readable four years later
FWIW my RM2 is still running well after 4y, and that includes plenty of abuse. I use it for notes at work, keeping track of little league lineups (and so tossing it in the grass many times), and its still a daily driver for me.
I did not update my ReMarkable 2 for years either and had probably the same clock issue. There was an article on the FAQ website from remarkable, if I remember correctly, that took me to a step-by-step process by which I could update it. Don't remember exactly how (I think I had to use the cable and connect to PC; which normally is not needed) but let's just say even if at first it seems like it doesn't work anymore and you have to hack it yourself, it is not actually needed.
Nonetheless, this hackabality is the main reason I got mine (although I don't hack it, the optionality and thus probable longevity made the difference in my buying decision. I do not regret.).
The reMarkable cloud is crap and has been since the beginning. I wrote a free/libre offline management tool called reMarkable Connection Utility (RCU) that is decently popular, used by several thousand people. Beyond backup/restore of editable notebook data, it has a lot of unique features the manufacturer can't/won't support (like exporting with native PDF highlight annotations).
> The reMarkable cloud is crap and has been since the beginning
Citation needed
On the contrary, reMarkable's cloud and associated sync functionality is praised regularly in the unofficial subreddit, as is the access Support has when people accidentally overwrite or otherwise delete notes.
I fully understand why some people would prefer to self-host their documents, but to link your own work whilst labelling reMarkable's as "crap" is somewhat disingenuous
I've been a big name in that "unofficial" subreddit for the past 8 years (u/rmhack), and I check it daily. I put unofficial in quotes because the moderators communicate and coordinate with reMarkable AS, so it's not really quite unofficial anymore.
I don't think it's disingenuous to link to my own work, when that work was directly inspired by reMarkable's own awful software. I would call that "relevance".
I don't think it's fair to praise reMarkable's support for restoring access to files they mistakenly deleted in the first place. And secondly, their support is doing this FAR less than they used to. Some people in the subreddit report they don't do it any longer, since about 2 years ago.
The "pro" adds conveniences, is faster, and somehow is still distraction free. The color features are a subtle joy, although a bit underwhelming and dim.
I've had all, too. I do like the light weight of the first... I'm less scared to toss it around too.
I bought a Remarkable 2 tablet a while back. I quickly realised two things -
1. Remarkable's own software is a steaming pile of poo. Their inbuilt web server for uploading files is extremely buggy and unusable. It's dog slow. You can't try to drag many files in one go, or it crashes. You can't try to upload a large file, or it crashes. There is also a hard limit on the file size you can upload (something like 100MB) which makes it unusable for some heavy PDF files I have. They push you towards paying for their cloud service subscription, which I will never do, just to be able to sync files. There is also no way to just ssh files over because their pdf reader will refuse to read them. All I want is to connect the remarkable every day for a few minutes to my computer and have it sync my files, and there is no way to do that.
2. Most of the "hacks" online are written assuming that you can install toolchains like Toltec on the device, and they are NOT updated for the newer firmware. My remarkable came with 3.15 and while there are some instructions on how to downgrade the firmware before installing the toolchain, they never worked for me. So I stuck with the subpar software and reading experience...
... until I discovered [ReManager](https://github.com/rmitchellscott/reManager). It just worked out of the box, did not require a firmware update, and I was able to install KoReader and other goodies (such as some launcher improvements). It can also transfer large files easily. What's ironic is that KoReader can read djvu files, which removes my need to use large PDFs in the first place. Equivalent djvu files are much much smaller.
Thanks to everyone in the remarkable community who contributed to ReManager and other assorted remarkable hacking!
EDIT: Also must point out a cool thing that I discovered recently - ReManager comes with a one click installer for the Zig toolchain on the Remarkable 2! It is slow, but I was able to compile and run zig programs on the tablet.
This is the achilles heel of modern tech. Devices are just so brittle and if it is not online 24/7 on returning back online, you need to perform incantations to get things working.
Long shell life is a taboo in the tech world where 5 years is a long time.
Yeah it's kind of comical the framing is that a device needs to be "revived" after four years. As SWEs we should probably all be a bit embarrassed for our trade, even in the alleged golden era of LLM induced productivity.
I have all sorts of offline digital&analog mechanical/optical devices which just work decades and decades later. The weak point in any of my old tech is when theres a software component that needs to be reverse engineered and ported across multiple generations of CPU architecture / OS / API deprecations.
I have 60 year old records, 35 year old CDs, 25 year old minidiscs that all still work fine. Properly developed film negatives are still fine decades later.
Despite all the warnings about media impermanence and lifespans, it's always the software that screws it up first. I've lost more content from digital / streaming services because it simply vanishes than because a piece of physical media failed.
That was my initial reaction as well, when I first found the device not being able to update. But look what was the saving grace: SSH/USB/HTTP/Unix with root access, instead of closed systems, hardware that you own 100%.
As software is increasingly "solved" by AI I think this is what will become most important
Really sad the official lack of proper support for using it as a general purpose device for the ones that would like time because otherwise the hardware is really great.
I like mine very much except the limitation that I can't do too much with it.
I do 't mean playing video games but lots of things could be done within the power range of the device.
For example be able to use the ssh access or synchronization web app from wifi, be able to use basic web page, synchronize with your own server like ftp server, ...
All that kind of things not very complicated or requiring power. And I'm not even asking for the work/app to be done by remarkable but that the interface to do that is available.
A few things could be done by connecting in ssh and replacing the xserver but it is extremely clunky and could easy make your expensive tablet a brick. But it shows the kind of things that would be nice to be done with it.
I guess that a simple code editor/visualiser could easily be done.
What exactly is a "general purpose device"? An eInk tablet is pretty far away from being "general purpose" as far as I can tell. Should I buy a Ford Ranger and demand that the company makes it easy to convert it to a lawn mover?
Examples: it sucks as an ereader, even though the hardware is super capable of it. It doesn’t have a built-in dictionary to look up words or check spelling. You can’t make links between documents or to different pages in the current document.
Their hardware is top notch, but I found the software to be so hamstrung that I returned mine after a few weeks. Basically, if you want to have exactly a physical paper notebook experience but with a computer, it’s great. If you’d like to transcend the limitations of a paper notebook and take advantage of the nice hardware to organize your work, or do literally anything but write or draw, you’ll be sorely disappointed.
I’ve heard this excuse for it plenty of times, and it rings hollow and/or Stockholm syndrome. People (rightfully) made fun of Apple for not including a calculator on iPadOS for the longest time. Imagine Apple claiming “we never advertised it as a calculator!”, which is technically true, but clearly silly because it’s an obvious use case that everyday users would want.
Well, same here: a Remarkable tablet is nearly identical to a Kobo or Kindle in form factor and basic capabilities. It even includes an ereader app. But the app, frankly, sucks. They could swapped in KOreader and called it a day. But instead of that, they — or rather, their supporters — give the laughable excuse that “it’s not an ereader”. Well, an iPad’s also not a calculator, and yet…
If your car has four wheels, room to walk around inside, and built in refrigerators that are mounted upside down for some reason, maybe the factory would say that they didn’t sell you an ice cream truck, but everyone else looking at it is going to wonder why they didn’t make it possible to stock popsicles while they were at it.
Similar in form factor and basic capabilities, sure. But. And it's a big one. The reMarkable tablets are aimed for content creation rather than consumption. Nobody realistically buys a reMarkable device when Kindles, Kobos, etc. all perform that task much better with all the connected ebook stores, whatever DRM keeps the publishers and authors happy, etc. etc. That's just not reMarkable's core business and likely never will be.
I'm not sure what the "ereader app" is that you refer to. reMarkables come with exactly one app "xochitl" that handles all user interaction. Sure, they let you access PDFs to annotate - but again the primary use case isn't to read them. ePub files are consciously converted into PDFs to support that premise.
KOreader, whilst an excellent reading app, doesn't support annotations. So it's not obvious why reMarkable would consider that an enhancement given the primary device purpose.
My car doesn't have space to walk around, nor refrigerators. That's why I bought it. Same with reMarkable devices. I buy and use them for the content creation functionality. I have a Kindle for the times when I want to swap to "consumer mode"
Well, nonetheless, those missing features and a thousand other papercuts led me to send it back and upgrade to a Supernote. It’s not perfect, but hasn’t deliberately kneecapped itself with some purity vision that just makes it frustrating to use. And honestly, I’d rather carry a Kobo and a paper notebook than a Kobo and a digital notebook that could’ve been an ereader, too, except “LOL we don’t make ereaders”.
Or at least competent, if not great. I mentioned in another comment that I switched to a Supernote. Its own reader isn’t fantastic. My Kobo is better for that. But it’s fine as a reader if it’s the only tablet-sized device I have with me that day.
That’s the baseline I’d expect from an e-ink tablet. It might not blow me away, but should at least be reasonably useful as a reader. Any tablet that can’t adequately let me comfortably read an epub is unserious, in my opinion.
I don’t use a remarkable but use an ipad and stylus for note taking a lot, so can totally get why people like remarkable even though I what I do is better for me[1]. The reasons for me:
1) I had a ton of paper notes, looking back, curating, finding old things etc is really hard.
2) An electronic device gives you the ability to cut and paste, move things around on the page, resize stuff, drop in screenshots (so I often screenshot a page of something I’m reading, drop it into a note and annotate it or make my notes about it all around the original) and (best of all) infinite erase with no skank left behind on the page and no surrounding myself with tiny little bits of eraser to clean up.
3) I have all my notes with me on my device even ones I made years ago vs in my study I have box folders and notebooks full of notes filling cabinet after cabinet, I couldn’t possibly carry all that around with me.
1 and 3 are nice, 2 is the killer app. Once I made the switch I find it painfully limiting to go back to having to make notes on paper.
[1] My system in case people are interested is Notability and a paperlike screen protector. It is fantastic. All notes back up automatically as pdfs in box (which I then copy to my linux laptop) and I can search them using AI just fine even though I’m writing equations and my handwriting is god-awful. The notes are all pdf so if notability gets bought out and becomes terrible I just drop it like a hot potato and move on to something else no loss of notes. I tried a colleagues RM2 and the screen didn’t feel as nice to write on as my paperlike screen protector. I also found the latency distracting - I couldn’t write as fast as I would like to.
Pencil and paper are very definitely better, until you need to carry them around or search through them.
The ease of filing/retrieving across a lot of notes is a huge advantage. Also the amount you can have with you. The sheer weight of paper is a huge pain. With this you can carry hundreds of books and search the notes you scribbled in the margins.
Aside from points made by other commenters here, it also works as an e-reader with a big screen :) So, one small lightweight device for all your writing and reading needs.
Because the fact that it is a tech gadget makes me more likely to write stuff down instead of believing I can remember everything. That’s about it , at least for my use case
i’ll address this as if it was a genuine question.
my handwriting is awful, not to mention that my physical notebook management is awful. i’ve considered a supernote nomad as a way to streamline some of those issues. theyre just so expensive that i cant really justify a $500 experiment.
I haven't tried it myself but I have heard that LLMs can be much better at handwriting OCR than previous tech. This opens the possibility of handwriting and then scanning and digitizing notes for organizing and search.
Honestly, this seems like a good opportunity to just write slower and pay closer attention to the tidiness of your handwriting. Using digital notetaking because your handrwriting is bad is just lazy. If you have parkinson fair.
I'm confused. Your physical notebook management is awful, ie. I guess you have live in a house without shelves or something. But spending time troubleshooting an electronic device from only 2022 is easier?
condescending comments really aren’t helpful. while i feel no compulsion to explain myself to you, I will say that most of my bookshelves are stocked with books, and I tend to leave notebooks in random places and forget about them until I need one. then I just open a new one and start writing some more. So I have fragments of thoughts scattered across multiple notebooks. I was hoping this could be a new way to navigate and manage that in my mind.
Maybe this will restore my faith in digital tablets.
I made notes, saved them. Only for the next morning to find my device out of battery and the notes missing. I don't get it, feels like I was zapped by some evil overlord that didn't want me recalling what I had written for the next part of my cartoon.
Easy to end up like this. Takes a lot of work to preserve. I had an Arch Linux desktop. Put it in storage to move to a different country and came back in a year. Booted fine, couldn’t upgrade. No feasible resolution. Reimaged it after a couple of hours (this was pre AI so you had to manually figure things out).
Indeed that is the case. I’ve been a Debian/Ubuntu user since Ubuntu came out. The Arch desktop was an experiment. Back to la salle de bian once again. But it is perhaps one of the few distribution (families) where this is true.
I'm running my remarkable on some ancient software version, and honestly for my use case (reading textbooks and occasional note taking) the old version is perfectly fine.
I don't connect it to the internet, just use the awesome RCU software (paid, but distributed with source code) to move stuff between it and my computer. I presume if I were to try to update it, I'll find the same fate! About exporting, the notebook format is relatively simple, I wrote a very bare-bones software that's able to convert the notebooks to PDF in a few hundred lines of Nim, or you could just use the integrated web UI.
Except it was able to be updated. Looks like mostly a time issue and having to restart the update service, possibly due to an old bug - or maybe a reboot would have fixed it.
The rm2 is still receiving software updates. The fact that this would have been impossible on more closed tablets, or indeed most mobile phones should show reMarkable in a positive light surely?
No, this device was only discontinued this year, you can still buy accessories and it still receives software updates.
It just turns out their software has flaws that break the update process after a few years of sitting unused. Not great, but luckily there are workarounds, as this article walks you through.
LOL - agreed. I was a bit shocked by the title being the type that gets bonded with my devices. I still use my Windows laptop from 2017 and my M1 Macbook Pro from 2021 daily. Additionally, my Kindles are from 2010.
Where is is obsolete? It's still receiving software updates and likely to for at least 3-4 years. Even after that it's not going to magically brick itself
This is pretty refreshing to read. "Its just linux", seems to ship with SSH/root terminal enabled (over USB at least, with a simple way to enable networked access), built in webserver, just uses systemd for service control, etc.
They even list it in the user guide https://remarkable.guide/guide/access/ssh.html along with an "developing software" guide https://remarkable.guide/devel/index.html.
Maybe other tablets are like that too, to be honest I'm too poor to swing the 700-1000$ for what I can cover with an paper note pad (with the bonus of being able to comfortably sit my coffee cup on it, use any pen or pencil, rip pages out, drop it, forget it somewhere, etc etc) to buy one but at least it seems like a product I would support.
> Maybe other tablets are like that too, to be honest I'm too poor to swing the 700-1000$ for what I can cover with an paper note pad (with the bonus of being able to comfortably sit my coffee cup on it, use any pen or pencil, rip pages out, drop it, forget it somewhere, etc etc) to buy one but at least it seems like a product I would support.
I have good news: they (RM2s) are often available on ebay for much less. People buy them thinking they're getting something like an android tablet, but they do nothing out of the box apart from showing docs and taking notes. Sometimes they're returned immediately for a full refund, but often they sit in a drawer, untouched, till they get offloaded on ebay for - comparatively - peanuts, letting us scoop them up and breathe new life into them (koreader rocks, to start with).
Yes, lots in the $200-$300 range: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=remarkable+2
Yeah, koreader is great. As long as you're fine with greyscale, the rm2 size is great for comics and textbooks. Most ereaders are way too small for both.
"They" is not reMarkable AS. remarkable.guide is a community project.
I have a Kobo that was kept unused in a similar state for a few years until I decide to build an SDK platform to develop and deploy apps on it. My Kobo does not support apps on its Linux platform.
I have been using it to read HN, as an RSS reader over my news and blog sources, generate audiobooks on topics I want to understand with ElevenLabs, Exa and OpenAI and listen via connecting its bluetooth to my speakers and even as a remote Claude Code & Codex approval sidekick.
It is amazing that a $100 device with a single core and 512mb RAM can do so much and run for so long.
Here is the open-sourced platform https://github.com/BandarLabs/Cobalt
There is also NickelMenu: https://pgaskin.net/NickelMenu/
NickelMenu is fantastic for adding custom buttons and some extra. We use it to display the Cobalt entry button on the stock Kobo interface.
This SDK provides more of an android/iOS type framework to use underlying hardware like bluetooth, wifi, battery and a bunch of UI components for creating complex apps with eink rendering, notifications, managed windows, OTA updates, a simulator, a sidekick mode for your apps and more.
> It is amazing that a $100 device with a single core and 512mb RAM can do so much and run for so long.
Not to sound like certain influencers but computers are pretty fast and the state of modern software is incredibly wasteful.
Manually updating a config file to enable the web server was a wholly unnecessary step as that's just a toggle in the "Storage" section of settings.
reMarkable software has its faults, but I keep coming back to them for the best-in-class hardware, developer-friendly platform, which itself spawned an active developer community. Could it be an easier platform to develop on? Sure. But that hasn't stopped a huge number of supported mods being made available
There is indeed a "USB web interface" toggle under Storage. I've added a note in the final section, thanks.
What a dismal idea that a four-year-old device is non-functional and in need of "reviving."
Any device that powers off fully functional should be able to power on fully functional barring hardware failure. That these steps were nessecary is a stunning indictment of remarkable, even if your tech geek can ssh in and fix it.
After all, my notebooks are perfectly readable four years later
FWIW my RM2 is still running well after 4y, and that includes plenty of abuse. I use it for notes at work, keeping track of little league lineups (and so tossing it in the grass many times), and its still a daily driver for me.
And if you leave it unpowered for a few years? I have a journal from two decades ago. Still readable.
There's a project called codexctl that can help you run an offline update to the latest firmware https://github.com/Jayy001/codexctl
Someone on Reddit also pointed out there is a support page for the clock issue https://support.remarkable.com/s/article/Unable-to-update-re...
reManager is far better for this use-case [0] instead of these fragile scripts.
[0] https://github.com/rmitchellscott/reManager
I second the recommendation to use reManager!
I did not update my ReMarkable 2 for years either and had probably the same clock issue. There was an article on the FAQ website from remarkable, if I remember correctly, that took me to a step-by-step process by which I could update it. Don't remember exactly how (I think I had to use the cable and connect to PC; which normally is not needed) but let's just say even if at first it seems like it doesn't work anymore and you have to hack it yourself, it is not actually needed. Nonetheless, this hackabality is the main reason I got mine (although I don't hack it, the optionality and thus probable longevity made the difference in my buying decision. I do not regret.).
I'm still using my remarkable from 2020. Has been receiving updates since AFAIK. Happy customer.
Several of my notes got lost in the ReMarkable cloud. I don’t think you are missing much.
The reMarkable cloud is crap and has been since the beginning. I wrote a free/libre offline management tool called reMarkable Connection Utility (RCU) that is decently popular, used by several thousand people. Beyond backup/restore of editable notebook data, it has a lot of unique features the manufacturer can't/won't support (like exporting with native PDF highlight annotations).
[1]: https://www.davisr.me/projects/rcu/
> The reMarkable cloud is crap and has been since the beginning
Citation needed
On the contrary, reMarkable's cloud and associated sync functionality is praised regularly in the unofficial subreddit, as is the access Support has when people accidentally overwrite or otherwise delete notes.
I fully understand why some people would prefer to self-host their documents, but to link your own work whilst labelling reMarkable's as "crap" is somewhat disingenuous
I've been a big name in that "unofficial" subreddit for the past 8 years (u/rmhack), and I check it daily. I put unofficial in quotes because the moderators communicate and coordinate with reMarkable AS, so it's not really quite unofficial anymore.
I don't think it's disingenuous to link to my own work, when that work was directly inspired by reMarkable's own awful software. I would call that "relevance".
I don't think it's fair to praise reMarkable's support for restoring access to files they mistakenly deleted in the first place. And secondly, their support is doing this FAR less than they used to. Some people in the subreddit report they don't do it any longer, since about 2 years ago.
https://www.reddit.com/r/RemarkableTablet/comments/1caeble/b...
https://www.reddit.com/r/RemarkableTablet/comments/1nzwt9c/d...
Another defect of theirs is erroneously RESTORING files that were previously deleted.
They do not have sync or cloud figured out.
https://www.google.com/search?q=remarkable+support+restore+d...
This thread made me curious about remarkable, what would you say is a good summary or entry point to the whole remarkable hacking scene?
I still have my remarkable 1 and love it. RM 2 didn’t have a backlight so there was no upgrade reason.
I actually like that the RM 1 is plastic, it feels durable and light.
The "pro" adds conveniences, is faster, and somehow is still distraction free. The color features are a subtle joy, although a bit underwhelming and dim.
I've had all, too. I do like the light weight of the first... I'm less scared to toss it around too.
I bought a Remarkable 2 tablet a while back. I quickly realised two things -
1. Remarkable's own software is a steaming pile of poo. Their inbuilt web server for uploading files is extremely buggy and unusable. It's dog slow. You can't try to drag many files in one go, or it crashes. You can't try to upload a large file, or it crashes. There is also a hard limit on the file size you can upload (something like 100MB) which makes it unusable for some heavy PDF files I have. They push you towards paying for their cloud service subscription, which I will never do, just to be able to sync files. There is also no way to just ssh files over because their pdf reader will refuse to read them. All I want is to connect the remarkable every day for a few minutes to my computer and have it sync my files, and there is no way to do that.
2. Most of the "hacks" online are written assuming that you can install toolchains like Toltec on the device, and they are NOT updated for the newer firmware. My remarkable came with 3.15 and while there are some instructions on how to downgrade the firmware before installing the toolchain, they never worked for me. So I stuck with the subpar software and reading experience...
... until I discovered [ReManager](https://github.com/rmitchellscott/reManager). It just worked out of the box, did not require a firmware update, and I was able to install KoReader and other goodies (such as some launcher improvements). It can also transfer large files easily. What's ironic is that KoReader can read djvu files, which removes my need to use large PDFs in the first place. Equivalent djvu files are much much smaller.
Thanks to everyone in the remarkable community who contributed to ReManager and other assorted remarkable hacking!
EDIT: Also must point out a cool thing that I discovered recently - ReManager comes with a one click installer for the Zig toolchain on the Remarkable 2! It is slow, but I was able to compile and run zig programs on the tablet.
This is the achilles heel of modern tech. Devices are just so brittle and if it is not online 24/7 on returning back online, you need to perform incantations to get things working.
Long shell life is a taboo in the tech world where 5 years is a long time.
Yeah it's kind of comical the framing is that a device needs to be "revived" after four years. As SWEs we should probably all be a bit embarrassed for our trade, even in the alleged golden era of LLM induced productivity.
I have all sorts of offline digital&analog mechanical/optical devices which just work decades and decades later. The weak point in any of my old tech is when theres a software component that needs to be reverse engineered and ported across multiple generations of CPU architecture / OS / API deprecations.
I have 60 year old records, 35 year old CDs, 25 year old minidiscs that all still work fine. Properly developed film negatives are still fine decades later.
Despite all the warnings about media impermanence and lifespans, it's always the software that screws it up first. I've lost more content from digital / streaming services because it simply vanishes than because a piece of physical media failed.
That was my initial reaction as well, when I first found the device not being able to update. But look what was the saving grace: SSH/USB/HTTP/Unix with root access, instead of closed systems, hardware that you own 100%.
As software is increasingly "solved" by AI I think this is what will become most important
Is part of the article missing? It ends abruptly.
I think you're right, the ending is a bit abrupt. Added a closing paragraph to the last section, thanks for pointing that out.
As did the reMarkable support for that device...
Bad take. The rM2 is still receiving software updates and likely to for the next 3-4 years.
All that happened is they stopped selling it. Source: https://remarkable.com/products/remarkable-2
It was a joke, son
Really sad the official lack of proper support for using it as a general purpose device for the ones that would like time because otherwise the hardware is really great.
I like mine very much except the limitation that I can't do too much with it.
It barely has enough power to render PDFs, I'm not sure what general purpose use you could get out of it.
The limitation is the whole point, it does pen input very well.
I do 't mean playing video games but lots of things could be done within the power range of the device.
For example be able to use the ssh access or synchronization web app from wifi, be able to use basic web page, synchronize with your own server like ftp server, ... All that kind of things not very complicated or requiring power. And I'm not even asking for the work/app to be done by remarkable but that the interface to do that is available.
A few things could be done by connecting in ssh and replacing the xserver but it is extremely clunky and could easy make your expensive tablet a brick. But it shows the kind of things that would be nice to be done with it.
I guess that a simple code editor/visualiser could easily be done.
What exactly is a "general purpose device"? An eInk tablet is pretty far away from being "general purpose" as far as I can tell. Should I buy a Ford Ranger and demand that the company makes it easy to convert it to a lawn mover?
Examples: it sucks as an ereader, even though the hardware is super capable of it. It doesn’t have a built-in dictionary to look up words or check spelling. You can’t make links between documents or to different pages in the current document.
Their hardware is top notch, but I found the software to be so hamstrung that I returned mine after a few weeks. Basically, if you want to have exactly a physical paper notebook experience but with a computer, it’s great. If you’d like to transcend the limitations of a paper notebook and take advantage of the nice hardware to organize your work, or do literally anything but write or draw, you’ll be sorely disappointed.
Please point to the marketing page where it's primary purpose is declared as an ereader.
My car has four wheels, that doesn't make it a good ice-cream van
I’ve heard this excuse for it plenty of times, and it rings hollow and/or Stockholm syndrome. People (rightfully) made fun of Apple for not including a calculator on iPadOS for the longest time. Imagine Apple claiming “we never advertised it as a calculator!”, which is technically true, but clearly silly because it’s an obvious use case that everyday users would want.
Well, same here: a Remarkable tablet is nearly identical to a Kobo or Kindle in form factor and basic capabilities. It even includes an ereader app. But the app, frankly, sucks. They could swapped in KOreader and called it a day. But instead of that, they — or rather, their supporters — give the laughable excuse that “it’s not an ereader”. Well, an iPad’s also not a calculator, and yet…
If your car has four wheels, room to walk around inside, and built in refrigerators that are mounted upside down for some reason, maybe the factory would say that they didn’t sell you an ice cream truck, but everyone else looking at it is going to wonder why they didn’t make it possible to stock popsicles while they were at it.
Similar in form factor and basic capabilities, sure. But. And it's a big one. The reMarkable tablets are aimed for content creation rather than consumption. Nobody realistically buys a reMarkable device when Kindles, Kobos, etc. all perform that task much better with all the connected ebook stores, whatever DRM keeps the publishers and authors happy, etc. etc. That's just not reMarkable's core business and likely never will be.
I'm not sure what the "ereader app" is that you refer to. reMarkables come with exactly one app "xochitl" that handles all user interaction. Sure, they let you access PDFs to annotate - but again the primary use case isn't to read them. ePub files are consciously converted into PDFs to support that premise.
KOreader, whilst an excellent reading app, doesn't support annotations. So it's not obvious why reMarkable would consider that an enhancement given the primary device purpose.
My car doesn't have space to walk around, nor refrigerators. That's why I bought it. Same with reMarkable devices. I buy and use them for the content creation functionality. I have a Kindle for the times when I want to swap to "consumer mode"
Well, nonetheless, those missing features and a thousand other papercuts led me to send it back and upgrade to a Supernote. It’s not perfect, but hasn’t deliberately kneecapped itself with some purity vision that just makes it frustrating to use. And honestly, I’d rather carry a Kobo and a paper notebook than a Kobo and a digital notebook that could’ve been an ereader, too, except “LOL we don’t make ereaders”.
Good point. I would expect most eink tablets to be good ereaders.
Or at least competent, if not great. I mentioned in another comment that I switched to a Supernote. Its own reader isn’t fantastic. My Kobo is better for that. But it’s fine as a reader if it’s the only tablet-sized device I have with me that day.
That’s the baseline I’d expect from an e-ink tablet. It might not blow me away, but should at least be reasonably useful as a reader. Any tablet that can’t adequately let me comfortably read an epub is unserious, in my opinion.
Why not use paper and pencil?
I don’t use a remarkable but use an ipad and stylus for note taking a lot, so can totally get why people like remarkable even though I what I do is better for me[1]. The reasons for me:
1) I had a ton of paper notes, looking back, curating, finding old things etc is really hard.
2) An electronic device gives you the ability to cut and paste, move things around on the page, resize stuff, drop in screenshots (so I often screenshot a page of something I’m reading, drop it into a note and annotate it or make my notes about it all around the original) and (best of all) infinite erase with no skank left behind on the page and no surrounding myself with tiny little bits of eraser to clean up.
3) I have all my notes with me on my device even ones I made years ago vs in my study I have box folders and notebooks full of notes filling cabinet after cabinet, I couldn’t possibly carry all that around with me.
1 and 3 are nice, 2 is the killer app. Once I made the switch I find it painfully limiting to go back to having to make notes on paper.
[1] My system in case people are interested is Notability and a paperlike screen protector. It is fantastic. All notes back up automatically as pdfs in box (which I then copy to my linux laptop) and I can search them using AI just fine even though I’m writing equations and my handwriting is god-awful. The notes are all pdf so if notability gets bought out and becomes terrible I just drop it like a hot potato and move on to something else no loss of notes. I tried a colleagues RM2 and the screen didn’t feel as nice to write on as my paperlike screen protector. I also found the latency distracting - I couldn’t write as fast as I would like to.
Pencil and paper are very definitely better, until you need to carry them around or search through them.
The ease of filing/retrieving across a lot of notes is a huge advantage. Also the amount you can have with you. The sheer weight of paper is a huge pain. With this you can carry hundreds of books and search the notes you scribbled in the margins.
Aside from points made by other commenters here, it also works as an e-reader with a big screen :) So, one small lightweight device for all your writing and reading needs.
Because the fact that it is a tech gadget makes me more likely to write stuff down instead of believing I can remember everything. That’s about it , at least for my use case
Paper is great for notes, bad at rendering arXiv
i’ll address this as if it was a genuine question.
my handwriting is awful, not to mention that my physical notebook management is awful. i’ve considered a supernote nomad as a way to streamline some of those issues. theyre just so expensive that i cant really justify a $500 experiment.
I haven't tried it myself but I have heard that LLMs can be much better at handwriting OCR than previous tech. This opens the possibility of handwriting and then scanning and digitizing notes for organizing and search.
Honestly, this seems like a good opportunity to just write slower and pay closer attention to the tidiness of your handwriting. Using digital notetaking because your handrwriting is bad is just lazy. If you have parkinson fair.
honestly, this is an unhelpful comment. but thank you for your thoughts - wish I had considered such a simple solution
I'm confused. Your physical notebook management is awful, ie. I guess you have live in a house without shelves or something. But spending time troubleshooting an electronic device from only 2022 is easier?
condescending comments really aren’t helpful. while i feel no compulsion to explain myself to you, I will say that most of my bookshelves are stocked with books, and I tend to leave notebooks in random places and forget about them until I need one. then I just open a new one and start writing some more. So I have fragments of thoughts scattered across multiple notebooks. I was hoping this could be a new way to navigate and manage that in my mind.
Isnt a remarkable 500$ too?
Why didn't you write that comment on a piece of paper instead?
This a social platform. Not a note-taking app. Besides why are you so triggered by my question?
I'm not particularly triggered, I didn't downvote you, if that's what you think.
This is a platform to discuss all things related to tech. The suggestion that the OP discards their old tablet seems not in the true hacker spirit.
But, that's only my 5 cents.
Maybe this will restore my faith in digital tablets.
I made notes, saved them. Only for the next morning to find my device out of battery and the notes missing. I don't get it, feels like I was zapped by some evil overlord that didn't want me recalling what I had written for the next part of my cartoon.
Now just use good ole paper and pen.
The tablet stopped being able to update just from sitting unused for a few years. That really decreases my faith, at least in reMarkable.
Easy to end up like this. Takes a lot of work to preserve. I had an Arch Linux desktop. Put it in storage to move to a different country and came back in a year. Booted fine, couldn’t upgrade. No feasible resolution. Reimaged it after a couple of hours (this was pre AI so you had to manually figure things out).
If you had Debian, the update would go with no problems.
Indeed that is the case. I’ve been a Debian/Ubuntu user since Ubuntu came out. The Arch desktop was an experiment. Back to la salle de bian once again. But it is perhaps one of the few distribution (families) where this is true.
I'm running my remarkable on some ancient software version, and honestly for my use case (reading textbooks and occasional note taking) the old version is perfectly fine.
I don't connect it to the internet, just use the awesome RCU software (paid, but distributed with source code) to move stuff between it and my computer. I presume if I were to try to update it, I'll find the same fate! About exporting, the notebook format is relatively simple, I wrote a very bare-bones software that's able to convert the notebooks to PDF in a few hundred lines of Nim, or you could just use the integrated web UI.
Except it was able to be updated. Looks like mostly a time issue and having to restart the update service, possibly due to an old bug - or maybe a reboot would have fixed it.
The rm2 is still receiving software updates. The fact that this would have been impossible on more closed tablets, or indeed most mobile phones should show reMarkable in a positive light surely?
On a remarkable, or other tablet? Sounds like a software issue, there's no reason for that to happen in 2026.
woah 4 years is considered obsolete?
My kids still using thinkpad 430 from 2013
> woah 4 years is considered obsolete?
No, this device was only discontinued this year, you can still buy accessories and it still receives software updates.
It just turns out their software has flaws that break the update process after a few years of sitting unused. Not great, but luckily there are workarounds, as this article walks you through.
LOL - agreed. I was a bit shocked by the title being the type that gets bonded with my devices. I still use my Windows laptop from 2017 and my M1 Macbook Pro from 2021 daily. Additionally, my Kindles are from 2010.
Where is is obsolete? It's still receiving software updates and likely to for at least 3-4 years. Even after that it's not going to magically brick itself
Next up, "reviving my paper notes from 40 years ago". Oh wait, there's nothing that I need to do, they still all work fine.