Thoughts on the Remarkable 2

I have been using a small Supernote (A6X) for a long time now and it has become indispensable.

The hardware is good, the writing experience is excellent, a good calendar application, the battery lasts a long time, etc...

But all those are not the coolest thing. The coolest thing is that the guys who write the software actually listen to their customers and implement features and optimisations regularly.

I do embedded device software for a living and I know that the most expensive, recurring part of development for a gadget is the software updates and support long-term, where "long-term" means more than a few years.

Not many companies will support the same hardware device with fresh updates (and new features) regularly over a long(ish) period of time, and that is what Supernote does, and that is why I like their product.

Apple is rather good at this; companies with Android devices, not so much.

Reading myself I realize I sound like a Supernote fanboy... actually I am a big fan of maintained software, and that is a rarity nowadays.

Of course, when your device is _liberated_ and runs open-source software, you can finally hope for actual good software support for more than a couple of years ... but that is a topic for another time.

I wonder if there's a chance of compensating for this terrible service by getting good contents insurance with the product?

I fear, immensely, the idea that I might get stuck in how I operate to such a degree that I’m no longer open to new experiences, and to me that’s who remarkable2 is for; people stuck in the “paper is best” mindset but who realize technology is important to try to keep up with.

Getting comfortable with a tablet for these tasks is the real solution. Remarkable2 is a crutch.

I have to zoom in several times to have a chance to read the pdf on remarkable, sometimes even have to zoom to read with glasses, because screen is darker than other ereaders I've used and as such has less contrast. For someone who's vision is going that makes it much worse.

Still their cloud stuff (even without subscription) is pretty much forced on you. I would have rather used syncthing or a nextcloud/webdav integration, where you can host the server yourself, because I don't trust their servers with secrets, potentially company or customer secrets.

For the price a RM2 cost, I would have expected to just pay for the hardware, not having their cloud stuff forced onto me, if I want to use all features, like sharing screen the desktop app or syncing files.

I am also a bit disappointed that they don't really cooperate and provide interfaces for third party developers and the community to integrate their applications. This is something for instance Pocketbook does better. In RM2 this has to be hacked into by reverse engineering RM2 libraries in order to access the display.

And now they released a $200 keyboard for the RM2, that is not even using expensive hardware switches, and it missing keys compared to a normal keyboard (the '\ |' is missing). So I would say this is not worth the money. I sort of understand exploitable business mechanisms when you use free stuff (free-to-play with micro transactions) but with a expensive full-priced hardware forcing you to upload all your files to their servers and monopolizing the storage and sync features is just bad, IMO.

Either they provide cheap hardware, that is bound to the vendors cloud and I have to pay for extra services or they provide expensive hardware where I am free to use it however I like, even with a self-hosted server. I just cannot justify products that are expensive and where the vendor has monopoly over the back-end, for which they also want more money, then I would pay to host it on a comparable VPS.