Readers of this blog know I’m quite a fan of the reMarkable as a distraction-free device for reading and taking notes. Almost everything is right about it — from the pencil-like friction of the writing surface to the sumptuous typography. For a premium product like this (a new Pro version was just released) you should expect not just a sleek device, but also an excellently designed user interface. And mostly this is what you get — except for one part that could be rather important to users. Buyer beware: reMarkable’s support for other cloud services is intentionally broken. (It doesn’t need to be this way; keep reading for a simple solution that reMarkable could painlessly implement.)
You will read in the marketing materials that you can “integrate the most popular cloud storage services with your paper tablet using our integrations feature”. But whatever the nature of this support, it definitely doesn’t deserve the name integration. You can browse folders and select files to copy one by one — that’s it. Files are not kept up to date, i.e. there’s no syncing. You don’t get to choose where a file goes: everything ends up in the root folder, wherever it originated. Even just getting a single file to or from your cloud storage is a painstaking multi-tap operation. This is not “integration”. This is the mud run approach to UI design.
Cloud integration had been one of the top requested features for years, but when it finally arrived users immediately said no not like this. It seems intentionally badly designed: a dark pattern to discourage people from actually using other cloud services. It’s the top listed complaint in a popular thread of false hopes and expectations about the Remarkable. The thinking is probably that were this to work really well, users wouldn’t want to pay for the Connect subscription service, which is reMarkable’s own cloud storage and file syncing solution.
Remarkable, you can do better
I don’t like software that is so obviously ill-designed just to enforce user lock in. I also think it shows a lack of confidence. The reMarkable is a top class product in terms of its sleek hardware and beautiful UX design. The clunky external cloud integration detracts from this and feels like a weak defensive move. ReMarkable, you can do better! You can just keep being superiorly designed while also making a segment of power users happy with better integration with other services they may already be using.
A minimal implementation that would go far beyond the current ridiculous method of manual import/export of copying files one long-press at a time would be as follows:
- For any of the supported cloud storage services, allow us to designate a single cloud folder as the reMarkable ‘link’
- Expose that folder just as a folder in the reMarkable UI — no ‘import/export’ shenanigans— and enable bidirectional syncing
If you’re worried something as simple as this will cost you Connect subscribers, then what that means is that Connect doesn’t offer value for money so you should probably make it cheaper. But here’s an idea! Just make it work like this for Connect subscribers — and then ‘Connect’ would really deserve its name and very likely would attract more users.
So pretty please with sugar on top: stop misleading your users and potential buyers. Don’t give us this Microsoft-class bullshit where things are interoperable in name only and the actual “integration” is the most clunky implementation possible. Listen to the dissenting voices on your team who (I’m sure) argued against this intentionally broken feature. Stay true to your mission — “to make products that take a human-centric approach to new technology”.
Very succinctly said. I am on day 1 of a reMarkable Paper Pro, with the Connect trial. I am already, instantly, underwhelmed with the google drive sync functionality – and the full lack of any meaningful zotero implementation – which seems particularly crazy, because it’s a fantastic use case for academics.
In my personal case, if Connect facilitated these syncing use cases in a more meaningful way than exposing files to hand download without a sync… I’d pay for Connect beyond the trial. As is, I’m very hard pressed to. Providing intentionally crappy semi-interoperable cloud services doesn’t feel like a long term success strategy.
I wondered for a long time why Remarkable is not opening up their cloud API for 3rd party vendors to build the integrations for them and expand the functionality without them actually investing.
For a couple of weeks now, I am looking at some re-engineering of their cloud API and the protocols – and now I know why they don’t open their API: it’s one of the most brain melting APIs I have ever seen. And I’ve seen a lot of broken stuff. The API they’re built is an overengineered mess that requires you to not just work with simple documents, but with a complex hash tree that changes every time a document is updated.
If you upload a new document, you are running the risk to wipe the entire account contents without any chance of getting it back because you have to essentially touch the very index dictionary for all documents in the tree. I wiped my account dozens of times just experimenting with the API.
If they would open up that mess to a 3rd party developer, there would be the risk that a tiny bug in that vendors software wipes accounts like crazy – which would probably fall back on Remarkables feet.
To make this an ecosystem, they would need to create a new API that is actually sane and resilient – and that is a steep invest I guess.
I’d say from my experience, they started as a hardware company and they had one very “bright” engineer who was thinking he is the king of the world and knows how to create the most flexible API and now they have it, an absolute mess of an infrastructure that costs shitloads of money in QE and prevents any 3rd party ecosystem.
Oof! I didn’t know this about the API, and it doesn’t bode well…