Posted by rcarmo 1 day ago
PineNote is risking the fate of reMarkable: great hardware, but extremely poor software.
My issue with Pine devices is that the community has largely fail to make something good out of them, so they've remained paperweights (please correct me if my impression here is wrong).
And this ignores other applications, like shared whiteboards, note organizers, etc.
I've been burned by the allure of Pine's hacker vibe. It's bullshit, IMO.
Maybe their white-label tablets and laptops are bad but I don't know what people expected. For stuff where support matters, they do pretty alright.
From that perspective, with such few choices of tablets, $400 doesn't seem that bad.
Correction: the devices are not subsidized by ads or paywalls features or services.
(Though in Pine’s case they are subsidized by unpaid workers trying to make software work on them)
Is this a mistake? The Developer edition has the same note (along with a more obvious red warning at the top), and if it's true, then I don't really see what the point of the "community" edition is.
What's the refresh rate?
Also a 30 day warranty doesn't inspire much confidence, or am I missing something? Is this something you're intended to repair on your own if it breaks?
It's e-ink. Like a Kindle.
You're missing that it's not a traditional commercial venture and it's basically sold at-cost. If you want them to make a profit then buy their merch.
Anyway if the hardware is good, that was always my biggest issue with the remarkable being that it was hard to customize or use for anything that is not the basic official usage.
I'm still interested in the Inkplate. I don't understand why the Remarkable gets so much attention around here and the Inkplate doesn't.
Also the 10.3" screen is too small for an e-reader imho. I want to read ArXiv pdf's which are always A4 or letter size, about 14" diagonal. My sister just got a 13" Ipad Air and it is very nice and light. I wouldn't want anything smaller than that.
Does anyone have any information on the OS being developed looks like? I have not been able to find any videos or screenshots that indicate what interacting with the device is expected to look like. I found this blog post here, but it shows it running a GNOME environment which is... Not at all what I would hope for in this type of device: https://pine64.org/2024/10/02/september_2024/#pinenote
The fact that GNOME works well on typical tablets isn't really relevant here. The PineNote is an E-ink device with very specific hardware constraints and use cases. It's primarily meant for reading and writing, and these tasks require software specifically optimized for E-ink displays and low-power operation.
I've personally experimented with desktop environments like XFCE and i3 on a reMarkable 2. While it was an interesting technical exercise, the experience wasn't practical for daily use. For comparison, look at the reMarkable's unofficial/hacked ecosystem (https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable) - it's full of applications and utilities specifically designed for E-ink displays and writing/reading workflows.
This is why I'm hesitant about the "community device" designation. Simply saying "it runs GNOME" doesn't tell us anything about the actual user experience for reading and writing on E-ink. To be clear, my concern isn't that it runs GNOME - it's that this seems to be the only information available about the software experience.
I bought 2 watches, the button of broke on one of them after a month and a week, just out of warranty. Both watches get their time fully reset when out of battery, which is after a couple of days.
I really love the concept and applaud the effort and time people have put into this, but just wish the hardware was a bit better.