They broke that feature. They’ve been quite responsive to my Zendesk ticket, and claim to be working on it. But I don’t know if they fixed it yet. For a number of versions at least it was impossible to use USB upload.
Also, it was always advertised as “experimental”. They don’t officially support non-cloud use.
Edit: To clarify that last comment, I mean non-cloud use for the advertised primary benefits. I.e. getting your notes off (and onto) the device.
> You need to be connected to Wi-Fi and logged in to your reMarkable account.
> Read on reMarkable
> Once you’ve logged into your account and sent content to your reMarkable paper tablet, you can review, annotate, and focus on the task you’re working on without any distractions.
Almost every use-case requires some sort of connectivity to a cloud. No mention of USB.
"Note: You must be connected to Wi-Fi to share files from your reMarkable. You won’t see an option to send a file if you’re not connected to Wi-Fi and signed into an account."
It does highlight the ambiguity around how people define the word 'cloud'. I think the first para of Wikipedia does it well:
> Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage (cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user
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i.e. "someone else's computer". I want the core advertised reMarkable features to be on my computer(s). Not half mine, half theirs.
That’s absolutely insane. I’m exactly the kind of person that would be interested in the RM2 but every time it comes up on HN I learn something new that keeps me away. Strange business.
With this issue I think it’s just they’re in move fast break things mode still. Probably feeling the heat from the competition and focusing on competitive features.
But as a user, my impression is that they don’t consider this feature to be existential enough to have a smoke test for. And I do.
That's very generous. Yes they're moving faster than before, but for a while it seemed like they didn't have any developers at all. Instead they spend an insane amount of money on marketing.
And for a long time (I'm an early v1 user) what they did deliver was miniscule, ignoring a lot of the feedback from core users about basic issues. Some of the "new" features being released recently even existed in early v1 releases, e.g. the screen sharing which used to work fine locally, but now doesn't anymore because it "needs" to go via their cloud.
The break stuff unintentionally too though, so you're right there. For a few releases they even broke the core writing feature - lines and drawings would be drawn all jaggy - and the fix took forever.
The marketing worked and tricked me into buying one, but it's clear to me now that reMarkable is first and foremost a marketing company, tech and users come second. I won't be spending any more money with them.
Thanks for explaining. I definitely don’t want to have a “connected” or “cloud first” experience. If I wanted to get locked in with a cloud, I would probably to find bigger players, at least they are more likely to be around in few years.
