Sony's new 13.3" digital paper DPTRP1 released

[edcoss]

Just wanted to share a video from youtube, starting from second 43:

https://youtu.be/d9fPqkIhcl4?t=43

The no-brainer feature for me for buying this device, is the fact of allowing to take notes besides an open document and immediately allow you to quickly zoom in an area, not necessarily using circles to highlight them, but instead using straight lines, like in the video. My main use case, so delightful, my super WOW for this device :-)

[ManDay]

Watching that part of the video you linked, it occurred to me how that whole "Pentagram & Asterisk" thing is another indication of how a different team led the design and development of the software, compared to the S1.

The S1 had a thoroughly thought-out, complete, and clean software (apart from the web browser, perhaps, which arguably felt somewhat like a makeshift solution which didn't fit in all too well). In the S1, the user would place a bookmark by tapping the screen in the corner and be done with it. Clean integration, quick interaction, semantically meaningful.

The team for the RP1, on the other hand, just seems to have put together a bunch of features which seemed "cool", but without giving it much thought. Instead (as I understand) of bookmarks, you now "scribble" one of two icons on the page. One might assume that this leads way to some clever feature but, oh, turns out in the end all this ends up with but the same semantic content of two kinds of bookmarks. But instead of being clean and semantically meaningful, we have entangled more degrees of freedom (e.g. "putting multiple pentagrams onto a single page", "drawing pentagrams in different styles", etc.) with technical redundancies ("useless", "useless", etc.), introduced pointless technical complications, and made interaction slightly more akward for the user.

Developers recognize this phenomenon as recurring pattern in the evolution of integrated devices (hardware and software). From the first generation to the second and third. Or under more extreme circumstances, from the first "underdog" prototype generation to the mainstream candidate which is actively pushed. What happens here is that the first generation is driven by highly motivated developers, visionaries to some extent, who developed the original idea and concept and consequently, invested a lot of thought into the product and were also driving the design specification.

If enough time passes, which is always the necessary case in larger companies for them to be able to evaluate feasibility, and corporate decides to go for a second generation, the original team will only rarely be involved again. In practice, developers will then often have moved divisions, left the company, or lost personal interest in participating in further iterations. So what corporate usually does is assemble a new team and project leads. They will be instructed bottom-down to create an improved version of the first iteration. But since from that point on, everything goes bottom-down onto mercenaries with no real heart in the cause, issues arise with their investment into the topic. This includes, but is not limited to the fact that a second team will often underestimage the effort contained in the original software and overestimate their abilities to produce an equivalent or better version.

Eventually, things "go corporate", i.e. people do as good as they are required to, tend to minimize their personal workload and try to argue in their own personal interest. In the end, the new team often does not deliver fully, but just sufficiently for corporate to nod it off. They fell a bit short of the deadline (features like "navigation" go missing), they didn't think it all through (bookmarks becoming scribbles), they took the easy way out (no pinch-and-zoom and scrolling but instead static zoom), and they made the featureset linear and rigid (requires a Windows/OS X application to operate).

The result is what the result is. Good for average Joe, but unacceptable to the power user who has grown accustomed to and reliant on the quality of the previous generation.

[DaleDe]

During the discussion the topic drifted momentarily to a competing device for some people. I have decided to capture the GVIDO Digital Music Score‎‎ in our wiki. While it is not advertised as a book reader it could certainly be used as one with a huge dual screen for reading and taking notes in PDF.

Dale

[LarryNYC]

Originally Posted by ManDay

Watching that part of the video you linked, it occurred to me how that whole "Pentagram & Asterisk" thing is another indication of how a different team led the design and development of the software, compared to the S1.

The S1 had a thoroughly thought-out, complete, and clean software (apart from the web browser, perhaps, which arguably felt somewhat like a makeshift solution which didn't fit in all too well). In the S1, the user would place a bookmark by tapping the screen in the corner and be done with it. Clean integration, quick interaction, semantically meaningful.

The team for the RP1, on the other hand, just seems to have put together a bunch of features which seemed "cool", but without giving it much thought. Instead (as I understand) of bookmarks, you now "scribble" one of two icons on the page. One might assume that this leads way to some clever feature but, oh, turns out in the end all this ends up with but the same semantic content of two kinds of bookmarks. But instead of being clean and semantically meaningful, we have entangled more degrees of freedom (e.g. "putting multiple pentagrams onto a single page", "drawing pentagrams in different styles", etc.) with technical redundancies ("useless", "useless", etc.), introduced pointless technical complications, and made interaction slightly more akward for the user.

....

Hmm, so, the RP1 keeps track of the pages you've written on in one list, the "Handwriting List", and your highlights in another, the "Highlight List". Both of these lists are displayed in a two tabbed list in the "Annotation List" option on a document. You don't have to draw pentagrams, stars, or any geometric shape. I guess you think that because one silly reviewer drew pentagrams! LOL. You just write something on the page in order for it to be bookmarked.

A rendering of the complete page, with handwritten notes, is shown in the "Handwriting List", such that you can actually read the text and see the context, an excellent feature, in my opinion. The Highlight list shows the actual text that you highlighted, also a wonderful thing, I think.

I find this approach to be simple, clean, and more powerful than the original approach. I think the second team, if there were two teams, thought a little harder about the problem and decided that if you took the time to write something on a page, a bookmark should be automatically generated.

How many times do readers forget to click on a little bookmark icon and lose an important place in a document? A lot, I would say, it certainly happens to me all the time. The new approach allows a user to focus on reading and marking up a document and does not require them to interrupt that flow to create a bookmark.

[digiflash]

What I'm really missing is the thumbnail-pageview. Used that to view powerpoints on the screen. For example 4 at one time.... still readable and you were able to rotate the screen with automatic alignment. Split view now only support one alignment. And the pinch-to-zoom. Nice zoom function now, but not that intuitive like the DPT-S1.

[fgdas]

Is it time for DPT-RP1 separate new thread for feature requests and ideas?

[filmo]

Originally Posted by rem736

i'm asian and i just busted out laughing. i'm betting that someone will make that work.
in case an explanation is needed, there is a stereotype of asians not taking off the plastic covering the products they use.

When I was young would see plastic still covering new and not so new furniture for years. Small town USA.

[juegos]

Originally Posted by LarryNYC

I have a hard time getting away from my computer for an hour.

The current Synch capability is fine and is better than the slow, clunky, Send functionality on the S1 that warned you not to interact with the device. Yes, you need a computer. What, you don't own one? In this age? Really, that's preposterous!

LarryNYC I own a computer but I am not a programmer like you who is at his desk all day (and if I were, I would probably just put a stack of paper and printer in there instead of the DPT-RP1). You make a mistake by equating your daily routine to others.

I walk around campus and city to go to seminars, to teach classes. Sometimes I go to the library for hours onwards to read, sometimes I sit in the train for hours onwards to work elsewhere. I almost always leave my laptop in the office. During the day I receive documents from colleagues, journals and students. I need a direct cloud download option so that I can instantly read them, mark them and sync them to the cloud/return to sender (which the DPT-S1 does well). Carrying a laptop with me all day just to get documents on the DPT-RP1 - and to get annotated documents from the DPT-RP1 on the cloud again - is out of the question.

What's worse is that even if I am in the vicinity of a colleague's laptop, I cannot use it to get documents on the DPT-RP1 since the laptop needs to have the Digital Paper App installed (whereas with the DPT-S1 you could just use a usb cable and drag-drop in the file explorer to transfer files). So it's not just having access to laptop that's a problem, it also has to be your own laptop.

My bet is that many buyers of the DPT-RP1 do not carry their laptop with them all day, and once they figure out that 'cloud integration' of the DPT-RP1 as advertised by Sony only works with the Digital Paper as an intermediary on a Windows/Mac pc, will contemplate returning the device (if not, the lack of basic features such as navigation may lead them to do so). It at least kept some of my colleagues from buying the device.

[LarryNYC]

Juegos,

I think you make a mistake in assuming that most people work like you do and aren't in the vicinity of their computers at any time during the day.

I just get the feeling that you're rooting for Sony to fail. Why don't you just stick to the S1 and be happy?

And, oh, I used paper for decades because every single device I bought proved to be disappointing in one way or another. The CrossPad digitized handwriting but you still had to write in ink so you generated as much paper and you had to upload files to a computer to view the pages.

The S1 and, now the RP1, are the first devices which have allowed me to be confident that I can give up paper. I used the S1 every day for over six months and it worked well. The RP1 is even better, the performance improvements are most welcome. You can't easily view sixteen pages of paper at one time or mark up paper and send it to a client, the RP1 lets me do those things with ease.

[xoanohn]

Yay~ I finally got mine (case included). Wow it is really slim compared to what I imagined; much slimmer and lighter than my ipad pro. The device feels really good.

I got this even though I have an iPad, primarily due to its weight and outdoor readability. I’ve been reading a lot outside and even at full brightness (600nits), I find it difficult to read on the ipad.

I got this to read and annotate pdfs. I don’t mind it not being able to read epubs since they don’t annotate very well anyway. I can do with being tethered to the app to transfer files, but like others, I think having an ios or android app while under go would be more efficient for those times when I am not near a computer.

Couple of things I don’t like:

I want a home button onscreen. It is disjointing to push the physical button.
The navigation options are very lacking. I often have to go to a table, a chart, or an endnote and then go back to the original page.
I also wish I could customize the pen buttons. I mostly highlight – I keep on forgetting to hold the button while highlighting.

I am letting the pen and the reader charge before I play more with it.

[agentofhope]

It's much better than I thought. Table of contents links do work. Side by side note taking is awesome. Writing is smooth and responsive. The one annoying thing I've been finding is the occasional "Please wait" box that pops up delaying my note-taking. Otherwise, I'm glad I got it!

[xoanohn]

I haven’t found it yet, but is there a battery indicator for the pen on the reader?

[Avenger]

Originally Posted by agentofhope

It's much better than I thought. Table of contents links do work. Side by side note taking is awesome. Writing is smooth and responsive. The one annoying thing I've been finding is the occasional "Please wait" box that pops up delaying my note-taking. Otherwise, I'm glad I got it!

When does that "Please Wait" box pop up?

Also does anyone know if you can return the Digital Paper at Amazon? Are there any restrictions?

[agentofhope]

Originally Posted by Avenger

When does that "Please Wait" box pop up?

Also does anyone know if you can return the Digital Paper at Amazon? Are there any restrictions?

Very random.

[LarryNYC]

Originally Posted by agentofhope

Very random.

What do you mean? I looked at my order and it said returnable through July 22nd. I don't see any restrictions. I'd have to pay return shipping, I think. I'm a Prime customer.

Anyway, I'm keeping mine, I might order a second one.