But wait — which live demo are you referring to? There's no live demo of PlayBook.
Also, the demos featured in the talk are gathered from several different prototypes created over the past two years. PlayBook is, in some sense, a loose series of prototypes exploring this idea space, not a single "product"-like piece of software.
Iirc there was a link posted at the end of the talk?
Edit: I just realized I was thinking of the patchwork demo.
Either way, after using a Remarkable for years, I've wanted something that actually tried to make use of the "digital" part of digital paper. When I came across you guys a few years ago, I was hooked (tbh, would love to work for you guys). So seeing the playbook demo was very exciting.
Sounds like they should charge for software updates then, as that is directly related to the ongoing work for people who have already bought the software.
Backstory: when we first set up the sandbox, we offered a handful inputs that devs could optionally use in their letters. You could click and drag directly on the letter, drag a little token on a "Kaoss Pad"-like control surface, scrub a timeline, toggle a big global mode switch, and more. Everyone used a different subset of the these inputs, based on whatever seemed like the best fit for the idea behind their letter. Some people even bypassed all that and implemented their own input handling (like Lilith did for the bullet hell game in C0). But most folks actually didn't add any interactivity at all.
When I curated the letters for our home page, I wanted to strike a balance between a few things. I wanted to encourage playfulness, for instance by having unpredictable things happen depending on what/how you interacted ("output randomness", to borrow a gamedev term). And while I did make some changes to some letters (adding some additional interactivity, simplifying some inputs), I didn't want to go too far and ruin the authorial intent behind the letters.
But, like you and the other commenter here found, there is inconsistency that errs on the side of frustrating. That's something that irked me too — I just ran out of time for polish and had to ship.
In any event, thanks for kicking the tires on it. Even if it didn't quite clear the bar for playful interaction, I hope it was fun to look at.
I don’t really mind the inconsistencies, it is just something fun and playful to discover and I believe the imperfections add to the charme of such things. It reminds me of the little sketches I made with Processing[1] years ago, when programming felt like just another artistic medium I could express myself in.
Just wanted to say that I personally enjoyed the little inconsistencies. It feels satisfying to discover interactions that I didn't expect, disorienting but in a good way.
But wait — which live demo are you referring to? There's no live demo of PlayBook.
Also, the demos featured in the talk are gathered from several different prototypes created over the past two years. PlayBook is, in some sense, a loose series of prototypes exploring this idea space, not a single "product"-like piece of software.