Note sure what you mean by "tools". It does support function calling, so you can hook it to whatever tools you want. I'm using it with Home Assistant to control my smart home devices.

I mean the consumer Gemini app. It has no way to connect MCP servers to it. Only Spark can, if you switch your Gemini to the separate Spark mode

Not sure on which planet you're living, but we are being cooked already.

Really? Because I'm doing quite alright. But I guess you belong to one of those religions that wants people to not trust their own eyes.

It sounds like your criticism is about their product, not about their business model.

The business model of having a popular product with great documentation, which leads free users to additional paid services, seems like a very valid business model.

Even the criticism you have for their product is along the lines of "the product only worked because they identified a problem in the market; If someone else identified it, this product wouldn't even be needed!". Which is, well, true, but also true for almost any other successful product.

Which model/brand?

I got a kobo clara bw and a xteink x4 that I gave to my kid. Im quite happy with the kobo, it’s a much better experience for reading imo despite not having buttons. The touch screen is usable after all. I started dumping things into epub format, for example lyrics/chords, things that I want to read, etc. chatgpt is quite helpful with formatting epub files.

I have an old kobo Clara hd.

I considered buying an X4 for the portability (and to be honest installing and tinkering with crosspoint sounds fun).

But the kobo can fit in my jeans pocket and is about the size of a normal paperback page. I feel like the X4 would be too small and might be frustrating.

If you're looking to tinker with a Kobo Clara HD, you can install PostmarketOS on it ;) I created https://github.com/bjesus/air for this device.

What apps are you using?

I’m on Calibre Web and Shelfmark.

Silvergear.

Same experience with the X4 Pro. Can wholeheartedly recommend. It feels like reading became much more accessible to me all of a sudden.

It's so sad that X4 Pro does not have USB-C.

They have added backlight, but still left charging/connecting to proprietary magnetic adapter.

> It's so sad that X4 Pro does not have USB-C.

Yeah, the connector they've made is absolutely bananas, wonder what they were thinking? Was there a 3rd-party docking ecosystem they were expecting to be spawned by this, or something? The magnetic connector by itself makes no sense, unless I severely misunderstand how it's supposed to be used in practice.

I saw a claim that the connector was to reduce the thickness of the device.

Terrible trade-off. I do not want a marginally smaller book if it means I have to worry about losing a proprietary cable.

It isn't proprietary.

Standard or not, it's not the standard.

It is, though to be honest it bothers me less than I thought it will. The battery lasts so long that I rarely charge it.

> proprietary magnetic adapter

They're supposedly not proprietary but a standard size that's easily replaced.

Ok, though still obscure.

I don’t want to looking where to order it when it’s lost or broken.

Any guesses why they went with that connector rather than USB C?

Just for improved thinnness; they're able to reduce about 2 mm from the thickness with the pins (and you can still technically use them for data transfer depending on how it's wired to the SoC).

Did TPB ever change a domain? I've been using the .org domain listed on Wikipedia for as long as I can remember.

I don't think .org is still official. Look for an orange isometric K

It seems to be the "official" one according to Wikipedia though?

a what?

Then you are not in a country where it is blocked. (Or you VPN into one.)

In the video he explains that the goal of the hybrid system is mainly to be used when for some unexpected reason the airplane cannot land at its original destination.

Simon, thank you for your comments and the great content you create. I've learned a lot from your blogposts and your experiments.

I got the Xteink X4 Pro a few days ago. I was so convinced everything these days has a USB-C port, I didn't even check. Honestly it's the only downside of the device, I love everything else about it. Sure, it's small, but it's almost entirely an advantage for me. I don't even think about "should I take it with me?" - I just do, which means I read much more. The light is great for reading in bed. And CrossPoint is super solid (flashing took a minute).

FWIW, some Kobos can run PostmarketOS. I built this UI for my Clara - https://www.github.com/bjesus/air . It runs Firefox, Syncthing, KOReader, and basically anything else you can run on Linux.

That's really cool. I've contemplated awesome for a tablet for similar reasons.

Yes - tiling window managers are really nice on a computer, but they're absolutely the best for small e-ink devices.

The Kindle used to use it! https://www.mail-archive.com/awesome@naquadah.org/msg05102.h...