Hardware is only as good as the software it requires
I will start by saying that the Livescribe Pen is amazing. The writing experience is flawless. It is not easy to create a compelling reason to buy a $150 pen that promises to magically transfer all your handwritten notes to a multitude of cloud services like Evernote and OneNote. But, they did it. The product development team for the pen hardware absolutely nailed it.
So what’s the problem? Unfortunately, the pen is only as good as the app that powers it...and that app is truly atrocious. It is buggy, unintuitive, unreliable, ugly, and just plain lazy. The app is just as, if not more, important than the hardware and what they produced seems like a no more than an afterthought. It renders the hardware useless which is truly a shame.
Can someone at livescribe please revive the app? Breathe new life into it? Create a product that lives up to the potential already provided by the pen? Please?
So what’s the problem? Unfortunately, the pen is only as good as the app that powers it...and that app is truly atrocious. It is buggy, unintuitive, unreliable, ugly, and just plain lazy. The app is just as, if not more, important than the hardware and what they produced seems like a no more than an afterthought. It renders the hardware useless which is truly a shame.
Can someone at livescribe please revive the app? Breathe new life into it? Create a product that lives up to the potential already provided by the pen? Please?
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Software updates improvements
The pen software has not kept up to the latest ios 11.2.6 updates.
Slow and clunky when you consider l am using the latest ipad pro.
Not good enough when you consider it is this ipad/iphone interface communication that makes livescribe useful if not you might as well use a Bic ballpoint.
Remember want they look like?
There are other competitors that do it better, get my meaning.
Slow and clunky when you consider l am using the latest ipad pro.
Not good enough when you consider it is this ipad/iphone interface communication that makes livescribe useful if not you might as well use a Bic ballpoint.
Remember want they look like?
There are other competitors that do it better, get my meaning.
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Does not work with iOS11.2.5
Latest updates of iOS render this app completely useless - which unfortunately make the pen no more useful than a conventional pen. As the most popular smart pen, it’s pretty disappointing that the app hasn’t been updated to fix this - it should be a matter of urgency. Like other users, I’ve contacted support only to be told that there is no estimated date for the update. I wouldn’t recommend buying the Livescribe 3 pen until this is rectified.
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Cool technology.. buggy
My app keeps crashing. Although I am really excited to be using the pen and the new plaintext open in part of the app so I can upload my notes to pages and then word on my MacBook Pro. It worked really well the other day. I use the app to record lectures and part of my agreement with school is that I delete the recordings once the semester is finished. I’ve attempted to delete my “pen casts” multiple times now. I wish there was a way to sign in on a computer for the pen. Maybe that would be a little less buggy.
I was just so excited about using the pen in the last week and now in the last couple days my excitement has diminished because of the apps crashing.
I was just so excited about using the pen in the last week and now in the last couple days my excitement has diminished because of the apps crashing.
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great hardware, some bugs still
this concept is brilliant and i do use this pen and paper everyday. but, some issues remain. So close to a “magical” game changer.
- date recognition (in the pen feed, or anywhere else) does not work; dates are not recognized as dates and therefore calendar events cant be automatically made... this would be great... or even better..(see next point)
- a daytimer or calender paper that could sync with ical/google calendar would be a fantastic future update
- simplification of onenote sync (i.e. upload “ink” directly to onenote?)... in generally the sync process works but feels “sketchy” and cumbersome
- custom tags, based on written symbols would be great (i.e. i can tag while writing based on my own, custom defined written symbol) ... this would make making a to do list much quicker.
overall, the app + pen is so close to good, but a bit slow and missing some simple tweaks that could really push the concept into great territory.
- date recognition (in the pen feed, or anywhere else) does not work; dates are not recognized as dates and therefore calendar events cant be automatically made... this would be great... or even better..(see next point)
- a daytimer or calender paper that could sync with ical/google calendar would be a fantastic future update
- simplification of onenote sync (i.e. upload “ink” directly to onenote?)... in generally the sync process works but feels “sketchy” and cumbersome
- custom tags, based on written symbols would be great (i.e. i can tag while writing based on my own, custom defined written symbol) ... this would make making a to do list much quicker.
overall, the app + pen is so close to good, but a bit slow and missing some simple tweaks that could really push the concept into great territory.
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Pen is good , app is flaky and workflow is terrible.
I bought a livescribe 3 pen and note paper a few weeks ago.
The pen works well and the handwriting recognition is great.
Unfortunately getting the notes from your device to your computer is cumbersome and requires you to pdf and email each note -also I have noticed about 50% of the time only part of a note is actually saved to the pdf and only when you open the email attachment do you discover this which is very frustrating as this should be a very simple step to get right in comparison to digitising handwriting (which it does well)
Also beware the livescribe pens are advertised as being capable of syncing with your Microsoft email onenote account however this is not the case. It only works if you have a free Microsoft account and not a paid office 365 subscription- get this sorted Livescribe or at least make it obvious in your marketing of this limitation!
Overall it’s disappointing having spent £150 on the pen and paper - this device has a great deal of potential but is really let down by a flakey app and limited syncing options.
The pen works well and the handwriting recognition is great.
Unfortunately getting the notes from your device to your computer is cumbersome and requires you to pdf and email each note -also I have noticed about 50% of the time only part of a note is actually saved to the pdf and only when you open the email attachment do you discover this which is very frustrating as this should be a very simple step to get right in comparison to digitising handwriting (which it does well)
Also beware the livescribe pens are advertised as being capable of syncing with your Microsoft email onenote account however this is not the case. It only works if you have a free Microsoft account and not a paid office 365 subscription- get this sorted Livescribe or at least make it obvious in your marketing of this limitation!
Overall it’s disappointing having spent £150 on the pen and paper - this device has a great deal of potential but is really let down by a flakey app and limited syncing options.
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Worst app and customer support ever
I have been using a Livescribe+ device for the last six years, and recently switched to a new iPhone. After I made the switch, my Livescribe+ app failed repeatedly to record audio while the pen was capturing the notes, prematurely terminated note-taking mode repeatedly, and crashed repeatedly. This is all while I had no other apps running in the background (therefore, no competing memory or CPU usage), and over 210 GB of storage available. There is no customer support phone number, and the people in the chat app are horribly unhelpful. They only suggest drastic measures, such as uninstalling and reinstalling the app, installing OS updates, or (best yet) wiping the whole phone and setting up everything again.
Despite trying all of that (except for wiping my whole phone), nothing worked. They then suggested that they be allowed to get remote access to my phone, which is impossible, given the security restrictions that my work puts in my phone. I will not be using Livescribe anymore.
Despite trying all of that (except for wiping my whole phone), nothing worked. They then suggested that they be allowed to get remote access to my phone, which is impossible, given the security restrictions that my work puts in my phone. I will not be using Livescribe anymore.
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Incompatible with iOS
I have been using this pen for about 2 years. Previously loved it, it had some issues syncing with the iOS app but this was usually resolved by restarting the app/pen. However, earlier this year it stopped working completely. I followed all the instructions on the website to correct this and then when that didn’t work I contacted costumer support who informed me this was known issue. That was it. No solution, no app update, no apology. So I am currently scanning all my notes from the prepurchased notebooks that have been written on with my prepurchased pen nibs frustrated that my pen is not supported through one of the most used operating systems! Thanks for the massive waste of time and money.
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Transcripts
I mainly used my Livescribe 3 to write my books. I prefer hand writing and I thought this would be the perfect way to save having to type everything up later. However the apps transcript function is spotty at best. When it does transcribe is amazingly accurate, but it seems every three pages or so it just doesn’t transcribed to type or only does half the page. There is no indication anything is wrong the page and feed view show all the words, there’s just nothing when you change to type. This is very frustrating when your trying to write 15-20 notebook pages a day and you still end up needing to type 5 of them.
I’ve contacted customer service, but they were no help. They told me to remove and reinstall the app. Which lost me all my previous work, and the problem still persists.
I really wanted this product to work and I think the pen’s technology is great. The app just needs to work like it’s advertised to work.
I’ve contacted customer service, but they were no help. They told me to remove and reinstall the app. Which lost me all my previous work, and the problem still persists.
I really wanted this product to work and I think the pen’s technology is great. The app just needs to work like it’s advertised to work.
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7 years on and the story is the same...
I'm on my second Livescribe pen, and while the platform has changed (macOS to iOS) the story hasn't: the hardware is brilliant, the client software is garbage.
It's time to take your software architect out behind the wood shed and start over.
It's time to take your software architect out behind the wood shed and start over.
