I received my Pocket on Friday and have been playing with it since. Because I don’t work on the weekends and live alone, I haven’t had any chance to experiment with meetings or multiple speakers. I did just try to record a phone call but though I flipped the switch, I forgot to press the button to start the recording…. That’s user error.
It’s beautiful. The packaging, the build quality, both top-notch. It sticks to the back of my phone quite securely even with the case on it. Setting it up was easy. I got my three free months of Pro with no problems. The box in Settings keeping track of how much longer I have in the trial is a very nice touch. I love that it uses a standard USB-C cable for charging, unlike the Plaud Note Pro, which uses a proprietary cable.
It did take me until late yesterday to get the WiFi firmware update done. I followed the quick troubleshooting guide and the suggestions given here. Then, before I went to bed last night, I gave it one more shot and it worked. I have no idea what changed. However, it’s still showing that it’s on version 3.
I have some gripes about the software. Some of them, such as the fact that currently, you can only search within a given recording and that you can’t easily send tasks to a preferred task manager, I know are likely to change so I’m not fussing about that. However, the calendar syncing seems very problematic. It never showed Friday. It duplicated the two items I added to the calendar but offset them by four hours. I dislike that I can’t see the next couple of days. And an indication that the reason I don’t see today because I don’t have any appointments would be nice. The whole labeling speakers is competely confusing. I’ve gotten it to work once or twice but I’m not sure how.
I also have a Plaud Note Pro (scarily thin but a nice case), so I’ve also had the opportunity to use their software. There is at least one thing I like, which is the ability to merge recordings before generating a summary and then generating one summary for the merged recording. Even though it doesn’t share directly with Apple’s Reminders, it’s much easier to transfer them. I can edit the summary, which it shows in Markdown, copy the tasks and share them to Reminders and let Apple Intelligence do the rest. I can’t seem to make that work with Pocket.
I’ve also played around with TwinMInd (software only) and it has a feature I really, really like. It sends a morning briefing with three top things I should be focusing on based on my previous notes and three “memories.” It also has a separate task list that pulls tasks from all recordings (though sometimes it repeats things I’ve already marked as complete.
Yes, I’ve gone way to far down the AI note-taking rabbit hole, but, everyone needs a hobby?
I recommend that the Pocket Developers, if they haven’t already, look at TwinMind and Bee to see how they handle the briefings and “second mind” features. When I further organize my thoughts and figure out which of my complaints are actually me now having figured something out, I’ll post Feature Ideas.
For now, kudos to the team. It’s a very nice device with a team behind it that seems committed to listening to their customers and making changes and improvements.
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