You should not be surprised. If you look at most of the jobs in the careers page for example [0], they mention the need for "Experience with framework-level customization of AOSP" and that the app is in "Flutter".
So this was immediately obvious that it was running Android. It is just that this was a nice and perfectly packaged scam, but not as expensive scam like the Humane AI Pin.
and yes. Humane is also using Android for their AI Pin devices. Unsurprisingly. [1]
The kind of SoC that you would put into something like this often only has official support for Android, too. If you're making any kind of mobile thing then Android is almost certainly the path of least resistance nowadays.
The Playstation Portal is another good example, it's a single-purpose device just for streaming games from a PS5 but it runs full blown Android, locked down so you can't use it for anything else.
That’s not a scam, either. They’re not being dishonest about what the hardware really is. They’re probably at least being unrealistically optimistic about the future software, though.
So? A scam is a scheme to profit by using dishonesty. Making something poorly, or cheaply, or not to anyone's liking has absolutely no bearing whatsoever as to whether something is a scam.
Things can be (and many things are) gimmicky, early development, cheaply made, or made to someone else's preferences in a completely honest way. This is that.
As others have commented - this is unsurprising - and makes a lot of sense from a technical perspective. Don't see this as scammy at all. And as for the product - the main qualm seems to be the lack of utility vs cost - which again does not seem scammy to me.
That doesn't make it a scam though, just a waste of money. A scam would be something like, you order it and what turns up is a photo of the device with a QR code on the back linking to a download for the app.
The article says nothing about the R1 being “scammy” - only that its functionality is overlapped by devices you likely already own. Also unsurprising for a $200 device, which is only even marketed to be a novel interface. Honestly if it’s less addictive than a smartphone due to being more limited, that could be reason enough to carry one.
It’s not that it being based on android is the surprising part, it’s that they designed and sold a physical device which could be replaced with an app on the hardware you already have.
The whole device seems to be “it’s Siri but as a standalone device” and since you still have to take your phone with you, it seems to provide no value.
This is a cursory take based upon superficial reckoning. The apps already exist, and they already suck, precisely because of the capabilities that phones have.
AI apps, particularly voice assistants, are designed to give you text and data via a screen. I can't tell you how many times I've asked a perfectly simple question and my android assistant responded, infuriatingly, "here's what I found on the web" or the dreaded "please unlock your phone" prompt when it relates to anything remotely personal.
If I wanted a web browser experience or to find the answer on my own, or to follow up with focusing my attention and interacting with a digital keyboard, I would have!
The rabbit interaction is for a purely responsive 2024 AI experience, which doesn't try to shovel me back to the 90's at earliest convenience.
I ordered one since it cost exactly as much as a 1 year stand-alone perplexity license that it comes with.
I don’t know how they can possibly make money with this but i’m looking forward to having a new toy on my desk and I really like the teenage engineering vibes of it.
> i’m looking forward to having a new toy on my desk and I really like the teenage engineering vibes of it.
I want more companies to try hardware!
To quote the title,
> a thing that should just be an app, is just an Android app
Except the company doesn't own the hardware for distribution by being an Android app! People want developers to be subservient and taxed forever, as if Google and Apple own all of non-desktop computing. It's an unfortunate place we've arrived at.
We need many more hardware options. The cellphone duopoly is harming and taxing innovation.
Yeah Google not allowing 3rd party apps to be used as the voice assistant is 100% reason enough to release as hardware. I don't want to unlock my phone and type and click buttons just to ask about a task I'm working on.
My point being, they’re already releasing an Android device with cellular. Why not make it a bespoke Android phone and/or partner with someone like One Plus to be a differentiator?
The number of people who’d carry two devices around is vanishingly small when the use cases all can happen on their phone anyway.
”Android lets you choose which digital assistant app to use. Settings > Apps > Default apps > Digital assistant app. Stock Android will have this preconfigured to Google Assistant, but it's designed to be swappable.”
Same and same. I don't know if I'd have bought a year of Perplexity, but the R1 plus that year for $200 was worth it to me for the experimental nature of it.
The math works out because they're most likely paying per API call and are banking on the near-certainty that >90% of devices will end up in a drawer within a week, never to be used again.
They aren't paying retail price for the subscription. The basic idea behind the business model is – you pay wholesale rates to the provider, charge all users a set fee, and hope that they collectively don't use the service too much.
"AI in a Box" devices doesn't even come closer to the Apps we have today and we already carry our phones everywhere. iOS/Android and Apps go through heavy optimization, atleast by the OS to make sure battery life is managed well. I really cannot fathom the utility, position of these devices and why would people buy them except for early adopters. Accessibility, though is a big use case, I believe these newer devices which tries to live on their own will do extremely well for people with impaired/lost vision and Humane AI pin can double down real-time translations as well, because as having a conversation with a foreigner in their language with the phone is tad bit unorthodox.
So I guess all depends on how next evolution of these devices are going to be, and cannot see it's replacing the mobile anytime soon. "More devices" is never the answer.
I actually like the idea of a small, stand-alone gadget like this. The battery life should definitely be better - if a decent phone can last a day or two, I'd expect a device like this to be able to last much longer than that.
But I can't see how they can sell this device without a monthly subscription? Even if you don't make many AI queries, you're still consuming resources on their "rabbithole" web services. If the company behind Rabbit closes down, I'm guessing the devices will become near-useless? Although, knowing that it runs on Android gives hope for hackers to extend and modify the devices.
Re the battery: a new software update came out today that they claim will improve battery life 5x. I don't know if that'll pan out or not; that's what their notes said.
GPT3.5-level models are now insanely cheap: $1 buys you something like a Moby Dick's worth of text. STT and TTS models are getting cheaper too. I'm guessing that they are betting usage over the lifetime of the device (maybe 2 years tops?) amortizes out to a decent margin without a subscription.
It's also a lot easier to stomach a beautiful shiny teenage engineering toy that doesn't do much if you don't have to pay every month.
the same is true of oculus quest devices. the choice of under the hood operating system really only matters to developers, otherwise why wouldn't you build on aosp?
the real value is in how it functions in the life of the users. if they put a new llm based shell on top and built a new app ecosystem for it that makes users happy, then they've done something useful!
That makes me feel better about the whole project. If they were wasting their time developing a new OS from scratch instead of working on the programs running on it, I'd think they're nuts.
I bought an R1 during the first pre-order and it arrived a couple days ago. In it's current form, it's not the AI from the movie "Her" that's going to manage your life for you. It's neat. It's a cool little toy that does interesting things and has potential. It definitely needs work: before today's software update, I couldn't type all the ASCII characters in my home's Wi-Fi password. I still like playing with it and I hope it improves.
Yeah, I would actually expect most hardware like this to be running on some open-source OS, either Android (AOSP), Linux or some variant.
I mean, even the hardware that Meta and Amazon produce are built on top of Android / Linux variants, so I would be surprised if smaller players were writing their own custom OS these days.
Anything else would also be completely insane. Usually your two options are Android or yocto depending on how custom you want your system to be and whether you want to rather write an android app.
There is nothing worthy of criticism in the fact they choose android as a base.
A competitor (e.g. Google) could come up with an app based version at any time. That app based version could simply integrate with the apps you have already installed. So far this thing is just a quirky feature phone.
If it's a portable device with connectivity and a battery Android is the only choice if you want to ship it on any reasonable timeline. Even going a Linux route you'll burn months just getting power management and wifi/cellular working to an acceptable (not even great) level, so much struggle with poor to no driver support.
I'd love it if there was a better Linux solution because Android certainly isn't without some pitfalls but from my experience Android is the only viable way to ship a device like this today, not even Linux is a viable option.
Sure, I have no doubt that someone can make good use out of it. But clearly it isn't meant to be the most practical option, in the sense that the same things can be accomplished without a 2k$ device.
Too many layers of stubborn ppl acting confused at this point. The hardware is the hardware because they wanted to make hardware. People bought they hardware because they wanted hardware.
? I'm not confused about anything, I'm explaining why it's a terrible decision. People aren't buying it (at least not now that it's actually out and reviewed, pre orders aside), not just because it's stand-alone hardware but that certainly isn't helping matters.
You're right, and I agree vehemently about the poor quality as well as if you're planning on taking a big swing, better to start with an app.
Bizarrely, my 5 year plan was exactly what they did, but step 1 is release a cross-platform app and get it reliable as possible while waiting for an AI level up.
Releasing an app, especially when they're trying to get ahead of the game and are staffed and funded to do so, would beg the question "Why do just an app? It's the same as ChatGPT, which is free."
The reviews are bad, they're certainly not on the precipice of selling a million units. but they had a ton of preorders and the strategy worked, they're in the conversation, names out there, and they'll be forever associated with AI hardware. A GPT wrapper app with the same level of coverage would get the same general reaction we're seeing now. A GPT wrapper app with the coverage a wrapper app gets would get much less attention.
There is unlikely any reason for you, someone who spends his time posting anonymously on an Internet forum, to want this.
But there is population out there who like to go outside and show off their fancy things to other real, live people. They are the intended audience.
Yes, it very well may be that this is not fancy enough to win anyone over, but such is the nature of business. Not everything is a hit. Even successful companies like Apple and Google that you would think should know with certainty what people want have had their fair share of flops. You really don't know until you try.
While I'm not interested in this device either, you could make this argument for many standalone devices. Why does Nintendo keep selling their own devices rather than putting their games on phones and PCs? They think having it as a physical, distinct device offers something that a phone app doesn't, which is pretty on brand for them.
Now, whether or not the buyers will agree with their thinking is another story.
I think Nintendo puts game-specific hardware in their portables. A phone wouldn't necessarily have the same GPU. Also perhaps they have more battery than a phone? I don't know, but it seems plausible Nintendo has actual reasons.
You can buy fully functional Android phones for less than $200, with better cameras, and battery life, and larger screens, and… well not a software-locked touch screen
Yeah it's just marketing. If it becomes a success they will sell their service as an app for sure.
It's just much easier to stand out with a beautiful hardware design than the 200th AI app released this month. And you can hardly buy anything from teenage engineering at this price point ;) Except the playdate which is much cooler.
What whole app could completely take over for Siri or whatever Google’s version is, with a single button press launching the app and putting you directly into command mode, at any time, without unlocking anything first?
I don’t blame Rabbit for wanting to control the hardware they run on.
Android lets you choose which digital assistant app to use. Settings > Apps > Default apps > Digital assistant app. Stock Android will have this preconfigured to Google Assistant, but it's designed to be swappable.
The EU are almost certainly going to push this onto Apple too once they realise the big tech co's are going to use their browser and phone distribution to push their new LLM based assistant products to market
Not this case, but there are cases where convenience of a custom device is nicer compared to a smartphone(custom buttons/instant access, physical feedback of custom controls). For example with cameras, if you want to control shutter speed/iso etc, a camera with custom mapped buttons and wheels will be more convenient compared to a smartphone
> We didn’t bother testing out any other functionality, such as Spotify integration, Vision, etc., but we wouldn’t be surprised if some of them didn’t work. After all, the Rabbit R1’s launcher app is intended to be preinstalled in the firmware and be granted several privileged, system-level permissions — only some of which we were able to grant — so some of the functions would likely fail if we tried.
Jesse Lyu (rabbit ceo) mentioned that they wouldn’t wait for os to avail and release sdks as it will take many years (paraphrasing).
The idea sounds I mean there’s Alexa (which is way cheaper) and shipping an AOSP with a Chinese vendor hardware is indeed manageable — but do we really want to have a ChatGPT-only 24/7? I highly doubt that, at least for me. I’m probably only chronically online for the social aspects of that, but had my interactions been only to an llm agent, I don’t think I’ll be using it that much.
I like to think 5 or 10 years later in the future and see how us and the newer generations would interact with technology but I find it difficult to envision that would be rabbit r1 device
Too much VC money into a gazillion startups without proper management.
What can go wrong? This is the result of tech cultism and lack of proper production standards. Design Thinking is like some form of forbidden knowledge today.
So much “disruption” with no clear product use case.
AI is the new dotcom boom. 190 percent hype. 10 percent actual implementation.
The startups have expectation to capitalize on testing with early adopters and naive consumers. The big companies fake their demos for likes and stock prices.
What a conundrum. We need people with real skills and clear vision. We need Skunk Works team quality to achieve something of substance.
Building a physical product, launching, getting feedback. They’re in the arena and regardless of how bad the initial offering is it’s more than sitting on the sidelines demanding Skunk Works from others.
Nobody’s going to die if their Rabbit can’t connect to Spotify on the first try. It’s a nice early release that was very clear about being an early release.
Jerk knee reactions. Typical for HN from 2015 onwards.
There was a time when here knowledge and experience did not hinder the new ideas at all. My entire career was a result of this process in early 2008.
Today we live in inflated VC realm of promises, big statements and low delivery.
It is not about demanding on a side lines.
Some of us still produce quality by following the proven methodology from the past. To push to market R&D projects and demand applause is pathetic. And no. There is no place for PC in this. It is about time to wake up from the AI Utopia. And the cleansing process is going on as we speak. Corporations reached the limitation of participation trophies and DEI agenda.
Maybe you should read about that again, because you obviously don't know what you're talking about ;-)
The A-12/SR-71 was leaking fuel while it was sitting on the apron/ramp, because due to the insane heating that occurs at Mach 3 you have to compensate the heat contraction of your tanks and everything else. So while they do leak on the ground, as soon as they start getting anywhere close to operating speed and the structure thus heats up, everything seals shut. No leaking midflight. The Skunk Works director Ben Rich (who took over after the original director Kelly Johnson stepped down) wrote a book called "Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed", it's a good read.
1. That makes it even worse/more dangerous 2. Still leaks fuel midflight during large portions of the flight 3. Its not like it’s some ingenious design tradeoff - wasn’t supposed to do that (which is my point)
If it ran Debian would we have the same complaint? I am surprised by the poor battery life if it’s running Android and using push to talk. They need to do something about that rabbit animation because that’s where this thing spends most of its time.
I'm interested in a device like this for my sight impaired older relatives. They struggle with smartphones and would benefit from a single purpose device with big obvious UI elements. Not sure they are the target demographic for the R1 but I can see v3 (R3?) being pretty useful. Maybe sell a case that looks like a tea cosy and ditch the orange first though
I agree, it is a looks problem. Capability wise, Siri and Google assistant do most of what rabbit did. They are well positioned to be able to expand every bit as quickly as rabbit can.
You do realize Google and Apple control 100% of the phone market, right? They don't need Rabbit's interaction data. They have their own. Their beta users probably provide more data than Rabbit's whole user base will.
Isn't harmony os 4 still running their kernel side by side with Linux and ostensibly still using android? If harmony os next takes off that will be interesting.
Yeah, I wanted really badly to love Gemini but it is really just mediocre. At this point I just want a voice command line. Teach me the magic words because it seems a lot easier for me to learn them than for the LLM to learn English well enough to understand me.
Now a ChatGPT-based Google Assistant would be damn tempting.
I'm surprised people are surprised this Rabbit thing is running Android
99.9% of the HW projects that have a modestly complex display/networking need run on Android. It's a no-brainer. OEM the HW from China, even if moderately custom and they can get you something for cheap.
There is no need to get anything more complex than needed; the Rabbit R1 is just an Android phone, pre-installed with only one app, with an action button bound, and that's it.
I agree to a point, there is no reason to over complicate it.
But if you are going to make claims about how its impossible to be an app, maybe you should be making sure that it isnt just an app and you are going down the route of it being its own distro.
I am not saying it should have been its own android distro, but it was my expectation given how they were talking about it.
I mean did they really not expect people to dig into it once it was in the wild and find their exaggeration (lies)?
Haven't used (or even seen IRL) Rabbit R1, but is there anything that requires it to be something more than an app? Isn't it just a thin layer with access to microphone and camera that translates everything to the backend?
No one is surprised. People are saying that this _could_ be an Android app, and _should_ be an Android app -- and now it's been shown that it _already is_ an Android app.
Android seems to be the go-to choice for most devices requiring a touch screen. You could get away with a lot less in most cases, but why bother when you can just throw together a quick Android app and use some industrial Android ROM to take care of all the hard parts? Everything from portable supermarket self service scanners to TVs has been running Android for ages. Sony has been putting Android on TVs since before Android TV was even a thing.
The only thing Android sucks at is native support for keyboard interaction, anything big screen or touch screen related may as well be presumed Android until proven otherwise.
There's one exception, which is Samsung, who is still pushing Tizen to its products, though their smart watches switched from Tizen to Android not too long ago.
I’m in the same boat. It feels like they either use Android or they end up re-implementing half of Android, probably at early Android quality.
Bonus points because then they get to re-implement Spotify integrations et al instead of using an existing APK.
I don’t really care that it runs Android, but it seems like it runs on Android _and_ locks you out of said OS which I don’t love. By all means, build on Android, but then let people use Android. Let me slap a SIM in it and make calls, or install a stupid clock face or something.
I’d say the same thing of most appliances. I don’t care what OS it’s built on, but I want access to that OS as much as possible. Eg I liked that Bluecoat devices have a custom SSH shell for managing them, but you can drop into a regular bash shell with the root password. Can’t say that I used it, but it was reassuring to know that I could get vi or something if their shell fell apart.
To be honest, I still don't understand the appeal of this product. I've always got a "one-time quick-cash hustle" video out of it and I can't trust it.
In 20 years your Legos will still function just fine, can be re-used, can be passed down to new kids or new owners, can be integrated in other things etc...
In 5 years this thing will be poisoning some small trash picking child in Africa somewhere.
It's not a very good cash hustle if people actually use it. From what I can tell, it's a one time $200 payment and you can use the LLM indefinitely. If the device costs $100 to produce and ship that's only $100 left to cover compute... forever.
It seems they want the compute to run on device, but that doesn't seem to be the case right now[0]. I don't know the specs of the device, but pretty sure it'd have to cost more than $200 to run an LLM locally.
edit:
128 gigs of storage and four gigs of RAM. For llama3-8b (the smallest llama3 model) you need at least 8GB of RAM.
Teenage Engineering aren't the ones who would be acquired, they just did the industrial design work on contract for Rabbit. The same way TE designed the Playdate but it's not a TE product.
Anyone interested in demystifying TE should look at the PC case they designed. They sell polished turds, they just didn't polish that one enough for it not to stand out as a complete piece of crap.
This is pretty unfair. They sell sometimes pretty exclusively priced stuff like their field table - more than the case. But with these you are buying aesthetics. And i would much rather have case this cool looking if i had it in visible place. They are one of the few companies recognized for their design that is something AND their audio stuff might also be expensive but is really good.
i apparently ordered one impulsively while i was… in an altered state, let’s say. (in my defense, iirc i wanted to evaluate it as a device for a family member with a neurodegenerative disease to use for some daily online activities…)
based on that appeal, i’d say you’re probably correct in that assessment.
Doesn't surprise me. In my opinion, many companies try to achieve outrageous premiums by taking the route of teen engineering (the originator of hype). In addition to rabbit, there is also a series of nothing products.
This doesn't convince the tech fetishists. In fact, I think te's contribution to music is very limited, even harmful, especially when I see the latest Yamaha even imitating te, which feels a bit funny and ridiculous. We need real innovation and democratic pricing.
By the way, if you care, you can learn about the history of rabbit’s founder. Let's just say, in certain circles, this is a recognized liar. So I’m not surprised at all when it was said a few days ago that Rabbit stole everyone’s passwords.
Care to elaborate, for the curious? A quick google on Jesse Lyu doesn't turn up much besides his own hype. Although he does appear to at least be obfuscating the truth, failing to admit that the only reason the "bootleg APK" isn't working is because of an IMEI whitelist.
Apparently, TE knows this Rabbit person's background as we are talking about millions dollar business. TE's values here are questionable when they decide to go with this guy.
As for OP1, packaging a tape effect when it can't produce good sound quality is a fraud. Sampling from FM? Check Klaus Schulze.. Music startups can certainly innovate, such as Roli (Seaboard and Rise), moog. make noise. Open source monome. and, to my sorrow, Émilie Gillet (Mutable Instruments). TE's innovation in music itself is far inferior to them. If you praise te, I think it is unfair to other people who are obsessed with technological innovation.
I have always felt that TE is a electronics company with no innovation in hardcore technology. The appearance and packaging are different from previous ones, but there is not enough practical integration. Of course, this is just my personal opinion. If you disagree, you can write down your opinion. Thank you.
And it's still a joke. Spend $200 less and get and Osmose[1] and have a keyboard that you can actually use, a better synth engine, and something that is actually used for music production. They even off free shipping. Portability is overrated when your keyboard tech is stuck in the early 90's, without velocity sensitivity let alone aftertouch and MPE.
The original OP-1 was $600 less than that when I got it for noodling around with music during my commute to work. So yes, if you choose to ignore some criteria, there's plenty of options.
And it costs what, $600-800 more than the original OP-1?
The "field" reboot is such a sad joke. All that fans had been asking for, quite literally for decades, was for Teenage Engineering to fix the supply chain for OP-1 and produce them in-volume. Instead they upped the price and made it even more rare.
A Synthstrom Deluge arguably ticks those boxes, except perhaps for the "piano layout" (not that I think that makes much difference when you can't play either device like an actual piano, and at least the Deluge has a luscious isomorphic keyboard) and the large screen (though the screen isn't really the primary interface on the Deluge, taking a more supporting role of dynamic visual feedback to the real interface, which is pushing the physical buttons - you can get quite far on the Deluge without even looking at the screen.)
I do some hobby music production and have no idea where I would incorporate any TE equipment into my life, but I can't explain it, I have this visceral reaction that I want to buy their stuff. It just looks so cool. Thankfully it's not at my "won't use more than 3 days then throw in my music closet" price level so I've never even come close to ordering anything.
I've been tempted to get that cheaper Pocket Operator to see if I'm missing out on something but have abstained so far.
> If you praise te, I think it is unfair to other people who are obsessed with technological innovation.
Lol this is music hardware. It's value is the joy people get from using it. The OP-1 has a huge fanbase that praise the workflow and the interface specifically. If "hardcore technology" is important to you then fine but I don't think that applies to most people buying synthesizers - right before the OP-1 the entire industry was deep in a trend of analog reissues.
FWIW I don't think an OP-1 is worth the asking price but after a short time with one it's clear where the money went.
I don't why it should surprise, or bother, anyone that it is running android. Totally reasonable choice. What does it say that it is treated like some sort of gotcha? Were they supposed to build their own AIOS?
Because they want to develop their own idependent ecosystem? Similarly, why does Amazon Fire OS exists?
I mean the question is kind of vaguely legitimate, but regardeless of how it is implemented one could ask why it is not an Android app instead. They thought about it and made other choices, and might not want to publicly list all the reasons that made them choose what they did...
Just from a pure marketing perspective, look at all the insane hype they were able to generate due to possibility of a new physical form factor.
There’s no way in hell they could have generated $10M in pre-orders and potentially hundreds of millions in earned media coverage for the 700th app that’s basically a chatgpt api wrapper.
You’re absolutely right, it would “just be an app” and have a much harder time getting noticed.
But I really meant what I said too. It doesn’t matter how great your thing is, people complain to high health about spending $.99 on it. And God forbid you want to subscription even if it’s only $2 a year. And don’t ask for an IAP of any kind.
The app market is a disaster of ads because almost no one will accept anything else.
Even if everything ran fully on the device so they didn’t have any server costs of any kind I think they’d have a very very hard time making money off an app unless it was incredibly extraordinary.
After all, the Rabbit R1’s launcher app is intended to be preinstalled in the firmware and be granted several privileged, system-level permissions — only some of which we were able to grant — so some of the functions would likely fail if we tried
And the statement from Rabbit in the article says essentially the same:
rabbit OS and LAM run on the cloud with very bespoke AOSP and lower level firmware modifications, therefore a local bootleg APK without the proper OS and Cloud endpoints won’t be able to access our service
why are you so incredulous that android might have some annoying privacy restrictions that a custom AOSP can sidestep? I would google rabbit's reasoning for this but I don't care enough
> why are you so incredulous that android might have some annoying privacy restrictions that a custom AOSP can sidestep?
I don't doubt that such restrictions exist. But I'm also curious as to what, specifically, they would be? Apps can access all sensors, cameras, microphone, network. So what's left?
Their official reasoning: "rabbit OS and LAM run on the cloud with very bespoke AOSP and lower level firmware modifications". https://twitter.com/rabbit_hmi/status/1785498453097009473 This reads like obfuscation to me. Just tell us in plain english!
I don’t get why people would pay for a bright orange box, or a snazzy little pin, when you can do the exact same thing with a phone app. Siri and Google’s offering on Android phones will eliminate this market when they start in on this stuff. I don’t see why any company making an AI widget would be valued high, unless they’re trying to get bought by Apple.
No argument from me. I don't see the end of smartphones any time soon. And if pulling a smartphone out of your pocket is too inconvenient, the smartwatch almost certainly has your use-case covered.
This is just the same guy, over and over. If he isn't too old, I bet he was into dropshipping too. Always on whatever new grift, always ready to start selling shovels to gold miners. I wish people were smarter about this stuff.
building a hardware company and shipping thousands of devices doesn't seem like a get-rich-quick grift to me. There are a lot of things rabbit can do that you couldn't do on an app since they own the hardware. Just shipped it too soon.
The product is definitely not super appealing to me yet in the current state.
I think at the very least it's a kind of trend-chasing. If the AI hype dies down a bit will Rabbit AI continue supporting their product and customers or are they going to wipe their online presence and move on to the next trend like with the NFT thing?
I don't even think in this case it's a matter of the AI hype dying down (though it is, and will continue to do so as products like these fail to get actually useful) I think this is just a complete nonstarter. Like, there's just nothing here that isn't better executed with existing tech. If I want to ask my phone to order a pizza, I can set that up in a lot of apps with Siri shortcuts, or, and far more likely, just open the damn app and pick what I want. Why the shit do I want to carry around a Rabbit, and make sure it has wifi access, and keep that also on my person next to my phone that does all that shit already?
It's literally just another smartphone, that you only control with your voice which is the worst way to control a smart phone, and it'll offer suggestions I guess? And I guess if you don't want the suggestions you need to have a whole fuckin conversation with it.
Like, we've already been down this road. It's tremendously easy as a customer to just be presented a list of things to buy, pick what you want, and swipe your credit card. Rabbit is a regression to ordering things with a phone, except instead of talking to a person, you're talking to a robot. But that's not an improvement, and in fact in many ways, it's a step back.
I'm a millennial and I hate talking on the phone, but I don't want to talk to a robot, either. Just give me the damn app with menus and stuff and I'll browse them at my convenience and then pick what I want.
And even if I did want to talk to a robot, I'd rather just use the gadget that I already have for talking into, not yet another thing to lug around, keep charged etc.
Well the unit economics don't make any sense. You get unlimited free LLM calls forever? I don't really see the argument for it shipping too soon (although it is too soon for what they're claiming). There's a basic unit economics problem that can't be solved regardless of their future roadmap. They're promising people a no subscription model, claiming it eventually will have a Large Action Model and LLM for question and answering, and somehow those will be available free forever? It's either a get-rich-quick scheme, which sounds likely given their background as crypto grifters, or complete incompetence (somehow no one there ever thought what it might cost to do inference). Neither seems like a legit company that just shipped too soon.
> There are a lot of things rabbit can do that you couldn't do on an app since they own the hardware. Just shipped it too soon.
I vehemently disagree with both of these statements.
For one, as far as I can tell every single hardware feature on the Rabbit (sans rotary encoder) has been present on every phone I've owned since 2011. Forward and rear-facing camera - check, nice bright touchscreen - check, speaker and mic - check... it's all there. Rabbit's "ecosystem" excuse is just as hollow as when literally any other company does it. They're trying to project a halo-effect, and too many people fell for it. Are there any software features that are exclusively enabled by Rabbit's form factor?
For two, waiting to ship it probably wouldn't have solved it either. Humane got absolutely humiliated last week with their own offering, it was a now-or-never opportunity to stage them up or let them set the tone forever. I don't think interest in AI or AI-focused hardware is liable to skyrocket any more than cryptocurrency-focused hardware was. Both of these things are software solutions; using it to sell you physical hardware is a 100% pure marketing gimmeck.
I will slightly disagree with your first point. I also partially agree though. I agree that every smart phone has most of the hardware of the Rabbit R1. But, just because the hardware is there, that doesn't mean the hardware manufacturer provides APIs/callbacks/hooks to third party developers for every capability of that hardware and operating system. The software developer has to build within the confines of the OEM. Building your own hardware, or at least building your own firmware and OS for open hardware, lets you do more with that same hardware.
Now, if we're talking about the OEMs building Rabbit-like features into their phones then that I agree with, and I hope (and assume) that's what will happen now. Rabbit has already shown some features that our smartphones should be able to do quite easily, such as sending a selected photo by text or email. My hope is that Rabbit pushes Apple and Google to build some of the low hanging fruit into their phones/operating systems soon.
I agree with you on hardware but I'm not talking about hardware. I'm talking about UX. There is a huge difference between being iOS and being an app on iOS as far as access to the user of the device. There is no way to innovate on novel notification mechanisms, for example.
While the rabbit, based on reviews I've seen, doesn't live up to its hype yet, AI assistants won't be able to do anything you can't do yourself on a smartphone or regular laptop.
Instead, the idea is they will be able to do these things for you, similar to a human assistant. Currently only rich people can afford assistants to manage their lives for them. This could be about to change.
But again: why do you want that? The pizza example is downright stupid, in no world would anyone prefer to tell an assistant, robot or otherwise, to order them a pizza. It's such a trivial task that outsourcing it to another entity, irrespective of what kind, is just less efficient, full stop.
And, even going for their big example: why would you want to outsource the planning of an overseas trip?! Planning a trip is the FUN part for goodness sakes! Choosing your destinations and building an itinerary. The only way I could see this is if you're so drowned in money and so utterly dead inside from years of casual overseas vacations that you just don't give a shit where you go anymore, and like, fair enough but a virtual assistant is not going to solve the yawning chasm of meaninglessness in your soul. You should probably see a therapist about that.
All of these things feel like faint imitations of something like JARVIS from the Iron Man movies, and look, if it worked like that as just a disembodied voice built into my home, and my cars, and my armored battle suit and my cell phones, hell yeah I'd have that. But the only way I would accept any technology that invasive is if I was running it on my own hardware, I will never, ever, in a thousand years give over that much hardware and privileged access to another pop-up company from silicon valley.
You're projecting so hard you might hurt yourself.
> in no world would anyone prefer to tell an assistant, robot or otherwise, to order them a pizza.
Sure they would, I'm one of them, I know many more.
> It's such a trivial task that outsourcing it to another entity, irrespective of what kind, is just less efficient, full stop.
Perhaps for you. As someone with a spinal cord injury whom at many times can not work a keyboard or a phone, a far simpler ability to get things done with my voice is something i've been looking forward too for some time and I hope continues to progress, especially as I age and things become more difficult.
> Planning a trip is the FUN part for goodness sakes!
What you enjoy and others enjoy is not the same. Your view of the world and what does and does not constitute a good time is not the benchmark or standard for anyone other than yourself. Again, you're projecting.
> I will never, ever, in a thousand years give over that much hardware and privileged access to another pop-up company from silicon valley.
I'd love for the iPod to come back. I have a small DAP, the Shanling M0, but it has not the iPod ergonomics. A phone can do what the DAP does, but not the way it does it. A better phone ergonomics would probably be a PDA.
(I'm not defending Rabbit R1 and I think it's useless).
I am not sure how active it is still but there was a pretty healthy ipod modding community a few years back if you are eager for those ergonomics with modern functionality.
I haven't heard anything about the Rabbit R1, what is it supposed to be? Based on the video it looks like this is just Google Assistant except not by Google, what makes it different from a normal phone?
And it's pluggable at the system level so the global shortcuts that default to Google Assistant can be made to point to a third party provider instead.
So as far as I can tell, this is a pay $200 once and use AI infinitely device. Are the keys inside the APK? What's stopping someone just using these guys OpenAI (or whatever they use) service for free?
I can guarantee that somewhere in the terms and conditions there's a buried line that says that they are not obligated to operate the AI features for free forever.
What led you to believe it was rushed and/or unfinished?
I agree with the sentiment that it's a _bad_ product with _bad_ choices and _bad_ strategy. It was likely caused by shitty ZIRP-era "MVP product without the 'viable'" mentality, rather than caused by rushing an unfinished product.
I'm 100% convinced the Rabbit R1 and the Humane Pin are in fact not AI "Assistants" but rather "AI" spying / user data harvesting devices. This is the reason their batteries deplete so fast. They're constantly sending your data back to some shady company to be sold to the highest bidder and / or given to foreign governments.
Humane actually worked really hard to do security the right way fwiw. They have to send your queries to OpenAI etc but they aren't straight up harvesting passwords. They probably save your queries and pictures to train their models but what else would you expect.
Rabbit on the other hand...don't give them your passwords!
Saying this as someone who won't waste money on the Humane pin but ordered an R1 for fun. Wish Humane got the price point (and a lot of other things) right. Like focusing on device latency and integrating Spotify instead of trying to boil the ocean and integrating only Tidal.
308 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 262 ms ] threadSo this was immediately obvious that it was running Android. It is just that this was a nice and perfectly packaged scam, but not as expensive scam like the Humane AI Pin.
and yes. Humane is also using Android for their AI Pin devices. Unsurprisingly. [1]
[0] https://boards.greenhouse.io/rabbit/jobs/4229430007
[1] https://humane.com/jobs/5045093004
The Playstation Portal is another good example, it's a single-purpose device just for streaming games from a PS5 but it runs full blown Android, locked down so you can't use it for anything else.
https://youtu.be/ddTV12hErTc?si=-SZ1xUpj5-KE7xWD
https://youtu.be/ddTV12hErTc?si=WGJLu6TwzYVgQ5wE
Things can be (and many things are) gimmicky, early development, cheaply made, or made to someone else's preferences in a completely honest way. This is that.
The Rabbit thing is literally just a terrible phone.
The whole device seems to be “it’s Siri but as a standalone device” and since you still have to take your phone with you, it seems to provide no value.
Smartwatches are exactly that, and some people buy those.
This device is essentially a phone in every way but massively less functional. I can’t see a single thing it does better or more conveniently.
AI apps, particularly voice assistants, are designed to give you text and data via a screen. I can't tell you how many times I've asked a perfectly simple question and my android assistant responded, infuriatingly, "here's what I found on the web" or the dreaded "please unlock your phone" prompt when it relates to anything remotely personal.
If I wanted a web browser experience or to find the answer on my own, or to follow up with focusing my attention and interacting with a digital keyboard, I would have!
The rabbit interaction is for a purely responsive 2024 AI experience, which doesn't try to shovel me back to the 90's at earliest convenience.
I don’t know how they can possibly make money with this but i’m looking forward to having a new toy on my desk and I really like the teenage engineering vibes of it.
I want more companies to try hardware!
To quote the title,
> a thing that should just be an app, is just an Android app
Except the company doesn't own the hardware for distribution by being an Android app! People want developers to be subservient and taxed forever, as if Google and Apple own all of non-desktop computing. It's an unfortunate place we've arrived at.
We need many more hardware options. The cellphone duopoly is harming and taxing innovation.
My point being, they’re already releasing an Android device with cellular. Why not make it a bespoke Android phone and/or partner with someone like One Plus to be a differentiator?
The number of people who’d carry two devices around is vanishingly small when the use cases all can happen on their phone anyway.
”Android lets you choose which digital assistant app to use. Settings > Apps > Default apps > Digital assistant app. Stock Android will have this preconfigured to Google Assistant, but it's designed to be swappable.”
From the first looks of it those will just end up in the drawers or landfill in no time which is a little sad.
Definitely not hooking it up to Spotify or any personal accounts after hearing how they handle security.
Rabbit R1: Barely Reviewable [video]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40206063
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40205666
So I guess all depends on how next evolution of these devices are going to be, and cannot see it's replacing the mobile anytime soon. "More devices" is never the answer.
But I can't see how they can sell this device without a monthly subscription? Even if you don't make many AI queries, you're still consuming resources on their "rabbithole" web services. If the company behind Rabbit closes down, I'm guessing the devices will become near-useless? Although, knowing that it runs on Android gives hope for hackers to extend and modify the devices.
It's also a lot easier to stomach a beautiful shiny teenage engineering toy that doesn't do much if you don't have to pay every month.
the real value is in how it functions in the life of the users. if they put a new llm based shell on top and built a new app ecosystem for it that makes users happy, then they've done something useful!
I bought an R1 during the first pre-order and it arrived a couple days ago. In it's current form, it's not the AI from the movie "Her" that's going to manage your life for you. It's neat. It's a cool little toy that does interesting things and has potential. It definitely needs work: before today's software update, I couldn't type all the ASCII characters in my home's Wi-Fi password. I still like playing with it and I hope it improves.
I mean, even the hardware that Meta and Amazon produce are built on top of Android / Linux variants, so I would be surprised if smaller players were writing their own custom OS these days.
There is nothing worthy of criticism in the fact they choose android as a base.
If it's a portable device with connectivity and a battery Android is the only choice if you want to ship it on any reasonable timeline. Even going a Linux route you'll burn months just getting power management and wifi/cellular working to an acceptable (not even great) level, so much struggle with poor to no driver support.
I'd love it if there was a better Linux solution because Android certainly isn't without some pitfalls but from my experience Android is the only viable way to ship a device like this today, not even Linux is a viable option.
Bizarrely, my 5 year plan was exactly what they did, but step 1 is release a cross-platform app and get it reliable as possible while waiting for an AI level up.
Releasing an app, especially when they're trying to get ahead of the game and are staffed and funded to do so, would beg the question "Why do just an app? It's the same as ChatGPT, which is free."
The reviews are bad, they're certainly not on the precipice of selling a million units. but they had a ton of preorders and the strategy worked, they're in the conversation, names out there, and they'll be forever associated with AI hardware. A GPT wrapper app with the same level of coverage would get the same general reaction we're seeing now. A GPT wrapper app with the coverage a wrapper app gets would get much less attention.
But there is population out there who like to go outside and show off their fancy things to other real, live people. They are the intended audience.
Yes, it very well may be that this is not fancy enough to win anyone over, but such is the nature of business. Not everything is a hit. Even successful companies like Apple and Google that you would think should know with certainty what people want have had their fair share of flops. You really don't know until you try.
Now, whether or not the buyers will agree with their thinking is another story.
It's just much easier to stand out with a beautiful hardware design than the 200th AI app released this month. And you can hardly buy anything from teenage engineering at this price point ;) Except the playdate which is much cooler.
But yeah it should have been an app.
I don’t blame Rabbit for wanting to control the hardware they run on.
> We didn’t bother testing out any other functionality, such as Spotify integration, Vision, etc., but we wouldn’t be surprised if some of them didn’t work. After all, the Rabbit R1’s launcher app is intended to be preinstalled in the firmware and be granted several privileged, system-level permissions — only some of which we were able to grant — so some of the functions would likely fail if we tried.
The idea sounds I mean there’s Alexa (which is way cheaper) and shipping an AOSP with a Chinese vendor hardware is indeed manageable — but do we really want to have a ChatGPT-only 24/7? I highly doubt that, at least for me. I’m probably only chronically online for the social aspects of that, but had my interactions been only to an llm agent, I don’t think I’ll be using it that much.
I like to think 5 or 10 years later in the future and see how us and the newer generations would interact with technology but I find it difficult to envision that would be rabbit r1 device
So much “disruption” with no clear product use case. AI is the new dotcom boom. 190 percent hype. 10 percent actual implementation.
The startups have expectation to capitalize on testing with early adopters and naive consumers. The big companies fake their demos for likes and stock prices.
What a conundrum. We need people with real skills and clear vision. We need Skunk Works team quality to achieve something of substance.
Ovens that leak gas, cars where the wheel comes off, games where you only get 10 minutes in etc.
Personally, I prefer how the world actually works where you have user testing sessions, beta programs, quality management etc.
There was a time when here knowledge and experience did not hinder the new ideas at all. My entire career was a result of this process in early 2008.
Today we live in inflated VC realm of promises, big statements and low delivery. It is not about demanding on a side lines.
Some of us still produce quality by following the proven methodology from the past. To push to market R&D projects and demand applause is pathetic. And no. There is no place for PC in this. It is about time to wake up from the AI Utopia. And the cleansing process is going on as we speak. Corporations reached the limitation of participation trophies and DEI agenda.
The problem is marketing and severely exaggerating what these devices are and can do thanks to all of the noise about "AI" recently.
This is a clear miscommunication (or intentional miscommunication) internally about what this thing actually is.
You mean the kind where plane literally leaks fuel mid flight? I think they're already there
The A-12/SR-71 was leaking fuel while it was sitting on the apron/ramp, because due to the insane heating that occurs at Mach 3 you have to compensate the heat contraction of your tanks and everything else. So while they do leak on the ground, as soon as they start getting anywhere close to operating speed and the structure thus heats up, everything seals shut. No leaking midflight. The Skunk Works director Ben Rich (who took over after the original director Kelly Johnson stepped down) wrote a book called "Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed", it's a good read.
And end up producing their own custom interface which has been universally panned.
A.I. itself is amazing... but still kind of half baked
No, in that case they would deserve to be called incompetent.
It would be much weirder to learn they built an entire tech stack specifically for the device and that it was technically impossible to port it.
The dumb part here is a company getting attention for making a virtual assistant just because they added "AI".
So there's no way this is true. Google and Apple probably don't even control 95% circa Q1 2024.
And we already know they are building a LAM for it.
It’s likely one of the reasons Rabbit was rushed out the door.
It mostly does simple commands and for the rest kicks you to web search results.
Apple surely understand the opportunity here, maybe their view is LLMs are just too variable / hallucinate too much to go all-in on it?
Now a ChatGPT-based Google Assistant would be damn tempting.
99.9% of the HW projects that have a modestly complex display/networking need run on Android. It's a no-brainer. OEM the HW from China, even if moderately custom and they can get you something for cheap.
Personally I figured it was running Android but likely a heavily modified fork.
Especially after how many times they seem to have buckled down on it not being possible as just an app.
(Unless I am misunderstanding and it is indeed a fork and not just an App? ).
But if you are going to make claims about how its impossible to be an app, maybe you should be making sure that it isnt just an app and you are going down the route of it being its own distro.
I am not saying it should have been its own android distro, but it was my expectation given how they were talking about it.
I mean did they really not expect people to dig into it once it was in the wild and find their exaggeration (lies)?
The only thing Android sucks at is native support for keyboard interaction, anything big screen or touch screen related may as well be presumed Android until proven otherwise.
There's one exception, which is Samsung, who is still pushing Tizen to its products, though their smart watches switched from Tizen to Android not too long ago.
Bonus points because then they get to re-implement Spotify integrations et al instead of using an existing APK.
I don’t really care that it runs Android, but it seems like it runs on Android _and_ locks you out of said OS which I don’t love. By all means, build on Android, but then let people use Android. Let me slap a SIM in it and make calls, or install a stupid clock face or something.
I’d say the same thing of most appliances. I don’t care what OS it’s built on, but I want access to that OS as much as possible. Eg I liked that Bluecoat devices have a custom SSH shell for managing them, but you can drop into a regular bash shell with the root password. Can’t say that I used it, but it was reassuring to know that I could get vi or something if their shell fell apart.
I can't judge them too much considering how much actual grownup money I've spent on Legos...
In 5 years this thing will be poisoning some small trash picking child in Africa somewhere.
* Everyone else can buy it when the pre orders are delivered
* Due to monetary constraints, regular orders are actually shipped before pre-orders
* The device is nothing like it was promised
* The device doesn't exist
The intentions are good (funding without VCs) but I rather the VCs lose money than consumers
It seems they want the compute to run on device, but that doesn't seem to be the case right now[0]. I don't know the specs of the device, but pretty sure it'd have to cost more than $200 to run an LLM locally.
edit: 128 gigs of storage and four gigs of RAM. For llama3-8b (the smallest llama3 model) you need at least 8GB of RAM.
0 - https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/18/24043490/rabbit-r1-ai-per...
based on that appeal, i’d say you’re probably correct in that assessment.
This doesn't convince the tech fetishists. In fact, I think te's contribution to music is very limited, even harmful, especially when I see the latest Yamaha even imitating te, which feels a bit funny and ridiculous. We need real innovation and democratic pricing.
By the way, if you care, you can learn about the history of rabbit’s founder. Let's just say, in certain circles, this is a recognized liar. So I’m not surprised at all when it was said a few days ago that Rabbit stole everyone’s passwords.
Update: They've barely tightened up, now the only missing piece is the OS build fingerprint. https://twitter.com/uwukko/status/1785626783900930447/
As for OP1, packaging a tape effect when it can't produce good sound quality is a fraud. Sampling from FM? Check Klaus Schulze.. Music startups can certainly innovate, such as Roli (Seaboard and Rise), moog. make noise. Open source monome. and, to my sorrow, Émilie Gillet (Mutable Instruments). TE's innovation in music itself is far inferior to them. If you praise te, I think it is unfair to other people who are obsessed with technological innovation.
I have always felt that TE is a electronics company with no innovation in hardcore technology. The appearance and packaging are different from previous ones, but there is not enough practical integration. Of course, this is just my personal opinion. If you disagree, you can write down your opinion. Thank you.
* Battery powered * Easily backpack portable
* Standalone DAW
* Piano layout
* Physical knobs and keys
* Sequencer
* Screen (and accompanying UI) large enough to not feel incredibly cramped
That's plenty of stuff that beats the OP-1 on plenty of these, but there just isn't much out there that hits all of them at once.
The whole kitsch with that device is being able to make music anywhere.
1: https://www.expressivee.com/2-osmose
The "field" reboot is such a sad joke. All that fans had been asking for, quite literally for decades, was for Teenage Engineering to fix the supply chain for OP-1 and produce them in-volume. Instead they upped the price and made it even more rare.
I've been tempted to get that cheaper Pocket Operator to see if I'm missing out on something but have abstained so far.
But damn the stuff looks cool.
Lol this is music hardware. It's value is the joy people get from using it. The OP-1 has a huge fanbase that praise the workflow and the interface specifically. If "hardcore technology" is important to you then fine but I don't think that applies to most people buying synthesizers - right before the OP-1 the entire industry was deep in a trend of analog reissues.
FWIW I don't think an OP-1 is worth the asking price but after a short time with one it's clear where the money went.
I mean the question is kind of vaguely legitimate, but regardeless of how it is implemented one could ask why it is not an Android app instead. They thought about it and made other choices, and might not want to publicly list all the reasons that made them choose what they did...
Just from a pure marketing perspective, look at all the insane hype they were able to generate due to possibility of a new physical form factor.
There’s no way in hell they could have generated $10M in pre-orders and potentially hundreds of millions in earned media coverage for the 700th app that’s basically a chatgpt api wrapper.
But I really meant what I said too. It doesn’t matter how great your thing is, people complain to high health about spending $.99 on it. And God forbid you want to subscription even if it’s only $2 a year. And don’t ask for an IAP of any kind.
The app market is a disaster of ads because almost no one will accept anything else.
Even if everything ran fully on the device so they didn’t have any server costs of any kind I think they’d have a very very hard time making money off an app unless it was incredibly extraordinary.
After all, the Rabbit R1’s launcher app is intended to be preinstalled in the firmware and be granted several privileged, system-level permissions — only some of which we were able to grant — so some of the functions would likely fail if we tried
And the statement from Rabbit in the article says essentially the same:
rabbit OS and LAM run on the cloud with very bespoke AOSP and lower level firmware modifications, therefore a local bootleg APK without the proper OS and Cloud endpoints won’t be able to access our service
I don't doubt that such restrictions exist. But I'm also curious as to what, specifically, they would be? Apps can access all sensors, cameras, microphone, network. So what's left?
There's a good number that might be useful for the R1.
If it's just an app...their hardware has no reason to exist AND they are competing directly with Google/Microsoft.
https://twitter.com/Andyparackal/status/1785676408280498655
This is just the same guy, over and over. If he isn't too old, I bet he was into dropshipping too. Always on whatever new grift, always ready to start selling shovels to gold miners. I wish people were smarter about this stuff.
The product is definitely not super appealing to me yet in the current state.
It's literally just another smartphone, that you only control with your voice which is the worst way to control a smart phone, and it'll offer suggestions I guess? And I guess if you don't want the suggestions you need to have a whole fuckin conversation with it.
Like, we've already been down this road. It's tremendously easy as a customer to just be presented a list of things to buy, pick what you want, and swipe your credit card. Rabbit is a regression to ordering things with a phone, except instead of talking to a person, you're talking to a robot. But that's not an improvement, and in fact in many ways, it's a step back.
I just, I cannot fathom who wants this.
> I just, I cannot fathom who wants this.
If that doesn't make a difference to you, you're not the target market. It truely doesn't for some, but for others, it does!
https://www.forbes.com/sites/briannawiest/2019/11/04/millenn...
https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-millennials-like-speaking-on-...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/26/whatsa...
https://www.euruni.edu/blog/the-mute-generation-why-millenni...
https://jeffjbutler.com/2019/04/02/why-millennials-dont-like...
https://www.inc.com/john-brandon/why-millennials-dont-like-t...
And even if I did want to talk to a robot, I'd rather just use the gadget that I already have for talking into, not yet another thing to lug around, keep charged etc.
It really is completely pointless.
I vehemently disagree with both of these statements.
For one, as far as I can tell every single hardware feature on the Rabbit (sans rotary encoder) has been present on every phone I've owned since 2011. Forward and rear-facing camera - check, nice bright touchscreen - check, speaker and mic - check... it's all there. Rabbit's "ecosystem" excuse is just as hollow as when literally any other company does it. They're trying to project a halo-effect, and too many people fell for it. Are there any software features that are exclusively enabled by Rabbit's form factor?
For two, waiting to ship it probably wouldn't have solved it either. Humane got absolutely humiliated last week with their own offering, it was a now-or-never opportunity to stage them up or let them set the tone forever. I don't think interest in AI or AI-focused hardware is liable to skyrocket any more than cryptocurrency-focused hardware was. Both of these things are software solutions; using it to sell you physical hardware is a 100% pure marketing gimmeck.
Now, if we're talking about the OEMs building Rabbit-like features into their phones then that I agree with, and I hope (and assume) that's what will happen now. Rabbit has already shown some features that our smartphones should be able to do quite easily, such as sending a selected photo by text or email. My hope is that Rabbit pushes Apple and Google to build some of the low hanging fruit into their phones/operating systems soon.
Instead, the idea is they will be able to do these things for you, similar to a human assistant. Currently only rich people can afford assistants to manage their lives for them. This could be about to change.
And, even going for their big example: why would you want to outsource the planning of an overseas trip?! Planning a trip is the FUN part for goodness sakes! Choosing your destinations and building an itinerary. The only way I could see this is if you're so drowned in money and so utterly dead inside from years of casual overseas vacations that you just don't give a shit where you go anymore, and like, fair enough but a virtual assistant is not going to solve the yawning chasm of meaninglessness in your soul. You should probably see a therapist about that.
All of these things feel like faint imitations of something like JARVIS from the Iron Man movies, and look, if it worked like that as just a disembodied voice built into my home, and my cars, and my armored battle suit and my cell phones, hell yeah I'd have that. But the only way I would accept any technology that invasive is if I was running it on my own hardware, I will never, ever, in a thousand years give over that much hardware and privileged access to another pop-up company from silicon valley.
You're projecting so hard you might hurt yourself.
> in no world would anyone prefer to tell an assistant, robot or otherwise, to order them a pizza.
Sure they would, I'm one of them, I know many more.
> It's such a trivial task that outsourcing it to another entity, irrespective of what kind, is just less efficient, full stop.
Perhaps for you. As someone with a spinal cord injury whom at many times can not work a keyboard or a phone, a far simpler ability to get things done with my voice is something i've been looking forward too for some time and I hope continues to progress, especially as I age and things become more difficult.
> Planning a trip is the FUN part for goodness sakes!
What you enjoy and others enjoy is not the same. Your view of the world and what does and does not constitute a good time is not the benchmark or standard for anyone other than yourself. Again, you're projecting.
> I will never, ever, in a thousand years give over that much hardware and privileged access to another pop-up company from silicon valley.
How delightful for you.
Sometimes the thing that defines something is not what it has, but what it lacks.
(I'm not defending Rabbit R1 and I think it's useless).
But a web app doesn’t get you the hype, VC funding and Galaxy brained Twitter tech bro adoration.
https://www.rabbit.tech/
"Assistant App" is a setting in the settings app where any assistant can be enabled. API is documented in the SDK docs
What led you to believe it was rushed and/or unfinished?
I agree with the sentiment that it's a _bad_ product with _bad_ choices and _bad_ strategy. It was likely caused by shitty ZIRP-era "MVP product without the 'viable'" mentality, rather than caused by rushing an unfinished product.
The very feel of every demo and the product itself
Rabbit on the other hand...don't give them your passwords!
Saying this as someone who won't waste money on the Humane pin but ordered an R1 for fun. Wish Humane got the price point (and a lot of other things) right. Like focusing on device latency and integrating Spotify instead of trying to boil the ocean and integrating only Tidal.