I saw this news and my reaction was, "Of course it is, doing anything else would be stupid." But that on its own doesn't mean it could just be a phone app if the hardware adds something useful to the way the user interacts with it. For example, old Sony mirrorless cameras just ran Android under the hood but the specific hardware is what made those products, not the OS.<p>As a hardware person, both the Rabbit R1 and the Humane pin are great examples of why I'm bored of today's technology in general. It feels like we have been caught in a cycle of minor spec increases and not much else (except maybe removing features/rights and shoehorning in a subscription) for the majority of technology we interact with day to day. Companies are desperately trying to come up with a new device class that will take off, but they all fail in the same way, nothing is solving real problems that people experience. Who wants to talk to something clipped on their shirt instead of pulling out the phone they already have? You don't see people in public talking to the assistant on their phone very often do you? Even if they worked well, these are likely destined to be niche products.<p>It feels like we need to wait for the underlying technology to advance before we can get to the next set of interesting products. I'm thinking unobtrusive AR, robotics, self-driving, etc. which are all going to take some time to mature to the point where they are practical.
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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>I bought an R1 during the first pre-order and it arrived a couple days ago. In it's current form, it's <i>not</i> 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.
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.<p>So much “disruption” with no clear product use case.
AI is the new dotcom boom. 190 percent hype. 10 percent actual implementation.<p>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.<p>What a conundrum. We need people with real skills and clear vision. We need Skunk Works team quality to achieve something of substance.
Basic appeal is about form factor. Underlying OS is an Implementation detail. It could very well be running Minix or BSD.<p>And towards that end, it seems these devices are underpowered, drain batteries faster, require an Internet trip to do anything and that anything could often easily be hallucinations.<p>And that's where these AI devices don't seem to have a chance to ever even a dedicated user base.
"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.<p>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 ordered one since it cost exactly as much as a 1 year stand-alone perplexity license that it comes with.<p>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 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
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.
It sounds like this product isn't where it should be, and likely shipped too early.<p>That said long term I want them or others to succeed.<p>The last thing I want (and most others should want) is a world where only Apple and Google are the only ones hosting mobile AI products.<p>As any phone OS integrated Apple AI or Google AI will beat out any shipped apps store AI app long term.<p>If a new hardware form factor is the way to break that duopoly then I wish them all the best.
I'm surprised people are surprised this Rabbit thing is running Android<p>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.
> "rabbit r1 is not an Android app. We are aware there are some unofficial rabbit OS app/website emulators out there."<p>Using Android for this makes a ton of sense. Lying about it does not.
As someone building an OS from scratch, of course it's not a custom OS. That'd be too large an overhead to support all the things android gives you out of the box.<p>That being said, their marketing terminology of "a revolutionary AI-based OS" is what's more problematic. If they had just mentioned it was an android platform none of this would have been shocking to anyone.<p>There's never been a company I've personally seen that is both <i>truly</i> innovative that also uses the term "operating system" to mean something other than an actual operating system.
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.
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".<p>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.<p>and yes. Humane is also using Android for their AI Pin devices. Unsurprisingly. [1]<p>[0] <a href="https://boards.greenhouse.io/rabbit/jobs/4229430007" rel="nofollow">https://boards.greenhouse.io/rabbit/jobs/4229430007</a><p>[1] <a href="https://humane.com/jobs/5045093004" rel="nofollow">https://humane.com/jobs/5045093004</a>
So as far as I can tell, this is a pay $200 once and use AI infinitely device. Are the keys inside the APK? What's stopping someone just using these guys OpenAI (or whatever they use) service for free?
All this thing does is send off an API request to chat GPT or something else like it. As is you can give chat GPT an image and it'll read it for you, and interpret it or whatnot.<p>You can just use Chat GPT on your phone and get 90% of the same experience. But then it's a matter of branding. To some it's cooler to use a toy like this. Sorta like how Beats headphones are often beaten by headphones costing a 1/3rd.<p>Edit: At 200$ I'm not mad, it's ultimately a toy. Much better than the AI pin costing 700$ + 25$ a month.
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.<p>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.
Running android is actually a good decision. We should celebrate it rather than scold Rabbit's founders. Creating OS is hard. Selling smart and intriguing devices for $200 is also hard. They had to pick one.
This is unsurprising - of course it runs AOSP, what else would you run on a MediaTek MT6765? Windows CE? Defintely not mainline Linux, thanks to PowerVR graphics[1] - the demo looked to smooth for 'no GPU driver'.<p>Ever since I saw that hardware, I've been wondering if it could be repurposed as a tiny phone with smart features, or as a 'connected' MP3 player. Pity it does not have a headphone jack.<p>[1] <a href="https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/MediaTek_MT6765" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/MediaTek_MT6765</a>
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?
This product feels like it is ahead of its time. Local processing will be readily available eventually. Better solutions for display of information and ingest of local data.
Hardware is … <i>hard</i>.<p>I remember a post, here, some time ago, that was an explanation about why someone wasn’t going to be making a webcam, even though they had a great idea.<p>The post talked about all the various details and hurdles, involved in sourcing parts, making, promoting, delivering, and supporting the product.<p>It basically said it wasn’t worth it.<p>Backing a hardware project requires substantially deeper pockets than an app.<p>Sometimes, a good hardware wrapper could make all the difference, but it’s a really big deal.
> Rabbit has reached out to Android Authority with a statement from its founder and CEO, Jesse Lyu. The statement argues that the R1’s interface is not an app<p>Followed by a demo of someone copying the APK and the whole thing more or less working... I think Lyu forgot that the statement was for androidauthority.com (where people who understand android hang out) and not for his 80-year-old-uncle...
Related: <a href="https://twitter.com/MarcelD505/status/1785346490635878837" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/MarcelD505/status/1785346490635878837</a><p>(via <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40223247">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40223247</a>, but we merged that thread hither)
My first instinct is to say "of course" my second instinct is to ask "who cares?".<p>Is it relevant whatsoever? Is the product relevant whatsoever? The answer to both seems categorically no at this point.<p>I really don't understand why this device is getting attention while hundreds of hardware products launched each year go mostly unnoticed. What am I missing here?
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.
Are people surprised that the app is written in code that can run on a different computer? Of course it can.<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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!<p>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.
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?<p>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'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.