This has smelt bad for a while. Here’s a Twitter thread from January where the CEO explained why it couldn’t be an app. In it, he makes weird claims like:<p>> by submitting as app, you submitting all your codes to them. think about it. remember there’s one of the most popular apps you want early days on app store was called ‘flashlight’ now see what happens? apple just incorporated that feature in iOS. so are building apps sustainable to a startup? maybe not.<p>— <a href="https://twitter.com/jessechenglyu/status/1745555882291646689" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/jessechenglyu/status/1745555882291646689</a><p>I think it’s pretty clear that Apple didn’t need to plagiarise some dude’s flashlight app code to build their own version, and you don’t submit your code to Apple/Google anyway.
It was very obvious that the original statement from Rabbit was knowingly false when they made it. It's weird to me how these companies dig themselves deeper by doing stuff like that, have they never experienced the real world before?
If anyone is interested in running "teach mode" directly on their desktop, we're building this over at <a href="https://github.com/OpenAdaptAI/OpenAdapt">https://github.com/OpenAdaptAI/OpenAdapt</a>.
I'm not sure how this is any better/worse than if it actually were a custom OS or whatever. There is no technical reason for this to be a standalone device, just a marketing/corporate one. People are easily tricked by a physical object into thinking it will bring more value than it does, instead of being yet another brightly colored square in the sea of apps. Additionally, this allows them to control their ecosystem outside of the grasp of apple/google (even if it's based on android, they can modify the OS to do whatever and aren't bound by app/play store rules). Anything else they say has always been a front to gain sympathy.
One thing I've been wondering about is, could you build an Android app that acts like google assistant in the sense of you pressing a button/swiping gesture whatever and the "assistant" kicks in from any context on the phone (e.g. while you have another app open)<p>I'm pretty sure you cannot replace Siri on iOS devices, but I'm not sure about Android. I know there is stuff like Samsung Bixby but I've not used it before.<p>I guess what I'm saying is, the plastic device seems like kind of a way of making the assistant accessible all the time without you having to open an app (as the app is always 'open' and that's the only app you can use) - but maybe that's possible on Android already idk
All this AI slop will be integrated in iOS and Android soon enough, probably with first class integration.<p>There is only a short, and closing, window of opportunity to grift some money with half baked solutions like this.
as someone who bought one of these on a whim in the wee hours of the morning, has anyone managed to jailbreak the hardware for any productive purpose yet? seems like an interesting little device even if the rabbit folks are less than forthcoming about the nature of it.