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.
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.
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.
> It feels like we need to wait for the underlying technology to advance before we can get to the next set of interesting products.
Probably. I think we've hit a plateau with user interfaces for most connected gear. Sticking a physical scroll button on what is essentially a phone buys me nothing but annoyance. Phones just kind of do what we want and have an acceptable enough interface that the alternatives get in our way.
The Humane Pin added the laser display but ... nobody wants it? This is starting to feel like sticking a spoiler on a phone and pretending it adds value. Maybe VCs are impressed by this stuff, I don't know.
If there were a magic version of this it would have the model and processing onboard. That's obviously extremely cost prohibitive right now, but that's what it's going to take to create a real AI-powered assistant:
* I need it to work without network latency.
* I need multiple forms of input/output depending on the context.
* I don't need Teenage Engineering's usual form-over-function design. I need the form to be out of my way most of the time.
It's great that people are experimenting in this space. It's less great that people are getting multiple millions in funding and selling a phone and web service as an "AI device." This will hurt future development.
"Giving order to one's assistant" is a class of interaction that some people desperately want, and I expect we'll see these kind of devices being made until it works, even if it's in two decades from now.
Fundamentally it's the model of the boss giving orders to its secretary, and people dream of it as some pinnacle of evolution (perhaps it is, I don't have a paid secretary to assess the point). That's actually pretty close to the concierge services offered by phone for instance, and some people with enough money seem to enjoy it, so why not (try to replicate it, even if it miserably fails for a while) ?
Because we need advances in material sciences, optics etc to build anything new.
Devices will stay the same until we invent new technologies.
We've certainly progressed semiconductors a lot, but it's still just the same old process for the most part. I think it's areas other than semiconductors that will drive innovation, new optics/displays (foldable, holographic, wide fov ar on a contact), solid state batteries, etc.
Would sure be nice to have properly 3d semiconductors tho. As many transistors as there are across x and y, there should be across z too.
> 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 think it shows a lack of creativity to say this, because existing technologies can definitely be used in novel ways to create value. Perhaps we just love to imagine new technologies as engineers.
But for example, the iPhone was nothing "new" in terms of hard tech but it definitely changed the world.
I think people do seem generally annoyed by the scroll wheel, but I think that's just a bad implementation in this case. I don't think that means that all physical controls (meaning: not a touch screen) are just pointless gimmicks. It's a bit myopic to think we've hit some perfect un-challengable UI paradigm with flickable scrolling and sheets of software buttons and fields that you tap.
I don't think Sony mirrorless ever ran Android, they always ran proprietary Linux distro(MontaVista or Linaro or one of those) and for brief moment they bolted on Android 2.2 userland on it as an experiment.
To be frank, it’s sort of hard to see many devices that could be more useful than the modern “phone,” which btw the phone part is almost superfluous at present. Now the an always connected general purpose compute device with a nearly complete environmental sensor array, extraordinarily high resolution screen, integrated multilens camera array, capable of doing AR with LIDAR, etc etc. It’s difficult to imagine a more capable device. These “new” devices are reductionist and trying to tackle the non-problem of carrying these wonderful tricorders of 2024. Converging devices has been a theme for the last 20 years, and now it’s almost entirely been achieved. There may very well not be another class of devices forthcoming if you factor in the connected wearables with bio monitoring that are essentially extensions of the “phone.”
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.
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?
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.
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.
Basic appeal is about form factor. Underlying OS is an Implementation detail. It could very well be running Minix or BSD.
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.
And that's where these AI devices don't seem to have a chance to ever even a dedicated user base.
It would be much more appealing to me as a watch. Since it can at least tell time, and I don't need to carry it around in my pocket, which I'm already carrying a phone and a wallet. I'll need a 3rd pocket for this?
Much quicker to access for quick question, take voice notes too.
"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 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
I think the thing people should want is on-device AI.
Because I honestly don't see the advantage in terms of privacy or performance to have Rabbit R1 proxy my requests to chatgpt or other cloud LLMs... At that point I might as well use Google AI or Apple AI instead of adding 2+ parties to my private AI use.
> If a new hardware form factor is the way to break that duopoly then I wish them all the best.
The only real allure of a separate device, for me, is isolating the bot from my data. I don't want it reading my emails and notifications and who knows what else. I suppose you could also market this for kids but they didn't go that route.
Their product doesn’t make any sense besides as an app. No one is going to carry a separate device around when your smartphone can do everything it can better. The chatGPT app on the iPhone already does everything the rabbit does better. They offer nothing.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There's never been a company I've personally seen that is both truly 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.
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.
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.
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.
So as far as I can tell, this is a pay $200 once and use AI infinitely device. Are the keys inside the APK? What's stopping someone just using these guys OpenAI (or whatever they use) service for free?
I can guarantee that somewhere in the terms and conditions there's a buried line that says that they are not obligated to operate the AI features for free forever.
All this thing does is send off an API request to chat GPT or something else like it. As is you can give chat GPT an image and it'll read it for you, and interpret it or whatnot.
You can just use Chat GPT on your phone and get 90% of the same experience. But then it's a matter of branding. To some it's cooler to use a toy like this. Sorta like how Beats headphones are often beaten by headphones costing a 1/3rd.
Edit: At 200$ 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.
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.
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.
The issue is that Rabbit's founders marketed the R1 device as having abilities that surpass that of your smartphone. They sold the device as if it itself actually does something useful that your existing devices can't.
But now we can see that it is just a weird shaped Android phone hard-coded to only run one app. It shatters the illusion that the R1 hardware was worth the $200 price tag, as the software under-the-hood could be equally if not more functional if it were just distributed as an app instead of as a piece of hardware.
It would be different if the hardware had special sensors and processors that help maximize its functionality. There would be no issue for AOSP to be the base OS - in fact I would agree with your assessment that it was a good decision that should e celebrated. The hardware itself having novel capabilities would be the important aspect, not the OS they chose to build upon.
Absent any special hardware functionality, it throws the entire Rabbit business model into question. They aren't charging licensing fees, and the service itself seems to be a lifetime subscription, so they aren't planning on making money selling software or SaaS services. The profit-making part of this business is selling hardware - and the hardware is just a worse version of the phone you already have...
The software also seems barely useful. Pretty much just a bare-bones implementation of speech-to-text, GPT via REST API, and text-to-speech, with a handful of basic integrations.
So once they've sold you the hardware, do they have any reason at all to improve the software or the service's offerings? If the R1 hardware can't do anything your phone can't, can they really compete with an app (even a paid app) that does the same thing on your almost certainly higher-spec'd smartphone?
Given the founders' history of grifting, I am going to guess that the R1 hardware costs Rabbit <$50, and that the company will soon disappear, taking down any expensive cloud-based AI functionality with them, as soon as they feel they've sold enough units to line their pockets with the profits, and the R1 owners will be left with a brick.
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'.
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.
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.
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.
The post talked about all the various details and hurdles, involved in sourcing parts, making, promoting, delivering, and supporting the product.
It basically said it wasn’t worth it.
Backing a hardware project requires substantially deeper pockets than an app.
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
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...
> Followed by a demo of someone copying the APK and the whole thing more or less working...
Isn't this how Android works though? The interface you boot into is an APK that has some more entitlements and hits some APIs. Like how should they have made it?
My first instinct is to say "of course" my second instinct is to ask "who cares?".
Is it relevant whatsoever? Is the product relevant whatsoever? The answer to both seems categorically no at this point.
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.
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.
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!
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.
starky|1 year ago
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.
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.
nkozyra|1 year ago
Probably. I think we've hit a plateau with user interfaces for most connected gear. Sticking a physical scroll button on what is essentially a phone buys me nothing but annoyance. Phones just kind of do what we want and have an acceptable enough interface that the alternatives get in our way.
The Humane Pin added the laser display but ... nobody wants it? This is starting to feel like sticking a spoiler on a phone and pretending it adds value. Maybe VCs are impressed by this stuff, I don't know.
If there were a magic version of this it would have the model and processing onboard. That's obviously extremely cost prohibitive right now, but that's what it's going to take to create a real AI-powered assistant:
* I need it to work without network latency.
* I need multiple forms of input/output depending on the context.
* I don't need Teenage Engineering's usual form-over-function design. I need the form to be out of my way most of the time.
It's great that people are experimenting in this space. It's less great that people are getting multiple millions in funding and selling a phone and web service as an "AI device." This will hurt future development.
makeitdouble|1 year ago
Fundamentally it's the model of the boss giving orders to its secretary, and people dream of it as some pinnacle of evolution (perhaps it is, I don't have a paid secretary to assess the point). That's actually pretty close to the concierge services offered by phone for instance, and some people with enough money seem to enjoy it, so why not (try to replicate it, even if it miserably fails for a while) ?
fennecbutt|1 year ago
Devices will stay the same until we invent new technologies.
We've certainly progressed semiconductors a lot, but it's still just the same old process for the most part. I think it's areas other than semiconductors that will drive innovation, new optics/displays (foldable, holographic, wide fov ar on a contact), solid state batteries, etc.
Would sure be nice to have properly 3d semiconductors tho. As many transistors as there are across x and y, there should be across z too.
personjerry|1 year ago
I think it shows a lack of creativity to say this, because existing technologies can definitely be used in novel ways to create value. Perhaps we just love to imagine new technologies as engineers.
But for example, the iPhone was nothing "new" in terms of hard tech but it definitely changed the world.
graypegg|1 year ago
I think people do seem generally annoyed by the scroll wheel, but I think that's just a bad implementation in this case. I don't think that means that all physical controls (meaning: not a touch screen) are just pointless gimmicks. It's a bit myopic to think we've hit some perfect un-challengable UI paradigm with flickable scrolling and sheets of software buttons and fields that you tap.
WeylandYutani|1 year ago
numpad0|1 year ago
fnordpiglet|1 year ago
tb1989|1 year ago
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.
nikcub|1 year ago
https://twitter.com/Andyparackal/status/1785676408280498655
rideontime|1 year ago
Update: They've barely tightened up, now the only missing piece is the OS build fingerprint. https://twitter.com/uwukko/status/1785626783900930447/
jibe|1 year ago
datpiff|1 year ago
kstrauser|1 year ago
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.
tasuki|1 year ago
samspenc|1 year ago
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.
paxys|1 year ago
cogman10|1 year ago
The dumb part here is a company getting attention for making a virtual assistant just because they added "AI".
dvngnt_|1 year ago
nbzso|1 year ago
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.
yinser|1 year ago
nerdjon|1 year ago
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.
dilyevsky|1 year ago
You mean the kind where plane literally leaks fuel mid flight? I think they're already there
wg0|1 year ago
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.
And that's where these AI devices don't seem to have a chance to ever even a dedicated user base.
joshl32532|1 year ago
It would be much more appealing to me as a watch. Since it can at least tell time, and I don't need to carry it around in my pocket, which I'm already carrying a phone and a wallet. I'll need a 3rd pocket for this?
Much quicker to access for quick question, take voice notes too.
zameermfm|1 year ago
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.
drewda|1 year ago
shwoopdiwoop|1 year ago
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.
svantana|1 year ago
kstrauser|1 year ago
kajecounterhack|1 year ago
Definitely not hooking it up to Spotify or any personal accounts after hearing how they handle security.
__m|1 year ago
echelon|1 year ago
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.
paxys|1 year ago
over_bridge|1 year ago
rjrogerto|1 year ago
bgun|1 year ago
Gigachad|1 year ago
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.
NotYourLawyer|1 year ago
BoiledCabbage|1 year ago
That said long term I want them or others to succeed.
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.
As any phone OS integrated Apple AI or Google AI will beat out any shipped apps store AI app long term.
If a new hardware form factor is the way to break that duopoly then I wish them all the best.
tredre3|1 year ago
I think the thing people should want is on-device AI.
Because I honestly don't see the advantage in terms of privacy or performance to have Rabbit R1 proxy my requests to chatgpt or other cloud LLMs... At that point I might as well use Google AI or Apple AI instead of adding 2+ parties to my private AI use.
MetaWhirledPeas|1 year ago
The only real allure of a separate device, for me, is isolating the bot from my data. I don't want it reading my emails and notifications and who knows what else. I suppose you could also market this for kids but they didn't go that route.
dyauspitr|1 year ago
raverbashing|1 year ago
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.
Leszek|1 year ago
jeroenhd|1 year ago
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.
everforward|1 year 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.
nerdjon|1 year ago
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? ).
paxys|1 year ago
constantlm|1 year ago
Using Android for this makes a ton of sense. Lying about it does not.
junon|1 year ago
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.
There's never been a company I've personally seen that is both truly innovative that also uses the term "operating system" to mean something other than an actual operating system.
ChrisArchitect|1 year ago
Rabbit R1: Barely Reviewable [video]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40206063
ChrisArchitect|1 year ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40205666
aeurielesn|1 year ago
mritchie712|1 year ago
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 $200 to run an LLM locally.
edit: 128 gigs of storage and four gigs of RAM. For llama3-8b (the smallest llama3 model) you need at least 8GB of RAM.
0 - https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/18/24043490/rabbit-r1-ai-per...
shmatt|1 year ago
* Everyone else can buy it when the pre orders are delivered
* Due to monetary constraints, regular orders are actually shipped before pre-orders
* The device is nothing like it was promised
* The device doesn't exist
The intentions are good (funding without VCs) but I rather the VCs lose money than consumers
nicklecompte|1 year ago
I can't judge them too much considering how much actual grownup money I've spent on Legos...
Klonoar|1 year ago
rideontime|1 year ago
karmajunkie|1 year ago
based on that appeal, i’d say you’re probably correct in that assessment.
rvz|1 year ago
So this was immediately obvious that it was running Android. It is just that this was a nice and perfectly packaged scam, but not as expensive scam like the Humane AI Pin.
and yes. Humane is also using Android for their AI Pin devices. Unsurprisingly. [1]
[0] https://boards.greenhouse.io/rabbit/jobs/4229430007
[1] https://humane.com/jobs/5045093004
jsheard|1 year ago
The Playstation Portal is another good example, it's a single-purpose device just for streaming games from a PS5 but it runs full blown Android, locked down so you can't use it for anything else.
TillE|1 year ago
The Rabbit thing is literally just a terrible phone.
constantcrying|1 year ago
cubefox|1 year ago
doix|1 year ago
paxys|1 year ago
turtlebits|1 year ago
999900000999|1 year ago
You can just use Chat GPT on your phone and get 90% of the same experience. But then it's a matter of branding. To some it's cooler to use a toy like this. Sorta like how Beats headphones are often beaten by headphones costing a 1/3rd.
Edit: At 200$ I'm not mad, it's ultimately a toy. Much better than the AI pin costing 700$ + 25$ a month.
wmf|1 year ago
amanzi|1 year ago
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.
kstrauser|1 year ago
zachthewf|1 year ago
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.
frappuccino_o|1 year ago
RIMR|1 year ago
But now we can see that it is just a weird shaped Android phone hard-coded to only run one app. It shatters the illusion that the R1 hardware was worth the $200 price tag, as the software under-the-hood could be equally if not more functional if it were just distributed as an app instead of as a piece of hardware.
It would be different if the hardware had special sensors and processors that help maximize its functionality. There would be no issue for AOSP to be the base OS - in fact I would agree with your assessment that it was a good decision that should e celebrated. The hardware itself having novel capabilities would be the important aspect, not the OS they chose to build upon.
Absent any special hardware functionality, it throws the entire Rabbit business model into question. They aren't charging licensing fees, and the service itself seems to be a lifetime subscription, so they aren't planning on making money selling software or SaaS services. The profit-making part of this business is selling hardware - and the hardware is just a worse version of the phone you already have...
The software also seems barely useful. Pretty much just a bare-bones implementation of speech-to-text, GPT via REST API, and text-to-speech, with a handful of basic integrations.
So once they've sold you the hardware, do they have any reason at all to improve the software or the service's offerings? If the R1 hardware can't do anything your phone can't, can they really compete with an app (even a paid app) that does the same thing on your almost certainly higher-spec'd smartphone?
Given the founders' history of grifting, I am going to guess that the R1 hardware costs Rabbit <$50, and that the company will soon disappear, taking down any expensive cloud-based AI functionality with them, as soon as they feel they've sold enough units to line their pockets with the profits, and the R1 owners will be left with a brick.
linmob|1 year ago
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.
[1] https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/MediaTek_MT6765
jeroenhd|1 year ago
nickthegreek|1 year ago
https://www.rabbit.tech/
rideontime|1 year ago
woleium|1 year ago
zitterbewegung|1 year ago
dyauspitr|1 year ago
ChrisMarshallNY|1 year ago
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.
The post talked about all the various details and hurdles, involved in sourcing parts, making, promoting, delivering, and supporting the product.
It basically said it wasn’t worth it.
Backing a hardware project requires substantially deeper pockets than an app.
Sometimes, a good hardware wrapper could make all the difference, but it’s a really big deal.
dmitrygr|1 year ago
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...
whywhywhywhy|1 year ago
Isn't this how Android works though? The interface you boot into is an APK that has some more entitlements and hits some APIs. Like how should they have made it?
dang|1 year ago
(via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40223247, but we merged that thread hither)
TrevorFSmith|1 year ago
threeseed|1 year ago
And end up producing their own custom interface which has been universally panned.
jpgvm|1 year ago
Is it relevant whatsoever? Is the product relevant whatsoever? The answer to both seems categorically no at this point.
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?
Cyphase|1 year ago
AI.
dorkwood|1 year ago
twobitshifter|1 year ago
constantcrying|1 year ago
No, in that case they would deserve to be called incompetent.
padjo|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
garrisonj|1 year ago
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.
lawgimenez|1 year ago
the_real_cher|1 year ago
A.I. itself is amazing... but still kind of half baked
leeeeeepw|1 year ago
[deleted]
nxicvyvy|1 year ago
[deleted]
elif|1 year ago
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.
a-dub|1 year ago
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!
Gigachad|1 year ago
rfwhyte|1 year ago
kajecounterhack|1 year ago
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.