The Rabbit R1 is probably running Android and is powered by an Android app | Hacker News Reader

The Rabbit R1 is probably running Android and is powered by an Android app

androidauthority.com

260 pointsgmjosack303 comments

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.

> Sticking a physical scroll button on what is essentially a phone buys me nothing but annoyance.

Strange thing is, it's actually a touchscreen. But the only thing that they let you use it for is the input keyboard. Saw this in a review on YouTube, I don't have one

> 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 is the best two-sentence summary I've seen so far. People tend to forget just how many wacky flip phones and PDA-type devices had to come and go before the touchscreen smartphone as we know it came into being. Which is what these new AI gadgets remind me of.

However, the difference I see now versus 20 years ago is that companies today are just trying to get the most cash and deliver the cheapest product (and pocket the difference), rather than stick with their product and reinvest into R&D.

Because the implementation of the laser display sucks (imo) bc we need better technologies for it. So more waiting.

Same thing for ultra wide fov ar glasses, I'd kill for those.

imo that laser display is awesome and I want one, but it's hobbled by the software. I'd gladly pay $700 if it was open and wasn't locked to their ecosystem.

Even considering it does not appear to work well in bright settings, and can't map the laser beam to uneven surfaces? Conceptually, the idea could be interesting, but the implementation shown appears that it would not work well in most real life settings.

Like the first gen Apple watch, or a convertible car. it doesn't work in a lot of scenarios, but for the ones where it does, it absolutely shines. A generation or three later, it'd be better, for sure, but early adopters have to give up some things to be that early. I just don't know why they had to force it to be independent of your smartphone this early in its lifecycle. It's an accessory, like a smartwatch, and sure, a later generation could operate independently, just like there's an LTE Apple watch, but that's not where they are yet.

Survivor bias is so strong here, though. None of us can predict the future, and for every iPhone there's a swarm of largely forgotten devices like the Newton, WebTV, or Nokia M510.

What brand new/emerging technologies did the 1st gen Apple watch use?

Apple mostly waits until a technology is proven, if they try something new they usually bury it.

See the failure of "AirPower". Or something like "vision pro" mostly all been done before apart from the weird ass screen that shows people's eyes for some reason that everyone hates and will definitely not appear in v2.

Apple is a terrible example of innovation for the most part.

I’m not sure it’s even at that stage yet. It’s more like very early proof of concept than limited demand consumer ready product.

Fair. I don't have one so I'm basing my opinion off of youtube videos and not actual experience with one.

As I've seen it demoed I'd get one as like a raspberry pi or microcontroller peripheral. But $700?

For hardware that doesn't require me to break out my TS80P soldering iron and no breadboarding (that is half the fun though, although it becomes a different kind of project)? I mean I could, but then I've got to make a whole harness for the thing and and and. It's worth it to me to not have to do all that. But you're right, $700 is a lot.

"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) ?

Yes it’s a very hierarchical way of thinking. I’d much rather imagine a world with more collaboration between peers than every person having a servant, but it seems those that run tech companies prefer the latter.

Totally agree. I also think that there might be a fundamental divide with people in our line of work (programming), as by definition we've decided to learn how machines talk and think, to address them in their language and understand what they're telling us.

Someone choosing this career path expecting to throw around vague orders and have them resolved exactly as they expected has probably already quit the first week on the job.

And I thought the conclusion was going to be nearly the exact opposite result.

That our constant exposure to machines, and machine patterns has ingrained an expected compliance and obedience of order following, and not needing to argue with the computer about the "worth" of the calculations or whether they "need" to be done.

You ask a machine to calculate, it calculates. Doesn't mean it calculates correctly, yet it "usually" doesn't talk balk (not until LLMs at least).

Well ostensibly the Rabbit is produced by software people. I’m generally skeptical of claims “our people think differently.” There’s loads of people in the world that understand the importance of meeting people where they’re at. An obvious example is nurses and therapists, but there must be loads of professions like that. Just not CEO, since it seems many people in that position want to give orders.

I think people can see the other side (or have a foot in both) and make the life easier for other people. I mean, your point is valid for any company building tools to democratize an otherwise complex task (e.g. Squarespace like online site makers, any camera with an auto mode, automatic transmission cars etc.)

I still think we're seeing different work patterns in our fields, RMS getting his mail printed is the exception more than the rule, where no one would bat an eye at HSBC's CEO never opening a computer in his daily work (I don't know him, just a random example)

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.

Even if that is the case, it is more of a commentary on how companies have overall failed to come up with anything creative for quite a few years. All of the products that are the "next big thing" currently are hampered by the current state of technologies that they use.

The iPhone is a great example of technology catching up to make a product viable. Between phone networks, display technology (especially touchscreens), SoC efficiency, etc. the iPhone only became possible when these could integrate together in a practical package along with the vision to bring it to market.

I feel similarly hopeful actually!

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.

There was an attempt with folding phones. Is that taking off beyond the "I have too much money" crowd?

The Samsung Z Flip is about the same price as it's equivalent S24, they're not necessarily more expensive anymore.

I know 3 people who switched to folding Android phones from iPhones and love them, anecdotally all were women.

It makes sense, women have to deal with painfully small pockets so these phones can be very useful.

what are you implying here? that folding phones are simply a money thing, and have no actual value?

I'm not sure if I'd get behind that take, but folding screen phones are horribly impractical if you are even a little hard on your phone. The screens and hinges are fragile, I've yet to see one that feels like it'd last more than a year at least for me.

I actually have a first gen Surface Duo and it's held up, though its been relegated to the second device role since it stopped getting updates. Anything with an actual folding display has seemed weak IMO, I'd be afraid of breaking it or finding weird distortions in the screen after a bit of use.

Your intuition about screen fragility is right. I recently switched from a Samsung Flip 4 to a non-folding Pixel 8. While I liked the idea of it, in practice it was pretty chunky (twice the thickness of a normal phone when folded, too tall for my pockets when unfolded), and I damaged the screen twice in a year via normal use.

I used to own a Fold 4 and it's a wonderful device, I really loved it (mostly the multitasking, stylus support, small outer screen for one-handed use). Unfortunately, the design is truly fragile and I sold mine after I got it back from the repair shop for the second time (and got a boring iPhone). I truly hope newer generations will be better and I can purchase one that will last at least 3-4 years.

From second hand experience (I’ve never owned one but my cousin loves foldables), they’re probably more reliable than an unadorned iphone. Folding means the screen isn’t fully exposed.

The major advantage of the iPhone is that its ecosystem of cases means you can get some pretty high quality cases that can make it actually protected.

I really like my Surface Duo for exactly that reason, folding it hides the screens. The device dimensions definitely aren't for everyone, but having the option for a larger device and the usability of two screens really is pretty handy.

The Duo has its own faults though, the body around the charging port is particularly fragile due to how thin they made the device.

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.”

There was a sci-fi story written in 1960s which described pretty much what smartphones ended up being:

> The remote-access computer transponder called the "joymaker" is your most valuable single possession in your new life. If you can imagine a combination of telephone, credit card, alarm clock, pocket bar, reference library, and full-time secretary, you will have sketched some of the functions provided by your joymaker.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_the_Pussyfoot)

Interestingly, the author came up with the idea after he got acquainted with the details of time-sharing mainframes common of his time. Consequently, the devices themselves are actually mostly hollow, just processing input and output, and all actual smarts are done on central servers elsewhere - which becomes a major plot point eventually.

It even got the social aspects of it - i.e. it being a standard device that people carry around them everywhere, it's used for most day-to-day communication etc. Just about the only thing about it that feels off from a modern perspective is their size - they are large enough to require carrying them on the belt (like 90s cellphones) rather than in the pocket.

Now, one thing that is still missing compared to the model is the "pocket bar" part (which in the novel also includes recreational drugs). Now that would actually justify a new device like Rabbit. ~

It’s the Leatherman vs a toolbox. The advantages of phones is their convenience. If you seldom use any of the extra parts, then it does a great job. More often and you’d better go with a proper device. And that includes the camera.

I would note that people use their camera constantly on the phone. I would posit people only use a dedicated camera in very specific situations where a superior lens or sensor is required, such as nature photography or some special event. I’ll wager $20 almost every photo taken by humanity YTD was on a “phone.”

I didn't say anything about it being more useful than a phone, but the next big thing would have to solve problem(s) that a phone (and other existing devices) cannot solve to the same degree.

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.

Twitter thread on rabbit's founder and his previous involvement with NFTs that he scrubbed:

https://twitter.com/Andyparackal/status/1785676408280498655

Pikachu's everywhere were shocked.

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.

> 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.

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 just, I cannot fathom who wants this.

> Rabbit is a regression to ordering things with a phone, except instead of talking to a person, you're talking to a robot.

> 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!

Show me someone.

https://fashionjournal.com.au/life/millennials-gen-z-phone-c...

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...

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.

It really is completely pointless.

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.

name one thing the rabbit can do that a smartphone can't.

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 should probably see a therapist about that.

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.

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.

not have a screen.

Sometimes the thing that defines something is not what it has, but what it lacks.

… or, you could do the same with a web app… and OAuth.

But a web app doesn’t get you the hype, VC funding and Galaxy brained Twitter tech bro adoration.

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.

Update: They've barely tightened up, now the only missing piece is the OS build fingerprint. https://twitter.com/uwukko/status/1785626783900930447/

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 if it's just an android app, you have to wonder why it's not just an app

One reason was mentioned in the article:

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

Are these privileged system-level permissions in the room with us now? What specifically are they?

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

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!

> 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?

You can CTRL-F here https://developer.android.com/reference/android/Manifest.per... for "signature" and view permissions that are only granted to apps signed with the platform key, i.e. built into the system image as part of the AOSP build process.

There's a good number that might be useful for the R1.

Because people were able to launch the app on their Android phones.

Because no one wants to pay for apps?

This one actually makes a lot of sense to me.

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.

> why it's not just an app

If it's just an app...their hardware has no reason to exist AND they are competing directly with Google/Microsoft.

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.

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...

I thought that before I knew it was running android.

I don't like most of TE's output but the OP-1 is definitely innovative.

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.

I would love to know about any other device that ticks the boxes the OP-1 does:

* 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.

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.)

The Deluge came out a decade after the OP-1

The Deluge was definitely a close runner up. Ultimately the OP-1 won me over on being smaller and having an integrated battery.

Smaller, granted, but the Deluge also has an integrated battery? Lasts ages too.

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.

1: https://www.expressivee.com/2-osmose

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.

The OP1-F has velocity sensitivity now.

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.

an iphone + korg nano series 2 :)

That's not standalone, that's two pieces.

try the latest Ableton Push, or NI Maschine+

OP-1 is under half the size.

The whole kitsch with that device is being able to make music anywhere.

Which is cute, but every single YouTuber you've seen fiddle with it bounces their stems to Ableton Live and mixes on their computer.

Neat! Those weren't available last time I looked around. Thanks!

> 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 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.

But damn the stuff looks cool.

The CEO/Founder of Rabbit is on the board of TE.

as innovative as rabbit r1

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.

And the main question remains unanswered: why do they sell a whole device rather than an app?

The eye catching hardware is what made this project interesting. Would we be talking about this at all if it was just an app?

So it's not really something intended to be efficient and useful, it's a conversation piece.

Have you looked at other teenage engineering products? None of them are in any way the most practical way to accomplish something.

The OP-1 is genuinely useful. It might not be good value, but I’m not sure anything does the job it does nicer.

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.

And then there's the K.O. II, which is somehow inexpensive, nice, and useful.

That's their reason to make it a stand-alone device. What is my reason to want it to be a stand-alone 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.

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.

Nintendo puts an 2014 ARM chip + Tegra X1 in their Switch.

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.

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

Possibly not, but is this thing a sales success? I haven't seen any compelling positive discussions of it yet.

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.

But yeah it should have been an app.

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

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

The question was somewhat answered in TFA

> 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.

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

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.

It sounds like they're using a phone SoC and generally those chips only come with Android drivers anyway.

> either Android (AOSP), Linux or some variant

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.

This entire device category is dead the second Apple & Google release their own AI assistants baked into the mobile OS.

They already have. Apple calls theirs "siri".

The dumb part here is a company getting attention for making a virtual assistant just because they added "AI".

Siri is no longer seen as an AI assistant, at least not with the post-chatgpt meaning of the word 'AI'.

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.

One notable difference is that Apple and Google don't have your interaction data at the end of the day. Well, unless Rabbit sells it to them.

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.

Huawei alone has >5%, and definitely at least a fifth of that install base is on harmonyos 4 which runs on a unique microkernel.

So there's no way this is true. Google and Apple probably don't even control 95% circa Q1 2024.

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.

We are 6 weeks away from WWDC where Apple will be launching their new Siri.

And we already know they are building a LAM for it.

It’s likely one of the reasons Rabbit was rushed out the door.

Maybe Siri isn't. I'm not even sure I've ever seen anyone use it successfully. I'm pretty sure Google's assistant was built using ML.

Yep, the meaning AI of is always changing. Search used to be considered AI because it could interpret human input.

Siri is nowhere near an AI assistant or even a decent AI query bot.

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?

WWDC is in June. Lots of us are expecting better LLM integration and SDKs to be released then...

you can already replace assistant with Gemini

And I won't until it lets me turn off my lights with my phone locked.

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.

* outside of the EU.

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.

So in your world the idea is to launch alpha quality products as early as possible.

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.

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.

Consumer software is the farthest thing from the regulation of the products you just mentioned. Is there a gun to your head to buy a Rabbit?

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.

I don't think it's improper management, I think management knows exactly what product they were putting out.

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.

> We need Skunk Works team quality

You mean the kind where plane literally leaks fuel mid flight? I think they're already there

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)

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.

> Basic appeal is about form factor.

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.

FWIW, there already are lots of purpose built devices for accessibility for blind and visually impaired individuals: https://www.afb.org/blindness-and-low-vision/using-technolog...

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.

Same here. $200 for an artifact of the times / more or less a little piece of decoration. Occasional question answering, maybe.

Definitely not hooking it up to Spotify or any personal accounts after hearing how they handle security.

Not just the vibes, they worked together with teenage engineering on 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.

Agreed, would love more hardware options. But not sure how a gadget based on AOSP helps with the smartphone duopoly.

From the first looks of it those will just end up in the drawers or landfill in no time which is a little sad.

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.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40225838

”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.”

How does Bixby work then?

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.

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.

Nobody was going to pay $200 for that app w/ 85 gazillion LLM wrappers already out there, so they need some other form factor to get traction.

>it’s that they designed and sold a physical device which could be replaced with an app on the hardware you already have.

Smartwatches are exactly that, and some people buy those.

Smart watches do quite a lot that my phone can’t. Primarily health/fitness tracking, and being on my wrist.

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.

It can do a lot more than ChatGPT's app, let alone Siri which can do even less.

The scam is that the hardware is unnecessary, expensive, and strictly worse than just using your phone.

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 line isn't that clear cut. broken promises that create a sale could certainly be construed as 'scammy'.

I don't know too much about this product - did they promise not to run it on Android?

The scam is that it uses Playwright and no LLM actually exists.

Market isn't an optimization problem. Market can decide what is necessary or isn't. I would pick this up for $200 if the models were running locally.

I think we all would. But realistically no $200 device is going to run models locally.

You can run models on anything if you try

They don’t though. And if they did, it would cost more than $200. Like, say, a phone.

It sounds like this product isn't where it should be, and likely shipped too early.

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.

> 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.

That is my thought as well. But then, wouldn't it be better to get a separate cheap phone and install ChatGPT or Claude on it?

Purely from a hardware perspective, a phone has all the sensors, chips etc needed for AI applications, so I'm puzzled why Humane and Rabbit thought that a standalone device was a better idea.

Marketing it to children means you have to start worrying about COPPA (if in the US, where Rabbit is HQ'd) or similar legislation elsewhere. An AI device that accepts voice input and is supposed to learn and adapt to your use-case is at ends with laws that say you cannot collect any information from children — not even an email address or username.

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.

The ChatGPT app requires a subscription, and offers no "Large Action Model" behavior (i.e. API tie-in to perform actions on other apps like Spotify/Doordash/Uber/Midjourney). The former is a nice bonus (10 months of ChatGPT $20 sub = one time purchase price of Rabbit R1), the latter has the potential in its fully realized form to make Rabbit infinitely more useful as an assistant.

None of those features require the Rabbit hardware though. There isn't an LLM in the Rabbit itself, it's just connecting to a remote server.

ChatGPT has an app ecosystem that absolutely allows you to control other apps.

Are you referring to this? https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt-plugins

Rabbit's approach is one-sided (train their model to generate needed API calls, and maybe also perform Selenium-style simulated actions?) which should make it more flexible if inherently less reliable than dedicated plugins written by developers from the apps looking to be called via AI

Having to rely on one company to train their API calls makes it less flexible and less reliable except maybe for the largest apps. Even if they did it better than chatGPT (and I don’t think they can), that would be the thinnest of moats.

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.

It makes sense, but also the Rabbit barely uses the touchscreen. Almost all the interaction is via the scrolly wheel.

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.

I don't think people (well outside of some clickbait headlines) are surprised it is running Android. But more that it is an app.

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? ).

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)?

The surprising part isn't that the device is running Android OS, but that the whole thing is a single Android app.

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?

Well, it's technically a system-level launcher which means it has more permissions and access than a standard app.

> "rabbit r1 is not an Android app. We are aware there are some unofficial rabbit OS app/website emulators out there."

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.

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.

Rabbit R1: Barely Reviewable [video]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40206063

I Witnessed the Future of AI, and It's a Broken Toy

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40205666

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.

0 - https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/18/24043490/rabbit-r1-ai-per...

It is most definitely selling at a loss and trying to generate enough hype to get acquired.

I highly doubt Teenage Engineering is looking to be acquired.

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.

Its amazing TE has such a brand that people think these are their products.

Forever as in: as long as they feel like/are capable of keeping their servers running.

i believe its a 12 month license to use the llm, but still, that’s nearly 200 by itself, so it seems like a sensible option to get both.

I can't think of a single hyped up pre-order that worked out. Either

* 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

I would never purchase this myself, but it seems most people are buying it as a toy or trinket, not as a productivity device.

I can't judge them too much considering how much actual grownup money I've spent on Legos...

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.

Considering their prior bit was NFTs, I wouldn’t feel too surprised by that feeling.

s/video/vibe?

You're correct. I didn't even notice the typo until now!

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]

[0] https://boards.greenhouse.io/rabbit/jobs/4229430007

[1] https://humane.com/jobs/5045093004

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.

The AI Pin is at least a wearable that puts a camera and a projector on your chest. That's not much, but it's something vaguely novel.

The Rabbit thing is literally just a terrible phone.

Absolutely nothing wrong with using Android as a base for this.

Using Android doesn't make it a scam.

The scam is they are selling it as anything other than "phone with fewer features"

Are Android tablets a scam too?

No, because the title is honest. An Android tablet means exactly that. An "AI Assistant" does not. That implies it's something much more than it is.

Why is it not an ai assistant?

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.

Yes they are. It's not an AI assistant. It's a smartphone with fewer features and slightly different form factor.

This review was interesting:

https://youtu.be/ddTV12hErTc?si=-SZ1xUpj5-KE7xWD

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.

As a rushed/unfinished product, I'd be highly skeptical if there was any form of security. Might get implemented once someone abuses it.

> As a rushed/unfinished product

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.

> What led you to believe it was rushed and/or unfinished?

The very feel of every demo and the product itself

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.

You're forgetting the app automation features (that currently don't work well).

Nothing about those features is specific to this device. OpenAI can do it in their app, or Google/Apple as a built in phone integration. In fact those companies have more data, more compute, more experience and more end users which matters a lot for AI. And most importantly, OpenAI/Google/Apple can basically get app developers to add any missing details into their apps. Rabbit can't.

>OpenAI can do it in their app, or Google/Apple as a built in phone integration

Have they done so or described any upcoming plans to do so? Rabbit is doing it now.

Man this site is so anti-hacker it's insane. Probably because it's 90% big tech employees that are actively hurt by startups shaking things up. Should be renamed

You're talking about a $200 closed source box which is basically a strip down phone.

Hacker is more like yo I built this myself with a raspberry pi, here's the source code to get it working. We have every right to criticize commercial products, particularly when they're not really doing anything unique.

Which is more "hacker" - Rabbit or Google?

> Rabbit is doing it now.

You mean Perplexity, Anthropic, and OpenAI are doing so now. Rabbit is just using their models.

Also, Startups are not hackers.

Google I/O is 2 weeks away. WWDC is 6 weeks.

And we know both companies have plans for enhanced assistants this year.

And this isn’t a hacker device. It’s not open source or easily modifiable.

I don’t think Rabbit AI has anything to do with “hacker” culture. It’s a dishonest business model based on a grift. They sell you a piece of redundant e-waste hardware that is less capable than existing websites and will inevitably shut down in literal months after Google and Apple inevitably show off their AI OS integrations in their developer conferences.

Building a company that solely exists as a financial vehicle to be acquired or sell $50 plastic computers for $200 isn’t “hacking.” It’s a grift.

Making something cool and selling it for a profit isn't grifting

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.

[1] https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/MediaTek_MT6765

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?

for one, its not a phone (it cant make calls)

https://www.rabbit.tech/

It also doubles as a low-range space heater.

google wont allow alternative voice assistants on android, so they had little choice.

?? Bixby and Alexa are on Android.

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.

Huh, now you mention it, that does sound correct. i wonder what i was reading that said there was some limitation..

What are you talking about?

"Assistant App" is a setting in the settings app where any assistant can be enabled. API is documented in the SDK docs

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.

Local processing will also be available on your phone. A separate device for this makes no sense in any universe.

Hardware is … hard.

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?

(via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40223247, but we merged that thread hither)

Maybe they don't want to pay Apple and Google a third of their revenue for the privilege of shipping software in the app stores.

No instead they will need to pay far more for Marketing and PR.

And end up producing their own custom interface which has been universally panned.

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?

> What am I missing here?

AI.

It's got AI in it.

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.

>If it ran Debian would we have the same complaint?

No, in that case they would deserve to be called incompetent.

Isn’t the action engine or whatever they’re calling it just a load of playwright scripts? Or was that some other hokey AI device?

Are people surprised that the app is written in code that can run on a different computer? Of course it can.

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.

Man, that keynote vibe is creepy.

> Unfortunately for them, both products launched half-baked

A.I. itself is amazing... but still kind of half baked

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!

The hardware of the quest provides significant functionality. What did the hardware on the R1 provide that isn’t on a phone already?

It's cool. Would not have been as cool as an app

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.

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