I finally got my hands on the Rabbit r1 (the company is particular about this lowercase style), which I've been writing about since its debut at CES in January. And within about 30 seconds of turning it on, I found out that it shipped two months too early. But let's be honest…is it really that good? It's weird, relatively cheap, and clearly an experiment. To me, it's about us getting together to keep up, not dunking.
The real problem with r1 is obvious. The app is poorly integrated and “may just be an app.”
As for the first question, well, that's totally true at this point. You can only connect to four: Uber, DoorDash, Spotify, and Midjourney. Apart from the obviously too low numbers, these are of no use to me. I don't drive much (I use Lyft a lot). I don't order much food (DoorDash is a bad company). I don't use Midjourney (and if I did, I probably wouldn't use the voice interface). And I don't use Spotify (Winamp and Plex, if you can believe it). Of course, your mileage may vary, but 4 miles isn't that much.
As for whether it could just be an app, and for people who are stuck with the idea of it running on Android or using some established API, you're probably thinking about the whole pitch. You may have missed it. That means we already have too many apps, and the key is offloading many common tasks and services to simpler, less distracting devices.
Obviously I'm not the target audience for this. But I'm still someone who picks it up and writes for a major technology publication, so let's take this seriously.
Image credit: Rabbit
The simple truth is, I like the idea of rabbit r1, and I'm fine with waiting until the idea matures. Rabbit is building version 1.0 (though currently closer to 0.1) of the universal AI assistant that Google, Apple, and Amazon have been faking for the past decade. Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa… they're all just natural language command lines for collections of APIs. None of them really know what to do, so they just sponsor one of the fast horses and hope they catch up someday. Rabbit said the goal was to move quickly and ship something while the industry's 900-pound gorillas were flapping around.
The problem lies in separating a company's ambitions from the products they actually pay for. Admittedly, Rabbit's device is far from what CEO Jesse Lyu has shown off in various demos and videos. There's plenty of explanation for this, but the fact remains that the r1 ships completely barebones.
I cannot in good conscience advise anyone to buy now. I mean, for me, it does almost nothing. But that hasn't stopped 100,000 people from doing so already, and I don't think they were fooled in any way. Rabbit has been pretty open about the fact that they plan to get a minimum viable product to market as soon as possible (despite delays, it's still coming to market fairly quickly), and later explained We are planning to add more features.
In the meantime, you can use some popular apps and powerful conversational AI (usually for a fee) that can examine things for you and identify things in photos. can. There are about three settings.
plenty of choices
So, with a limited definition of “work”, it works. Sounds like MVP to me. Is it worth $200 to you? What if I added video calling via WhatsApp? Is adding Lyft, Tidal, voice transcription, Airbnb, navigation, and Snake worth that $200? Next year, when you can train on your favorite app? What will happen? (Assuming the company's vaunted large-scale action model works.) I'm not kidding. It's really just a matter of what you think is worth paying.
$200 isn't nothing, but it's also not a lot of money when it comes to consumer electronics, especially these days when iPhones cost over $1,000. People pay $200 every day for RAM, a smart tape measure, and a nice mechanical keyboard. If he told me I could buy Feker 75 aluminum for $200 right now, I'd order two. You will never regret it. (If you have one, please email me!) On the other hand, you'll never find me paying full price for his MacBook Pro. Again, it is up to each of us to decide. (However, given that you have security audit-approved sessions for many accounts, you may want to wait for the security audit.)
Personally, I think it's fun to peek into possible futures. My phone is in my bag, but my R1 is in my pocket, so I can take it out on a walk and ask, “What kinds of hawks and eagles live around here?” Instead of opening the Sibley app and filtering by region. Then you can say, “Add prairie falcons to my list of birds I've seen in Simplenote.” And if you say, “Please call a car at the Golden Gardens parking lot and take me home, please use the cheaper option,'' it will happen. Then ask them to record and identify the song that is playing next to someone's bonfire. (Listen? It's not happening in Seattle yet). and so on.
Indeed, everything can be done on your mobile phone. I don't know about you, but I'm a little tired of having it and switching between apps and getting notifications for things that aren't actually important right now.
Currently using Usagi r1. Hand model: Chris Velazco of The Washington Post.
I like the idea of a more focused device. I like that it's a small, safe orange color and that it has a really bad camera with a complicated rotation mechanism for basically no reason (they have a camera on both ends for this very reason) (manufacturing stacks).
Companies used to make all kinds of strange things. Remember Google's weird Nexus Q music? Remember how wild smartphones used to be, with their unique keyboards, trackballs, cool materials, and weird launchers? Today's technology is very boring. People do everything on the same device, and everyone's device is pretty much the same as everyone else's.
“What song is this?” The phone comes out, unlocks, swipe swipe tap tap.
“I'll have to see if I can find a cabin over there over Memorial Day weekend.” Phone, Swipe Swipe Type Scroll Scroll.
“Who were the two men at the post office?” Phone, Tap Type Scroll Tap.
Every day, everything, the same handful of actions. Useful, but boring. And it's been the same for years! In 2007, phones came where laptops used to be, and smartphones came along to let us know there was another way. Rabbit wants to do the same thing with r1 to a lesser extent. To be fair, so does Humane, but the latter seems to have a more fundamental problem.
I love that r1 exists and that it's both amazingly futuristic and hilariously limited. Technology has to be fun and weird sometimes. Efficiency and reliability are overrated. Additionally, the homebrew and hacking communities will be active on this issue. I can't wait until I play Tempest or, honestly, scroll down on my social media apps and readers. Why not? Technology is what we create. Rabbit leans into it, and I think it's cool.