I finally received the rabbit r1 (the corporate insists on this lowercase styling) I’ve been writing about since its debut at CES in January. And I used to be capable of tell inside about 30 seconds of turning it on that it was shipped a pair months too soon — but truthfully…that’s high-quality? This AI gadget is weird, relatively low-cost, and clearly an experiment. To me, that’s something we needs to be rallying behind, not dunking on.
The actual issues with the r1 are obvious: it doesn’t have enough app integrations, and it “could just be an app.”
As to the primary problem, well, it’s completely true at present. There are only 4 things to hook up with: Uber, DoorDash, Spotify, and Midjourney. Leaving aside the clearly too-small number, these aren’t useful for me. I don’t take many cars (and I often use Lyft); I don’t order much food (DoorDash is a foul company); I don’t use Midjourney (and if I did, I wouldn’t use a voice interface); and I don’t use Spotify (Winamp and Plex, when you can consider it). Obviously your mileage might vary, but 4 isn’t loads.
As as to whether it could just be an app, and for people hung up on the concept it runs on Android or uses some established APIs — perhaps you missed the entire pitch, which is that we have already got way too many apps and the purpose is to dump a variety of common tasks and services to a less complicated, less distraction-inducing device.
Clearly I’m not the audience for this thing. But I’m still the guy holding one and writing for an enormous tech publication, so let’s take this seriously.
Image Credits: rabbit
The straightforward truth is I like the concept of the rabbit r1, and I’m OK with waiting until that concept has a while to mature. Rabbit is attempting to construct version 1.0 (though it’s more like 0.1 at this point) of the all-purpose AI assistant that Google, Apple, and Amazon have been faking for the last decade. Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa… they’re all just natural language command lines for a set of APIs. None of them really know what to do, in order that they’re just backing one in all the fast horses and hoping to catch up in some unspecified time in the future. Rabbit has said that their intention was to maneuver fast and ship something while the 900-pound gorillas of the industry are flailing.
The issue is available in separating an organization’s ambition from the product. Definitely rabbit’s device is nowhere near the state that CEO Jesse Lyu showed off in various demos and videos. We now have perfectly good explanations for that, but it surely doesn’t change the undeniable fact that the r1 is shipping in a completely barebones state.
I can’t in good conscience advise anyone to purchase one now. I mean, for me, it does almost nothing. But that hasn’t stopped 100,000 people from buying one, and I don’t think they’ve been deceived in any way. Rabbit has been pretty open in regards to the undeniable fact that it’s going to market with a minimum viable product as fast as possible (which, despite delays, has still been pretty fast), and that it’ll add the features it has talked about later.
Within the meantime, you could have a couple of popular apps to make use of and a reliable conversational AI (one you’d normally should pay for) that may look things up for you or discover stuff in pictures. There are, like, three settings.
A wealth of selections
So it really works — for a limited definition of “works.” Is that value $200 to you? What if rabbit added video calls via WhatsApp? Will it’ll be value that $200 when it adds Lyft, Tidal, audio transcription, Airbnb, navigation, and Snake? What about next yr, when you possibly can train it on whatever app you would like? (Assuming the corporate’s vaunted Large Motion Model works.) I’m not being facetious; it truly is just a matter of what you think that is value paying for.
$200 isn’t nothing, but with regards to consumer electronics — especially in as of late of $1,000+ iPhones — it’s not exactly an enormous ticket item, either. People pay $200 for RAM, for a wise measuring tape, and for nice mechanical keyboards day-after-day. When you told me I could get an Feker 75 Aluminum for $200 straight away, I’d order two and never regret it! (If you could have one, email me!) Meanwhile you’ll never catch me paying full price for a MacBook Pro. Again, it’s as much as each of us to come to a decision. (Though you may wait for a security audit too, considering they’ll have authorized sessions for a variety of your accounts.)
Personally, I feel it’s a fun peep at a possible future. My phone is in my bag however the r1 is in my pocket, and I can pull it out on a walk and ask “what sorts of hawks and eagles live around here?” somewhat than opening up the Sibley app and filtering by region. Then I can say, “add prairie falcon to the list of birds I’ve seen in Simplenote.” Then I can say “call a automotive to the parking zone of Golden Gardens to take me home, and use the low-cost option,” and that happens. Then I ask it to record and discover the song playing by someone’s bonfire. (Just ask? In Seattle it isn’t done.) And so forth.
Sure, I could do all that on my phone, but I get sort of uninterested in holding that thing and swapping between apps and getting notifications for stuff that isn’t actually vital straight away.
The rabbit r1 in use. Hand model: Chris Velazco of the Washington Post.
I like the concept of a more focused device. I like that it’s smallish and safety orange and it has a extremely bad camera with an advanced swivel mechanism for mainly no reason (they make double-ended camera stacks for this exact reason).
Corporations used to make all types of weird stuff. Remember Google’s weird Nexus Q music thing? Remember how wild smartphones was once, with unique keyboards, trackballs, cool materials, and weirdo launchers? Tech is so boring now. People do every little thing on the identical device, and everybody’s device is nearly the exact same as everyone else’s.
“What song is that this?” Out comes the phone, unlock, swipe swipe tap tap.
“We should always see if we are able to discover a cabin out that way for Memorial Day weekend?” Phone, swipe swipe type type scroll scroll.
“Who were the 2 guys within the Postal Service again?” Phone, tap type scroll tap.
Day-after-day, every thing, same handful of actions. It’s useful, but it surely’s boring. And it’s been the identical for years! Phones are where laptops were in 2007, and smartphones got here along to tell us there’s one other technique to do it. Rabbit is hoping to do the identical thing to a lesser extent with the r1.
I like that the r1 exists and that it’s concurrently each amazingly futuristic and hilariously limited. Tech needs to be fun and bizarre sometimes. Efficiency and reliability are overrated. Plus, let me let you know, the homebrew and hacking community are going to go to town on this thing. I can’t wait til I’m playing Tempest on it or, truthfully, scrolling down a social media app or reader. Why not? Technology is what we make of it. The r1 is leaning into that, and I for one think that’s cool.
