I finally received the r1 rabbit (the company insists on that lowercase style) that I’ve been writing about since its debut at CES in January. And I could tell about 30 seconds after turning it on that it had shipped a few months too early – but honestly…is that okay? It’s weird, relatively cheap and obviously an experience. To me, this is something we should rally behind, not sink into.
The real problems with the R1 are obvious: it doesn’t have enough app integrations, and it “could just be an app.”
As for the first problem, well, that’s absolutely true right now. There are only four things to log into: Uber, DoorDash, Spotify, and Midjourney. Aside from the clearly too small number, these are not useful to me. I don’t drive a lot (and use Lyft often); I don’t order a lot of food (DoorDash is a bad 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, if you can believe it). Obviously your mileage may vary, but four isn’t a lot.
As for whether it’s just an app, and for people clinging to the idea that it runs on Android or uses established APIs, you may have missed the point, c That is to say, we already have way too many apps and the point is to offload many common tasks and services to a simpler, less distraction-inducing device.
Clearly I’m not the target audience for this thing. But I’m still the one holding one and writing for a major tech publication, so let’s take this seriously.
Image credits: rabbit
The simple truth is that I like the idea of the r1 bunny, and I’m okay with waiting until this idea has time to mature. Rabbit is trying to create version 1.0 (although it’s more like 0.1 at this point) of the general-purpose AI assistant that Google, Apple, and Amazon have been simulating over the past decade. Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa… these are just natural language command lines for a collection of APIs. None of them really know what to do, so they just back one of the fast horses and hope to catch up at some point. Rabbit said his intention is to move quickly and ship something while the industry’s 900-pound gorillas struggle.
The problem comes from the separation between a company’s ambition and the product you’re actually paying for. Rabbit’s device is certainly far from the state presented by CEO Jesse Lyu in various demos and videos. We have some very good explanations for this, but that doesn’t change the fact that the R1 comes in a completely naked state.
I cannot in good conscience advise anyone to buy one now. I mean, for me, it almost doesn’t matter. But that hasn’t stopped 100,000 people from doing it already, and I don’t think they were deceived in any way. Rabbit has been pretty open that it will get to market as quickly as possible (which, despite the delays, has still been pretty quick) with a minimum viable product, and will add the features it talked about later.
In the meantime, you have a few popular apps to use and competent conversational AI (which you would normally have to pay for) that can look up information for you or identify items in images. There are like… three settings.
A wealth of choice
So it works – for a limited definition of “works”. This seems like an MVP to me. Is this worth $200 to you? What if they added video calls via WhatsApp? Will it be worth that $200 when they add Lyft, Tidal, audio transcription, Airbnb, navigation, and Snake? And next year, when you can train it on the app of your choice? (Assuming the company’s vaunted big action model works.) I’m not being facetious; it’s just a matter of knowing what you think you deserve to be paid.
$200 isn’t nothing, but when it comes to consumer electronics – especially in this day and age where iPhones cost over $1,000 – it’s not a very expensive item either. People pay $200 every day for RAM, for a smart tape measure, and for nice mechanical keyboards. If you told me I could get a Feker 75 Aluminum for $200 right now, I would order two and never regret it! (If you have one, email me!) In the meantime, you’ll never catch me paying full price for a MacBook Pro. Again, it’s up to each of us to decide. (Though you might also want to wait for a security audit, given that they will have authorized sessions for many of your accounts.)
Personally, I think it’s a fun glimpse into a possible future. My phone is in my bag but the r1 is in my pocket, and I can take it out on a walk and ask “what types of hawks and eagles live here?” rather than opening the Sibley app and filtering by region. Then I can say, “Add the prairie hawk to the list of birds I’ve seen in Simplenote.” Then I can say “call a car at the Golden Gardens parking lot to take me home and use the cheap option,” and it happens. Then I ask him to record and identify the song played near someone’s bonfire. (Just ask? In Seattle, this is not done). And so on.
Of course, I could do all of this on my phone. I don’t know about you, but I’m a little tired of holding this thing, switching between apps, and getting notifications for things that aren’t really important right now.
The R1 rabbit in use. Manual model: Chris Velazco of the Washington Post.
I like the idea of a more focused device. I like that it’s small and security orange and has a really bad camera with a complicated swivel mechanism for no reason (they make double ended camera stacks for this exact reason).
Companies were making all kinds of weird stuff. Remember Google’s weird Nexus Q music thingy? Remember how wild smartphones used to be, with unique keyboards, trackballs, cool materials and weird launchers? Technology is so boring now. People do everything on the same device, and everyone’s device is almost exactly the same as everyone else’s.
“What is this song?” Phone comes out, unlock, swipe, tap.
“We should see if we can find a cabin around there for Memorial Day weekend.” Phone, scroll type scan type.
“Who were those two guys from the postal service again?” Phone, tap tap scroll.
Every day, everything, the same handful of actions. It’s useful, but it’s boring. And it’s been the same for years! Phones are replacing laptops in 2007 and smartphones have arrived to let us know there is another way to do things. Rabbit hopes to do the same thing to a lesser extent with the r1, and to be fair, so does Humane, although it seems the latter has more fundamental problems.
I love that the R1 exists and is both incredibly futuristic and hilariously limited. Technology should be fun and weird sometimes. Efficiency and reliability are overrated. Furthermore, let me tell you that the homebrew and hacker community will mobilize on this subject. I can’t wait to play Tempest on it or, honestly, scroll through an app or social media player. Why not? Technology is what we make of it. Rabbit leans into it, and I for one think it’s cool.
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