If there is one The takeaway from yesterday’s Rabbit R1 launch event is this: Hardware can be fun again. After a decade of undisputed smartphone dominance, there is, once again, excitement in consumer electronics. The wisdom and longevity of any single product or form factor — while important — can be set aside for a moment. Just sit back and enjoy the show.
Despite flying out of an airport on a monthly basis, last night was my first night at the TWA hotel nestled within the labyrinthine reaches of JFK’s Terminal 5. One rarely stays in hotels where one stays, after all. The space is a nod to another era, when people dressed to board flights and smiling chefs carved whole ham legs.
Image Credits: Brian Heater
A rented DeLorean emblazoned with Rabbit branding was parked out front, serving as a postmodern homage to the event’s agnostic embrace of the past. Less impressive was Ritchie Valens singing in between Motown hits over the elevator speakers as we descended three stories to the underground event space.
Hundreds of attendees had already lined up by the time I arrived at the venue. Well-known figures from the world of technology journalism pondered, but a significant number were excited early adopters. The two groups were distinguished with “Press” and “VIP” lanyards respectively. A man standing in front of me in line volunteered that he had flown in from Los Angeles especially for the event.
Like Humane, the team at Rabbit is clearly invested in the spectacle. The approaches are similar, but different, with the former investing a lot of funding into viral videos, incl an eclipse teaser which was clearly envisioned as a sort of spiritual successor to Apple’s famous ‘1984’ spot. One gets the feeling, however, that Rabbit didn’t really expect how much buzz the company’s CES 2024 debut would generate.
“When we started building the r1, we said internally that we’d be happy if we sold 500 devices on launch day,” the company posted on X. “In 24 hours, we’ve already beaten it by 20 times!”
It would be hard to time the release better. The creative AI hype had reached a fever pitch. Humane had revealed but not yet released its Ai Pin. Intel has declared 2024 its year PC AI and soon, Samsung will do the same for the smartphone. Apple, meanwhile, was promising its own big news on that front in the coming months.
Image Credits: Brian Heater
When it puts on a big show, a tech company also has to dress the part. The focus on product design is another key parallel between Rabbit and Humane. While the form factors are very different, both the Ai Pin and the R1 are a testament to the value of industrial design. For its part, Rabbit took a page out of Nothing’s book, contracting the savvy guys at Teenage Engineering to create an incredibly original-looking product. Indeed, the R1 looks like a work of art as much as anything. It’s an orange squat thing — something you might want to put on your bike’s handlebars for bad weather.
While the defining physical feature of the Ai Pin is the absence of a display, the Rabbit embraces the display — albeit modestly. The screen is only 2.88 inches and sometimes it seems almost random for the cause. This goes double for touch functionality. While, like the Ai Pin, most of your interactions are performed by voice, a combination of analog scrolling and a button mostly fill in the blanks.
Aside from entering a Wi-Fi password, there’s not much reason to touch the screen. This is for the best. The most monumental and ongoing task facing the nascent AI device space is justifying its existence outside of the smartphone. After all, anyone with a half-decent mobile device (and many not-so-decent ones) has access to AI models. These are largely accessed through browsers or standalone apps at the moment, but models like ChatGPT and Google Gemini will be increasingly integrated into mobile operating systems in the coming months and years.
Image Credits: Brian Heater
When I posed the question to Humane, co-founder and CEO Bethany Bongiorno offered this anecdote:[Humane’s co-founders] had been to this dinner, and a family was sitting next to us. There were three kids and a mom and dad, and they were on their phones the whole time. It really started a conversation about the incredible tool we built, but also some of the side effects.”
The Ai Pin’s lack of a screen is, in fact, a feature. Again, there are many reasons to question the wisdom and effectiveness of this design decision, but regardless, it’s vital to the product. It’s worth noting that at $199, the price justification barrier is significantly lower than the Ai Pin’s asking price.
Brian Heater
The truth is, at this early first generation stage, innovation is a huge selling point. Either you see the appeal of a dedicated LLM access device or not. Rabbit’s relatively affordable price opens up that world quite a bit. You should also note that R1 does not require a monthly service fee, while Humane charges you $24/month for functionality. That, combined with the (albeit limited) touchscreen and truly stellar design, and you can see why the product has taken some wind out of Ai Pin’s sails.
Neither device trades in apps like modern smartphones. You interact exclusively with the embedded operating system. This, however, can be linked to other accounts, including Spotify, Uber, Midjourney and DoorDash. The system can receive voice recordings and make two-way translations. The system can also acquire environmental context through the built-in camera.
Among the first tests I did was to offer a description of my shelf. I turned the camera on a series of four hardcovers: Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick.” “The Barbary Coast” by Herbert Asbury. “Understanding the Media” by Marshall McLuhan. and “Dodsworth” by Sinclair Lewis. He generally had difficulty with the last book — understandably so, as it was the least clear of the bunch.
He largely identified and understood what he was seeing with “Moby Dick,” calling it a “classic” and sometimes offering a brief summary. It recognized the middle two books 50% to 75% of the time. He also tried to provide some context as to the curatorial choices and sometimes went to extremes to praise said curatorship.
There were times, however, when the frame was a bit large. I asked R1 when the Oakland A’s are playing (I added the city after an initial search for the “A” that came up as “Ace”) and it gave me the time of tonight’s game, before running a list of the next 10 or so teams who play. But hey, I’m a big fan of A. I enjoy defeats like this.
Image Credits: Brian Heater
Something worth noting about all these early-stage recordings is that these types of devices are designed to improve and adjust their results the more you use them. I’m writing this after picking up the device just last night. I will send this to Devin for a more thorough write up.
Having only played with the R1 for a few hours, I can definitely tell you that it’s a more affordable device than the Humane Pin, thanks to the touchscreen and the price. It doesn’t solve the cultural obsession with the screen that Humane cares about — nor does it seem drawn to such grandiose ambitions in the first place. Instead, it’s a beautifully designed product that offers an exciting glimpse of where things might be headed.
