The Rabbit R1 for Business… Just Kidding, for Your Kids!

Jacob:

Welcome to a mini episode on the Rabbit R1. Me and Jeff are going to be talking about… 

Jeffrey:

How useful it is for your business.

Jacob:

How do you explain this for your business? Yeah, this new AI device that has come out earlier this year, and I am one of the lucky recipients of this device. 

Jeffrey:

Yeah. Um, so yeah, Jacob, what is… I didn’t even know about this until you brought it up like two days ago and you’re like, “we should do an episode about it, like a review,” and I’m like, “I don’t even know what it is”. So yeah, go on.

Jacob:

So, what is the Rabbit? The Rabbit is a… it’s like an AI pocket device. It had a really cool keynote back in January, where basically it’s like… the idea is, you don’t really need apps anymore, what it will do is it will operate basically a virtual machine, a computer or a tablet or iPhone for you, and then it’ll just get you stuff as you need it. So you, it basically: it won’t really replace your phone for like really cool apps, but it will allow you to basically have a more minimalist experience.

Jeffrey:

Like, like give me an example of what it might do.

Jacob:

Well, it’s supposed to be able to you know…

Jeffrey:

What it should be able to do.

Jacob:

Play different music and podcasts. It can play music, but not podcasts, which is funny for a podcast episode, and then, you won’t be able to listen to this on your R1 anytime soon, apparently. It’s supposed to be able to get you, like, Uber, or DoorDash, or go out and generate images for you for Midjourney and all these, like, things out of the box. It can be a language translator. It can give you your news, it can take notes…

Jeffrey:

So why is that better than say, Alexa or Google Assistant? Cause I feel like they can do a lot of that. No?

Jacob:

Oh, yeah in Gemini and as Apple comes out with what’s that, Apple AI Apple Intelligence as they say it, and Gemini gets integrated into other things. I mean they’re gonna outpace the functionality of this device pretty quickly, and honestly they already do in many ways. However, it is neat that It is a very well designed product, like in your hand, and that is something going for it. It’s just different, and that is kind of refreshing. It’s small form factor, it has an actual physical wheel that you scroll. 

Jeffrey:

Ah, so it’s like retro?

Jacob:

It is a little retro, it’s very inspired by like, you know, tape cassette days. It’s got a great feel, there’s…, it doesn’t have an always on listening, like Google Home might, you actually have to press a button, so there’s some privacy with that, that’s kind of nice. The camera is always facing down inside of a tube inside of a box inside, like…

Jeffrey:

So even if someone could hijack the camera, they can’t see anything unless you flip it open.

Jacob:

Right. And, you would know right away because it actually moves: Like, if I tap it, double tap it twice, it moves, if I double tap it twice, and if I hit the scroll wheel, it moves around the other way. So, from a product design perspective… stellar, five stars in my opinion: It’s a good size, the microphones in it have a dual microphone system, great charging on it pretty standard, but– I shouldn’t have said charging, it just, it doesn’t even have wireless charging, like Apple or Google does at this point, I should have said– but everything else about it is great, the orange is really good too…

Jeffrey: 

A beautiful color: A+

Jacob:

Yeah, but that’s kind of where it kind of ends, and basically, most of the internet is just shitposting on it constantly. I mean, they just do everything they can to put this thing down, when really, it is a good, innovative idea. It just needs to get out there; it  needs to really get spruced up.

Jeffrey:

I have a quote here from CNET [paraphrased], and they say that it’s supposed to evolve over time, but it’s just like… like I guess it’s like, the more people use it, the more it learns, and the better it gets, sort of thing. And so just not enough people are putting data into it. But, it is $199, and you do… if you want to take it on the go, you have to have a data plan for it. So it’s kind of expensive. And you– just like knowing who you are as a person– you love being an early adopter, and you’re just like a gearhead-nerd person– which I am not, so I would not buy this thing. But you were telling me it’s really great with your kids. 

Jacob:

Yeah. That’s honestly one of the best things about it. I do want to refute one thing: You said that the more people use it, the better it gets. I have to say it doesn’t seem like the model that it’s working on is doing that. There’s a lot of, just baseline functionality things that we’re in. We’re in a really rough product stage.

What they said in the keynote, and what they present in that keynote, is so far away from what’s in my hand today. It was a little disappointing unboxing it. But my kids, you’re right, my kids think it’s amazing. It’s orange, it has an adorable rabbit, you can name the AI device, and so, uh, my son has come up with the name Carrot for it. And, I’ve told it its name is Carrot, and it will say, “Hey, my name’s Carrot”. And the kids love that. And one thing that it’s great is that little kids love to ask questions all the time, like all the time about all sorts of random things. Like, “why are black eyed peas called black eyed peas? Why are black eyed Susans called black eyed Susans?”

Jeffrey:

And your kids are like, six and four, right?

Jacob:

Uh, seven. Seven and four.

Jeffrey:

Seven, four. 

Jacob:

Right. But that’s like a great edge for those questions because you get peppered with them all the time. It’s really fun to pull this out and then hold the button down and say, “you ask it”. And then the thing will give us an answer. And I’ll be like, “great! We can actually do it together”. And the nice thing about it for kids is that it is completely keyboardless– and you can turn on a terminal mode to type in it, but you don’t need to have any keyboard skills. So my kids can actually run around and operate this thing and ask it questions without… you just hold a button down and talk.

Jeffrey:

Yeah. And it’s a really, really simple interface, like you said, it’s functionality is limited to just like… it’s not like giving them your tablet where then all of a sudden, “hey, now they’re in my bank account!” Like, you know what I mean?

Jacob:

Right, they can’t do a lot of damage with it, which is kind of funny, because one of the reasons you can’t do a lot of damage with it, because it can’t do that much. But, I mean, the kids love it, and one of the best things on the camera that is so good for young kids, is they have this cool… the camera quality, the picture quality of the actual camera, terrible for a new camera. I mean, that’s probably why the price point is so cheap, because it’s like, a web camera from like 3 years ago… 5, 10 years ago kind of.

Jeffrey:

I was gonna say ten years.

Jacob:

It’s pretty rough. But, what it does do is it has this thing called, I think called “Magic Eye”. And it will take a picture and then it turns it into an AI image that looks really cool of all sorts of stuff.

Like I took a picture of a– I’ll post this along with the article today– I took a picture of a snail shell we found at a lake, like a lake snail, I guess, of some sort– And the kids… and it is, it’s really pretty perfect spiral snail. I put it on my desk and took a picture of it and it turned it into a magical pixel art snail.

Jeffrey:

Okay, yeah that has to be fun for them.

Jacob:

And my kids have…they’ve been like making little scenes and setting things up and then taking a picture of it and then going to see what the artwork turned out like. And if you put a… almost every image, if it can, it seems like the Rabbit tries to put a rabbit in the photo, which my children love and find adorable. But if you put a rabbit in the photo, it makes some really cool rabbit things if there’s already rabbits in the photo. So, we have these little toy bunnies, these little toy carrots, these little toy stuffed animals and that’s killing it. 

But overall, I would say to end most of this review of this product is, I wouldn’t get it yet If you’re not happy with buying something that’s half baked. But, they do update it every week, and it is fun to be a part of it. And I do think what it does do, I think it will push companies… Hopefully it pushes companies to think outside of the box a little bit on the classic phone experience. Because pretty much since the iPhones came out, all we have are iPhones. I mean, you can say I have a Google, you can say I have a…

Jeffrey:

But they’re all pretty… they’re the same experience. The user interface might be slightly different, but yeah, we’re all doing the same thing with our little screens in our pockets.

Jacob:

Exactly. So, one of the other things that came out around this time was the Humane AI Pin, which was pretty innovative, but way more expensive. A lot more difficult, people… Yeah, I’m not gonna do a review about that, I don’t have one… 

Jeffrey:

We’ll, we’ll link to it if you’re interested.

Jacob:

But, we’re in an age right now where people are doing something different, and that is really what I like about it so much because

Jeffrey:

That, I mean, that is cool. Like you said, we haven’t really seen anything new since 2007. Like, I mean, we have laptops, we have TVs, we have phones… like I guess game consoles, they’re the same too.

Jacob:

Yeah, and pretty much a game console is you just hook it up to a screen

Jeffrey: 

Yeah, it’s just a computer.

Jacob:

Yeah, so it’s nice to see something that is trying to go, uh, less interface, more privacy, even though I would say their privacy news articles that are coming out about this are not great either.

So there’s a lot of wild west. I do think, and like my prediction is, within one year, this thing will be either amazing, and people will finally realize it’s awesome; what’s probably more likely is that it’s going to be a dead product sitting on my shelf and I’m going to dust this off like a Game Boy from like 1995 in like 10 years, like, “you remember this? This was cool, right?” And, yeah, it’ll be… that’ll be that. So, all right…

Jeffrey:

I love Game Boys still, I mean I gave my nephews for christmas… I was like, “I don’t know what to get them. They’re really into pokemon, they love gaming…” So I was just like, “here are all of my old Game Boys and all of my old Game Boy games and Pokemon games…” and they loved it. It was their favorite gift of the season. I was just like “another win for uncle Jeff”.

Jacob:

Yeah, that is amazing. I’m very jealous of your nephews right now. I want that. My kids want that.

Jeffrey:

Alright, well that wraps up our mini episode.  Got a little off topic at the end, but whatever.

Jacob:

 Hey, I’m back in the studio now, after we finished that because Jeff and I definitely enjoyed talking about Pokemon. , at the end of that, and that is a little off topic. However the R.  like a Pokemon in your pocket it’s a great fun toy. Um, I have has a lot of potential to become a very solid product in the marketplace.

That’s up to the R one development team to make that happen, but I think – what I would take away is that the R1. Is a stellar representation of how you can disrupt the phone market. Let’s see if they can follow through on their vision. Because if they can, I believe that we can see some very new, innovative items coming out of the phone market that are beyond foldable phones. Something that is truly just different and that is really refreshing. Have a great day, everybody.