I don't why it should surprise, or bother, anyone that it is running android. Totally reasonable choice. What does it say that it is treated like some sort of gotcha? Were they supposed to build their own AIOS?
After all, the Rabbit R1’s launcher app is intended to be preinstalled in the firmware and be granted several privileged, system-level permissions — only some of which we were able to grant — so some of the functions would likely fail if we tried
And the statement from Rabbit in the article says essentially the same:
rabbit OS and LAM run on the cloud with very bespoke AOSP and lower level firmware modifications, therefore a local bootleg APK without the proper OS and Cloud endpoints won’t be able to access our service
why are you so incredulous that android might have some annoying privacy restrictions that a custom AOSP can sidestep? I would google rabbit's reasoning for this but I don't care enough
Their official reasoning: "rabbit OS and LAM run on the cloud with very bespoke AOSP and lower level firmware modifications". https://twitter.com/rabbit_hmi/status/1785498453097009473 This reads like obfuscation to me. Just tell us in plain english!
> why are you so incredulous that android might have some annoying privacy restrictions that a custom AOSP can sidestep?
I don't doubt that such restrictions exist. But I'm also curious as to what, specifically, they would be? Apps can access all sensors, cameras, microphone, network. So what's left?
Just from a pure marketing perspective, look at all the insane hype they were able to generate due to possibility of a new physical form factor.
There’s no way in hell they could have generated $10M in pre-orders and potentially hundreds of millions in earned media coverage for the 700th app that’s basically a chatgpt api wrapper.
You’re absolutely right, it would “just be an app” and have a much harder time getting noticed.
But I really meant what I said too. It doesn’t matter how great your thing is, people complain to high health about spending $.99 on it. And God forbid you want to subscription even if it’s only $2 a year. And don’t ask for an IAP of any kind.
The app market is a disaster of ads because almost no one will accept anything else.
Even if everything ran fully on the device so they didn’t have any server costs of any kind I think they’d have a very very hard time making money off an app unless it was incredibly extraordinary.
I don’t get why people would pay for a bright orange box, or a snazzy little pin, when you can do the exact same thing with a phone app. Siri and Google’s offering on Android phones will eliminate this market when they start in on this stuff. I don’t see why any company making an AI widget would be valued high, unless they’re trying to get bought by Apple.
No argument from me. I don't see the end of smartphones any time soon. And if pulling a smartphone out of your pocket is too inconvenient, the smartwatch almost certainly has your use-case covered.
Because they want to develop their own idependent ecosystem? Similarly, why does Amazon Fire OS exists?
I mean the question is kind of vaguely legitimate, but regardeless of how it is implemented one could ask why it is not an Android app instead. They thought about it and made other choices, and might not want to publicly list all the reasons that made them choose what they did...