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Rabbit R1: Barely Reviewable [video]

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Re: Rabbit R1: Barely Reviewable [video]

#11

Post by arrakeenrevived »

His spiel starting at 14 minutes in about how seemingly every tech product these days is a partially-baked, unfinished, barely even usable, yet full-priced product with a vague promise of "it'll receive updates and be better" rings very true, and is frustrating as hell.

Marques specifically mentions it happening in video games, cars (Tesla self-driving), smartphones, and these AI things as particular offenders. I've also seen it with SaaS. Even a lot of the things being released by the big cloud providers at their yearly conferences are mostly in some half-baked state.

We've taken the concept of a "minimum viable product" and turned it into "minimum hype-able product". It sucks.

Re: Rabbit R1: Barely Reviewable [video]

#12

Post by wferrell »

perryizgr8 wrote: post #9
bhhaskin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google and Apple already have the same if not better functionality via Google assistant and Siri. The AI pin thingy is totally just a gimmick product to get funding. Just like all the other "wearables" companies out there. And teenage engineering just likes weird quirky products.

No, Google assistant and Siri are barely usable beyond setting a timer or adding a reminder. Even that does not work 100% of the time. They absolutely cannot come close to a proper LLM at all.

Apple does >1B queries per week on siri. Likely greater than 4B assuming minimal growth since 2016. I would bet >10B. I'm not saying it is equivalent to an LLM. It is getting real, serious usage. I have no dog in the fight.

Re: Rabbit R1: Barely Reviewable [video]

#14

Post by __loam »

arrakeenrevived wrote: post #11

His spiel starting at 14 minutes in about how seemingly every tech product these days is a partially-baked, unfinished, barely even usable, yet full-priced product with a vague promise of "it'll receive updates and be better" rings very true, and is frustrating as hell. Marques specifically mentions it happening in video games, cars (Tesla self-driving), smartphones, and these AI things as particular offenders. I've…

I think the mindset is like, we've done a bunch of development, let's sell it to deliver some value now rather than wait for it to be perfect. It makes sense from that agile manifesto perspective but I miss the days of buying something like a game boy advance cartridge that ships once and mostly just works.

Re: Rabbit R1: Barely Reviewable [video]

#15

Post by wvenable »

jsheard wrote: post #3
shombaboor wrote: post #2

is this a rush to market of a half baked product or a product that doesn't need to exist except to show investors "something"? the fact it gets answers wrong and makes you double check its work sorta defeats the purpose.

It's a product class that's racing against the clock of Google and Apple baking basically the same functionality into their operating systems and making these dedicated widgets (even more) pointless. I'm not optimistic that Google and Apples take will be significantly more useful than these half-baked attempts, but at least they won't require you to pay for and then juggle an extra device.

These devices have no reason to exist. This entire device could be an app on a phone and be 500% more useful and less expensive.

I understand this particular product is [edit] designed by Teenage Engineering and it's kinda what they do. But that makes it a niche product.

But there is no reason for a serious product to have a screen, a camera, a speaker, and a network connection and not be a smartphone.

Re: Rabbit R1: Barely Reviewable [video]

#16

Post by esafak »

__loam wrote: post #14
arrakeenrevived wrote: post #11

His spiel starting at 14 minutes in about how seemingly every tech product these days is a partially-baked, unfinished, barely even usable, yet full-priced product with a vague promise of "it'll receive updates and be better" rings very true, and is frustrating as hell. Marques specifically mentions it happening in video games, cars (Tesla self-driving), smartphones, and these AI things as particular offenders. I've…

I think the mindset is like, we've done a bunch of development, let's sell it to deliver some value now rather than wait for it to be perfect. It makes sense from that agile manifesto perspective but I miss the days of buying something like a game boy advance cartridge that ships once and mostly just works.

That only works if you are doing something unique enough to ignore its imperfections, otherwise people will use a full-featured competitor. The alternative to the Rabbit is your phone, I suppose.

Re: Rabbit R1: Barely Reviewable [video]

#17

Post by mmusc »

shombaboor wrote: post #2

is this a rush to market of a half baked product or a product that doesn't need to exist except to show investors "something"? the fact it gets answers wrong and makes you double check its work sorta defeats the purpose.

I think Dave2D zeros in on the why in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMqhE9r5JuI&ab_channel=Dave2...

These devices should be apps on your phone. Google and Apple will won't open their devices enough for these assistants to useful cause they want to roll their own. So their only hope is to create a stand alone device.. But yeah they're dead in the water.

Re: Rabbit R1: Barely Reviewable [video]

#18

Post by shostack »

__loam wrote: post #14
arrakeenrevived wrote: post #11

His spiel starting at 14 minutes in about how seemingly every tech product these days is a partially-baked, unfinished, barely even usable, yet full-priced product with a vague promise of "it'll receive updates and be better" rings very true, and is frustrating as hell. Marques specifically mentions it happening in video games, cars (Tesla self-driving), smartphones, and these AI things as particular offenders. I've…

I think the mindset is like, we've done a bunch of development, let's sell it to deliver some value now rather than wait for it to be perfect. It makes sense from that agile manifesto perspective but I miss the days of buying something like a game boy advance cartridge that ships once and mostly just works.

The problem is with the lack of transparency and expectation setting. If you sell something with lots of hype and then deliver half of it, you've failed.

Re: Rabbit R1: Barely Reviewable [video]

#19

Post by saltsaman »

arrakeenrevived wrote: post #11

His spiel starting at 14 minutes in about how seemingly every tech product these days is a partially-baked, unfinished, barely even usable, yet full-priced product with a vague promise of "it'll receive updates and be better" rings very true, and is frustrating as hell. Marques specifically mentions it happening in video games, cars (Tesla self-driving), smartphones, and these AI things as particular offenders. I've…

It's his core philosophy:

"Never. Ever. Buy a tech product based on the promise of future software updates."

https://x.com/MKBHD/status/1383616274693951494

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