The bubble of AI hardware is bursting a little faster than imagined.
First, there was the Humane AI Pin, projecting an “Overheating Warning” onto your palm with lasers. Then came the Rabbit R1, wearing the halo of Teenage Engineering’s retro aesthetics, only to be exposed as a mere “Android Launcher” running on a low-end MediaTek chip.
This wave of AI hardware feels like a collective hallucination by Silicon Valley’s genius product managers. They are trying to tell us: “Stop looking at your phone; look at this badge pinned to my chest / this little square in my hand instead.”
But here is the problem: to cure phone addiction, you are asking me to spend $199 to $699 to buy a piece of electronic waste that not only cures the phone habit but also cures me of the concept of “usability” entirely? That is actually quite dark.
Today, let’s talk about what is really hiding beneath the Emperor’s new clothes.
1. Deep Insight: It’s Not That the Hardware is Too Advanced, The Logic is Anti-Human
When the Rabbit R1 launched, founder Jesse Lyu shouted a slogan on stage that gave countless geeks a rush: “The future of interaction is App-less.”
Sounds sexy, right? No need to download apps, no need to open Uber. Just shout “I want to go home” at the orange square, and the car arrives.
But what is the reality?
The reality is that after you shout at it, it spins its wheels for ages, only to tell you: “I need you to log in to Uber on the web portal first.” Once you finally log in, it errors out because it can’t handle a complex CAPTCHA or an API change.
This isn’t just a bug; it is a fatal logic flaw of the “middleman bottleneck.”
Rabbit’s claimed core technology, the LAM (Large Action Model), purports to understand App interfaces and operate them like a human. However, reverse engineering by various experts suggests that right now, this thing looks more like a pile of pre-written Playwright scripts (a web automation testing tool). To put it plainly, it is a cloud-based macro clicker.
It is like hiring a butler: you tell him to buy groceries, but instead of going to the market, he puts on reading glasses and taps on your phone to order delivery for you, three times slower than you could have done it yourself.
Value Anchor: Why is this worth paying attention to? Because this is a naked “interaction regression.” Smartphone apps have evolved for over a decade to achieve extremely high interaction efficiency. Attempting to completely replace “touch + vision” (high-bandwidth interaction) with “voice commands” (low-bandwidth interaction) is, at this stage, sheer arrogance.
2. Independent Perspective: A Pseudo-Demand Forced by the “App Store Tax”
Since the experience is so poor, why do these companies insist on making independent hardware?
There is a blind spot here: Rather than disrupting the user experience, what they really want to disrupt is Apple and Google’s “toll booths.”
If you build an AI assistant App on the iPhone, you are not only restricted by iOS sandbox permissions (no system-level control), but you also have to pay Apple a 30% tax on every subscription. Making independent hardware looks like “freeing your hands,” but it is actually about building their own closed ecosystem.
The Humane AI Pin is the quintessential example. Not only do they sell you hardware for $699, but they also force a monthly subscription of $24. It is like buying a phone that doesn’t even have a screen, paying a separate monthly bill for it, yet getting only 1% of the functionality of your main phone.
This seemingly minimalist orange toy, once stripped of its casing, is revealed to be an Android phone that will be exposed if security patches aren’t applied in time.
Even more amusing, when it was discovered that the Rabbit R1 is essentially a low-end Android phone running a specific APK, this “independence” became even more comical. Since it’s just an App, why can’t I just install it on my Galaxy S24 or iPhone? Why must I carry an extra brick?
The calculation behind this is actually quite shrewd: Only by making hardware can you tell a capital story worth billions. Making an App makes you a toolmaker; making a hardware gateway makes you Steve Jobs.
3. Industry Comparison: When Dreams Crash into Physics
Let’s look at the hard specs.
| Dimension | Smartphone | AI Independent Hardware (Rabbit/Humane) |
|---|---|---|
| Compute | Powerful Local NPU + Cloud | Extremely Weak Local Compute (Low-end MediaTek/Qualcomm) |
| Interaction | Screen + Touch + Voice (High Bandwidth) | Voice dominant + Tiny Screen/Projection (Low Bandwidth) |
| Latency | Milliseconds | Seconds or even minutes (Fully dependent on Cloud) |
| Ecosystem | Millions of Apps instantly available | Supports single-digit services (Spotify, Uber, etc.) |
| Privacy | Sensitive data processed locally | Tokens flying everywhere, Cloud “leveling up” for you |
The Humane AI Pin’s fatal flaws are heat and battery life. Laser projection belongs in sci-fi movies; on your chest, it’s just a hand warmer. The laws of physics won’t spare you just because your PowerPoint looks nice. When the device detects overheating, it simply shuts down—at that moment, your so-called “AI Companion” is colder than your ex.
The Rabbit R1’s fatal flaw is unreliability. MKBHD (the renowned tech YouTuber) dropped a heavy line in his review: “Reviewing this product is impossible because the product is unfinished.”
In contrast, look at Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses. Although not as “smart,” they are first and foremost good-looking sunglasses, secondly capable of taking videos, and only lastly about AI. This route of “icing on the cake” currently seems far more reliable than “tearing it down and starting over.”
4. Unfinished Thoughts: What If They Were Just Accessories?
Let’s engage in a thought experiment: What if the Rabbit R1 wasn’t a standalone device, but a Bluetooth peripheral?
Imagine it as a high-end controller with a scroll wheel and microphone that connects to your phone, utilizing your phone’s processing power and network, responsible only for interaction. Doesn’t the logic flow much better?
But if they did that, it could only sell for $49, not $199; it would become a phone accessory maker, not the “next Apple.”
So, it’s not that the technology can’t do it, but that capital won’t allow them to “think small.”
Future AI hardware definitely won’t be these “bricks” trying to replace phones; it should be imperceptible. It might be a chip in the arm of your glasses, or a line of code in your earbuds. It should be doing things silently in the background, not projecting green lasers on your chest to announce to everyone around you: “Look, I’m a geek (and a sucker).”
iFixit’s teardown reveals the truth: even packed with batteries and magnets, due to the lack of a screen—the most efficient information output port—they remain expensive electronic blind boxes.
5. Final Words
I actually admire the courage of Rabbit and Humane. Truly.
At a time when everyone is just adding AI features to mobile apps, they dared to jump out and say “the phone is wrong.” This kind of idealism is as rare as a giant panda in today’s conformist tech circles.
But regrettably, packaging immature technology as “the future” and selling it to consumers at a high price isn’t idealism; it’s arrogance.
The Rabbit R1 and Humane AI Pin will eventually enter the Electronic Museum, displayed in the “Failed Pioneers” cabinet. Through their suicidal charge, they have verified that the “Post-App Era” is currently a dead end.
Maybe one day we really won’t need to open Apps anymore. But that day will definitely not be heralded by an orange plastic box.
References：
- Rabbit R1 review: an unfinished, unhelpful AI gadget | The Verge
- Rabbit R1: LAM or SCAM? – TheBadCoders
- Going Down a Rabbit Hole to Jailbreak the R1 – Hackster.io
- Humane shifts focus to AI software after wearable struggles – EMARKETER
- Rabbit R1 and Humane AI Pin: A Quick Look at the Hardware – iFixit
