Thread by @jessechenglyu

lots of ppl were asking, why not an app. here’s my personal opinions on a thread 🧵:

1. apps are relatively easy to build, and easy to copy too. but super hard on maintenance and create customer loyalty. we are talking about at least you have to have 2 versions, iOS and Android. and these platforms are fundamentally different.

as an app, you need to feature matching all the time and it’s very painful and maintenance heavy. the t&a on both platforms changes all the time. not saying they were vicious but they have the rights all the time to take you down.

by submitting as app, you submitting all your codes to them. think about it. remember there’s one of the most popular apps you want early days on app store was called ‘flashlight’ now see what happens? apple just incorporated that feature in iOS. so are building apps sustainable to a startup? maybe not.

2. we can’t put a V12 engine to a horse, and Tesla doesn’t need one. LAM and rabbitOS is a generation ahead of the current app based OS. it doesn’t fit. rabbitOS doesn’t need apps.

and even if we build rabbit OS as an app, what’s the end user experience is gonna be like? you are opening one app to do multiple things on other apps you installed, with 10 other notifications popping all over it? surprisingly that’s how current experience of siri is. the user experience is conflicting with their design purposes.

but we understand bootstrapping any new hardware is hard. luckily i’ve created some of the best piece of hardwares in my past 15 years of career. raven H and raven R still looks absolutely beautiful today. i learned a lot of good/bad/ugly from the entire process.

so the best way to perform as a startup, is to de-risk on hardware. how can we create the best looking/quality piece of hardware that’s capable of all the potentials of LAM, while at the same time, lower the entry barriers for early adopters?

hence the $199, no subscription tamagotchi/pokédex r1, if you every worked on a massive produced hardware project, you understand that it’s never pushing a boundaries of stacking cool parts, but quite the opposite: it’s a painful process of compromises to find the best balance.

as a result, rabbit r1 sits perfectly on the spot. it’s god-level design from te, retro-culture resonating the good old fun tech era, with the best price on the market, powered by our patented LAM that offering features non of the other gadgets can do.

3. we are not saying you should dump your phone, nor do we delusional about it’s better to carry 2 devices than one, regardless of where and how you carry them.

but r1 is making a small dent in the industry by convincing our audience that, hey look, it can do x amount of things that you phone can do, but MUCH faster and intuitive. then with teach mode (this is underrated and will likely continues to be), user start to teach rabbit OS all the things your phone can not do.

ultimately, rabbit team is young and represents where the future tech will go by making it. if you look through the history, tech is not about improvement, it’s always revolution. every other decade we completely revamp the human machine interface. it’s just about time to do so.

so here at @rabbit_hmi ,we take humble bold small steps. but we aim big and long. why build an app?