After two months the hopes for Rabbit R1 and Humane AI devices crashed and burned. They introduced radical new form factors and promised to break our addiction to screens, but when we finally got our hands on them, they were completely broken. However, some people aren’t ready to give up on the idea of a gadget that offers app functionality without the glamor of a big, bright screen. What if I told you the answer was staring us in the eye?
The idea behind the TinyPod is simple: it’s a case for Apple Watch allowing you to navigate menus with a click wheel reminiscent of an old-school iPod. The worst part of the Apple Watch is using the digital crown to run your errands, and who doesn’t love a click wheel?
Simply put, this goes a long way toward making the Apple Watch a more attractive option as the only device you carry with you. It’s not as interesting to look at as the Rabbit R1 or have the great laser projector that the Humane pin offers, but the watch does what it promises and it works.
Unfortunately, it’s still an Apple Watch. Millions of people carry them and still don’t feel compelled to put their phones down. But that could change next month.
Apple’s WWDC event is expected to be all about integrating the latest AI features into its devices. This was reported on Sunday by Mark German of Bloomberg Apple meets Google and OpenAI about a potential partnership to integrate one of their chatbots into iOS 18. Apple isn’t giving up on its own AI products, but it does acknowledge that these two companies are ahead in the chatbot space.
Then, on Thursday, The Information reported this OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has officially closed a deal with Apple this is potentially worth billions of dollars. That was kind of shocking. Google has a long-standing relationship with Apple and pays the Cupertino giant billions of dollars a year to be the default search engine in Safari. Moreover, Apple’s main competitor Microsoft has a huge stake in OpenAI.
All of this means that we’ll likely see ChatGPT integrated into Apple products soon, and that could mean a much more powerful Apple Watch. Both Rabbit and Humane claimed to have their own solutions built into these products, but the reality is that ChatGPT was still the backbone of the AI. And then no product works.
The Apple Watch is capable of doing most of what these AI devices promise, and there’s no reason it can’t do more in the future. Sure, you can call Uber with the Rabbit R1 until the ride-hailing company pulls its app from the Apple Watch in 2022. But Rabbit’s location tracking is so broken that there’s no reason to believe that the car you order will arrive somewhere near you. If Apple can make its watch more useful (and really fix Siri), we could see developers jump to make apps for it.
That doesn’t mean the TinyPod will be the next big thing. We know very little about it, other than the fact that it has a good idea and a nice design. The company’s website has no information other than the tagline and “coming this summer.” No matter, others work on a similar idea. A cake is an Apple Watch case that looks a lot like a smaller version of the Rabbit R1, complete with a spinning wheel. And of course, Apple could just make their own new cases if that’s a behavior they want to encourage.
I’m just spitballing here, but something tells me that Apple would like to keep selling billions of iPhones, so it might be slow to make its watch more flexible. I don’t think these AI devices will ever be a smartphone replacement. I’d be happy to keep my phone in a bag or leave it in the car until absolutely necessary. The TinyPod in my pocket sounds great.
