Rabbit R1, OpenAI’s GPT Store, and all the other AI hardware and software this week

This year, it was both obvious and not at all surprising what everyone’s thinking about. It’s AI. It’s cars. It’s cars with AI. It’s headphones and smart rings and robot bartenders and projectors and AI inside of all those things, too.

The Verge has a lot of great coverage of all things CES, and you should definitely spend some time poking through our stories and streams. Here are just a few of what I think are the most interesting, Installer-y things in Vegas this year:

• The Rabbit R1. The most intriguing gadget of the year so far, at least for me. This is a great-looking, Teenage Engineering-designed, surprisingly inexpensive AI device. Can it be more than just a smartphone app? Is its Large Action Model a total privacy disaster? I don’t know! But I find this much more compelling than certain other AI gadgets. 
• The Honda Zero Series. This car concept straight up looks like the Batmobile, and I can’t decide whether I love or hate it for that. But I love that Honda’s looking for ways to make cars lighter and sleeker instead of bigger and truck-ier, and you know? I do want to drive the Batmobile. I love it.
• Ballie. Projectors were one of the stories of the year this CES, and Samsung’s Ballie — a rolling AI assistant / projector / robot companion — kinda stole my heart. I’m still not sure anyone has made a good case for why you need a robot in your home, but Ballie’s one of the best so far.
• Xreal Air 2 Ultra. Apple wasn’t at CES, and the Vision Pro was still one of the most-discussed things in Vegas. But I continue to think Xreal is on a cool path: it’s building displays into glasses and giving those displays more and more power. The $699 Air 2 Ultras are heavy on technology and light on cool apps, but that might change fast.
• Movano’s Evie Ring. I agree with Victoria Song: this is the year of the smart ring. The Evie Ring, which has some impressive health-focused features and is designed specifically for women, is a pretty impressive device — but I suspect we’re going to see a lot more like it this year. 
• The Aqara Hub M3. We’re inching slowly closer to the interoperable smart home we need and deserve, but we’re not there yet. For now, we get super-versatile hubs like this one. Aqara is a rising star in the smart home world, and the hub makes it a serious player.

I’d bet heavily that at least one of these things will never ever actually hit the market. (Ballie and Honda are probably the favorites to never appear.) But the trends here are really interesting: cars are being rethought from the ground up, the screens are starting to follow us around, and everyone is pushing hard to find a new kind of device that isn’t a smartphone or a watch. It’s going to be really fun to see if any of it actually takes off.

The Verge’s Mia Sato warned me when I asked her to share her screen that it was going to be super boring. To which I said, Mia, there are no boring homescreens, only boring people. Wait, no, not that. Only boring app icons? I don’t know. We’ll come back to it.

Mia covers a lot of things for The Verge, and this week wrote a spectacular story about how SEO culture and optimization has changed the way websites work. Everyone’s trying to be seen by Google, and so the whole web looks the way Google wants. It’s a great story, with some amazing illustrations and interactives. 

Here’s Mia’s (decidedly not super boring) homescreen, plus some info on the apps she uses and why:

The phone: iPhone 11 Pro.

The wallpaper: I’ve had this wallpaper for almost a decade and across several phones. I have to keep finding a resized version when I upgrade my device. It’s a quote from William Blake, and the design is by artist Tessa Forrest.

The apps: Messages, Photos, Camera, Settings, Google Calendar, Google Maps, Instagram, Slack, Gmail, Clock, Bose Connect, Messenger, Transit, Compass, Notion, Mail, Safari, Phone, Apple Music.

I try to keep my homescreen a neutral space, so it’s heavy on the practical things: camera, photos, calendar, my public transit app, my Bose app for my headphones, Gmail for work. I have messaging apps that I need to keep an eye on: Slack for my job, Messenger for family. Most social media is buried deep on other pages, because otherwise I would be unwell — I don’t know why Instagram is there, to be honest. 

I’m obsessed with the Compass app and am a Compass app power user, probably. When you get off the subway, Google Maps is always directionally confused, but the compass app will tell you which way to start walking. Putting Notion on the homescreen is my delusional stretch goal for the year: I’m trying to make a habit of organizing my thoughts instead of writing them on random scraps of paper that are then lost. I leave the bottom row empty so I can swipe without accidentally opening apps.

I also asked Mia to tell us a few things she’s into right now. Here’s what she shared:

• The Japanese post-harcore / pop-punky band Mass of the Fermenting Dregs. They never tour in the US, and I recently saw them in Brooklyn. The concert vibe was like someone opened several mosh pits at a K-pop concert. Everyone was doing coordinated hand motions. It was perfect. Maybe start here.
• I have been poring over a set of craft books from the ‘60s and ‘70s called Creative Hands. They have instructions for sewing, knitting, crochet, needlework, beading, literally any kind of home craft project you can think of. I’ve been gatekeeping these because I’m still missing a few editions.
• My mom got me a subscription to a monthly mystery tinned seafood box. Last month’s included sardine pate, which I forced my friends to try with me, and it was surprisingly incredible spread thin on crackers.
• I recently hosted a viewing party of Cher’s 1999 Do You Believe? Tour concert movie. It was an HBO special but is unstreamable online, so I ordered a DVD on eBay for $6. I watched this on VHS every single day from the ages of like five to eight, and it formed probably 60 percent of my personality. Put Cher in the Las Vegas Sphere! Then send me to write about it!