It was very obvious that the original statement from Rabbit was knowingly false when they made it. It's weird to me how these companies dig themselves deeper by doing stuff like that, have they never experienced the real world before?
They have. Unfortunately, they took the wrong lesson from the experience, they learned that you can sometimes get away with it and make a quick buck with overt lies, so they'll employ that strategy again with no regrets.
They're determined grifters for sure, bespoke hardware is a much bigger investment than shitting out some NFTs, but they're still probably going to run away and leave you with a useless device in a year.
It's the statement quoted as a block quote 3/4 of the way down the page on the article:
> rabbit r1 is not an Android app. We are aware there are some unofficial rabbit OS app/website emulators out there. We understand the passion that people have to get a taste of our AI and LAM instead of waiting for their r1 to arrive. That being said, to clear any misunderstanding and set the record straight, rabbit OS and LAM run on the cloud with very bespoke AOSP and lower level firmware modifications, therefore a local bootleg APK without the proper OS and Cloud endpoints won’t be able to access our service. rabbit OS is customized for r1 and we do not support third-party clients. Using a bootlegged APK or webclient carries significant risks; malicious actors are known to publish bootlegged apps that steal your data. For this reason, we recommend that users avoid these bootlegged rabbit OS apps.
If you read “won’t be able to access” as “forbidden by our TOS to access” that can still be true. Or - literally - at some point in the future they will introduce some preventative measures.
