Revisiting the 3 Biggest Hardware Flops of 2024
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The year began with such promise. Back in January, I remember sitting in a presentation hall at a Las Vegas hotel during CES 2024 as Rabbit CEO Jesse Lyu unveiled the R1. This colorful and fun pocket-sized AI companion promised to do everything, from ordering an Uber to answering all your vexing questions. My story on the R1 had just gone live and within hours—I'm not trying to pat myself on the back here—there were a lot of eyeballs on it. The device was unlike anything that had come before, and showed us a novel vision of how these newfangled AI agents would fit into our lives. Rabbit's R1 became the breakout story of CES, and the company claims it sold 100,000 units by March.
Soon after it came Apple's Vision Pro—a $3,499 mixed-reality headset that lets you escape the real world to watch movies, play games, and work in a cyber-office with multiple screens hovering around you. Apple had spent the year prior hyping it, and it was the first new product category for the company since the Apple Watch in 2015.
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