Fwiw Teenage Engineering is a design firm who was originally contracted by Rabbit to design the physical device. I don't think they had anything to do with the functionality.
While Rabbit Inc is a separate entity, they are more deeply intertwined than a mere design contract. Rabbit's CEO, Jesse Lyu, is on TE's board of directors. TE's CEO, Jesper Kouthoofd, is employed by Rabbit as "Chief Design Officer".
That’s a good point, I guess they didn’t have any hand in the software…just seems icky to me.
I trusted the product mainly because of their name, it’s hard for me to understand how they didn’t see what the underlying product was when they attached their name to it.
Teenage Engineering use a type of design that is intended to obfuscate the functionality of the device. For example, their Pocket Operator series use LCD displays which have very little utility to the experience of music-making. The OP1 has an OLED display which mostly displays non-sequitur nonsense.
Those of us who despise Teenage Engineering are reacting to a design ethos which devalues the users knowledge and understanding of what they are doing, over whimsical non-sequitur. You're not getting a musical instrument - you're getting a device, which despite itself, can nevertheless be used to make some kind of music.
That's the beauty of music, not the device. You can make music with anything.
So the feeling among those of us who also make musical instruments is that Teenage Engineering are packaging up an inherent feature of music and selling it to people in a fancy way - they don't really care about the music-making features, which are almost secondary to their effort to design aesthetically appealing, moderately functional, expensive toys.
And in that light, it makes complete sense that they would involve themselves in the Rabbit R1. The impression is that Teenage Engineering kind of despise their customers, who they think are dumb, and they therefore invest in non-sequitur aesthetics in lieu of smart design that pushes the industry forward. Teenage Engineering ship exploitation and ridicule - they don't make finely crafted instruments for musicians to hone their skills. Most great musicians who play with an OP1 and make music with it, do so despite the devices' many roadblocks to creativity.
