Calendar is nice... but how long until we get basic playlist access?

[rlang59]

I have to say, regardless of what they added or didn't, it still is nice that i've gotten 3 updates in 5 months of ownership. I assuming the things I want will turn up eventually and perhaps someday the missing stuff I really miss will be there. I'd have taken USB shuffle over all the updates I got with 6.0, but each one (except the air suspension one since I don't have that) is a nice FREE addition to an already great car.

I've never really liked shuffle and never use it so not having it isn't a big deal to me.

 

[youlikeadajuice]

As far as media functionality goes, it'd be great if when you perform a search over voice command, the results came back with USB results as well (and a shuffle option!!!) . Scrolling through lists of artist takes forever and is not very safe while driving.

 

[tomas]

The most logical explanation would be that they're working on CarPlay integration and don't want to waste time on an interim technology.

This has also been my theory, that they've realized it makes no sense to build media player, have decided to integrate 3rd party, and that's gotten hung up somehow. IN fact, waiting for a third party on this might have been pushing back 6.0 so they dropped new media player from update to get it out. Let's see what happens. I'm also yearning for shuffle and playlist, but also enjoying listening to albums in sequence as the artist intended with hifi flac sound. Maybe should move to Colorado

 

[trils0n]

Features I would like for the future media player are:
-Recognize and play songs with "special" characters, like umlauts and accents.
-Gapless playback
-Option to stop playing after an album finishes instead of looping to beginning again
-Shuffle (all, genre, artist, album, etc)
-Voice command to play from specified source (play blank from USB).

 

[MDK]

I have no idea why the calendar took precedence over fixing music, as music is used far more often. I guess it's like the cross country route through South Dakota--Elon wanted it.

Or... Talulah wanted it

Elon Musk on Twitter:

And.. I prefer to listen to my music one album at a time so doubt I'd use a shuffle feature, but am really looking forward to the calendar integration.

 

[bollar]

Or... Talulah wanted it

Oh, it all suddenly makes sense. Carry on, Elon.

 

[Treading water]

I was really hoping this update would finally include decent music controls for people who play music stored on their phones. This is a very basic feature that you get with any other nice car. I recently bought $120 touch-screen stereo for my truck and it has a far superior phone music interface than I have in my Tesla.

The Tesla software needs to at least add the basics. A "scrubber" bar to skip forward and rewind in a song (that is available for USB stored songs). The ability to browse to folders and playlists on the screen. Requiring drivers to do that on the phone is hazardous, and annoying.

I'm not the only one who's expressed shock that these features don't exist, and I've had several passengers comment on the lack of function in the music player. I'm surprised this isn't on the wishlist. I've seen many other posts about it.

 

[dsm363]

I was really hoping this update would finally include decent music controls for people who play music stored on their phones. This is a very basic feature that you get with any other nice car. I recently bought $120 touch-screen stereo for my truck and it has a far superior phone music interface than I have in my Tesla.

The Tesla software needs to at least add the basics. A "scrubber" bar to skip forward and rewind in a song (that is available for USB stored songs). The ability to browse to folders and playlists on the screen. Requiring drivers to do that on the phone is hazardous, and annoying.

I'm not the only one who's expressed shock that these features don't exist, and I've had several passengers comment on the lack of function in the music player. I'm surprised this isn't on the wishlist. I've seen many other posts about it.

Things are so much nicer than there were when the car was delivered two years ago but they still have a lot of work to do. I bet they are working on most of these basic features people are expecting. It's a matter of time and resources so hopefully the wait won't be too much longer.

 

[AmpedRealtor]

I hope all of these feature requests are going to be handled inside of 6.X and before 7.0.

 

[dsm363]

The version numbers are largely for marketing purposes. I'm hoping music is greatly improved by next spring at least.

 

[Treading water]

My theory on this is that Tesla is gunshy about allowing more than very limited 2-way data communication with the phone via the USB connection and are limited in what they can do using Bluetooth. I heard somewhere that other car companies (Ford Sync) have had major embarassing problems caused by viruses that get into the car OS via the drivers cellphone. That theory would partially explain why they don't allow the album art to come from the phone, instead they access their own art database.

If that's the reason, why not explain it so people understand the technical issues. Moderator?

 

[iffatall]

/**** 100% SPECULATION ****

I believe, just as someone else stated earlier, that the main focus of this update was navigation. The calendar feature is also mainly meant for navigation, rather than for you to be able to view your calendar which by itself would be of very little use, given you have your phone right there.

I believe a future imminent release will focus on media player adding all those basic features such as shuffle, playlists, displaying album art from file (only resorting to the web when it is missing from the file), displaying song/artist info better (currently, the artist info gets truncated even though there is so much space around), and better overall cache management. As someone else pointed out, it may also be that a future release focuses on making an SDK available instead, and hence rely on third party apps to take care of the media player UI. Although, it still seems unlikely that Tesla will abandon the stock media player in its current state.

Lastly, I also believe that future updates are not going to take as long as six took.

/**************************/

 

[Robert.Boston]

I like the calendar function, though what would be really nice is if it were smart enough to realize that phone numbers were phone numbers and allow you to dial with one tap.

+1 on this. I often take conference calls in the car, and having to pull over to dial in the phone # and authentication codes is a PITA. (Dialing them without pulling over is unsafe, and we still don't have a voice command that dials by number.)

 

[Dylan]

For me, I rather see them support Apple CarPlay. Gives me access to iOS music app, spotify, soundcloud and a thousand other apps that get developed and improved in a much, much higher rate.