Firmware 8.0

[DÆrik]

That's likely already online because Europeans have had Spotify in their car for awhile now, due to Rdio's demise.

I would tend to agree. However the link that @SouthlakeDad shows the URL as "support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/play_on_stereo_tv_car/tesla/....." The "US" in there signifies that it is the USA version of the site. Whereas the European versions contain UK, DK, DE, FR, etc instead of US.

Therefore I would say that link shows us the Spotify is finally coming!

Thanks Erik

 

[Cosmacelf]

My #1 request is a Nav that can give GOOD routes, similar to what Google maps can do. My routes overestimate the speed you can do on city roads with traffic lights. Looking at the estimated time of arrival while driving, it simply does not take into account traffic on city streets. It also has a bad habit of giving you suboptimal routes when it's own algorithm knows another route would be faster (you ignore the route and go the way you know is faster, and the nav knocks a few minutes off the estimated arrival time after it has recomputed the route).

And while the web browser is just a nice to have, would it kill them to employ a single software engineer for the 30-60 days it would take to port a new one that was lightweight, wasn't infested with obvious bugs, and supported HTML standards that arrived 10 years ago?

I'm not an expert in browser code, but heck, I'll give Tesla a fixed bid $50K contract to rewrite/re-port the browser so that it works. Others that have actual experience doing this could probably undercut my bid.

 

[DÆrik]

Do you also get the ads with Spotify?

While I don't have access to it yet, I'm in the USA also,he link to Spotify says "The car can automatically create a Premium account for you." So I would assume no ads since the premium account lists no ads. I have a premium account already and have no ads.

From Spotify:

Premium

• Unlimited high-quality streaming access to over 30 millions songs.
• Play music without internet connection.
• Travel abroad with your music.
• Use Connect to play Spotify on your speaker, TV, and car.
• No ad interruption.

I think the biggest take away from what Spotify posted was this "Note: An automatic Tesla account will only be accessible in-vehicle." That alone is why I will keep my separate premium account. To be able to use it at home, work, and be able to download music for use without signal is to valuable for me to give up.

Thanks Erik

 

[chillaban]

I think from Elon's comments that with v7 and v8 they are restructuring a lot of the code under the hood I assume to run more efficiently/improve security.
And also claimed to make future updates faster/easier.

The trouble with under the hood is we don't see this, we only get to view the UI, which could go some way to explaining the 8.0 / 8.1 in that they have done most of the work under the hood with v8 and some UI changes, with more to follow fairly quickly from the new code base.

As a low-level OS engineer myself, I hope this is the real story of 8.0. I've seen some of the teardowns of the underpinnings of the Tesla infotainment system (X11 networked displays between the two panels?) and it looked like it was something slapped together using off-the-shelf parts that is probably largely to blame for the performance issues with the platform. They might be nearing the end of this architecture's capabilities and to move to something else would likely require rewriting a good portion of the UI, even if it is largely the same set of apps from the outside.

 

[number12]

real question is ol elon considering Monday as part of the weekend??

 

[eyespii]

real question is ol elon considering Monday as part of the weekend??

I'm not even sure if Elon considers Sunday a part of the weekend.

 

[Matias]

Do you also get the ads with Spotify?

Here in Europe we get Spotify without ads.

 

[HankLloydRight]

What are "weekends"?

 

[wolfson292]

While I don't have access to it yet, I'm in the USA also,he link to Spotify says "The car can automatically create a Premium account for you." So I would assume no ads since the premium account lists no ads. I have a premium account already and have no ads.

From Spotify:

Premium

• Unlimited high-quality streaming access to over 30 millions songs.
• Play music without internet connection.
• Travel abroad with your music.
• Use Connect to play Spotify on your speaker, TV, and car.
• No ad interruption.

I think the biggest take away from what Spotify posted was this "Note: An automatic Tesla account will only be accessible in-vehicle." That alone is why I will keep my separate premium account. To be able to use it at home, work, and be able to download music for use without signal is to valuable for me to give up.

Thanks Erik

There are no ads present when manually enabled in the US firmware. Tesla provided premium credentials are auto populated, but you can enter your own.

 

[mblakele]

The spotify support page (linked above) also notes that "An automatic Tesla account will only be accessible in-vehicle."

 

[number12]

I'm not even sure if Elon considers Sunday a part of the weekend.

we blog post "coming at end of weekend" would everyone guess later today or later tomorrow on Labor Day?

 

[ohmman]

we blog post "coming at end of weekend" would everyone guess later today or later tomorrow on Labor Day?

I would guess next Thursday.

 

[rog]

I doubt it will be any time soon.

What really strikes me is that he seems to be the only one that can write that blog post... Is there no one else in the company that knows what's going on on the firmware side?? Or could it maybe really be that at least the 8.1 part only exists in Musk's head at this point in time?

 

[fallen888]

I would guess next Thursday.

Perfect, just in time for my delivery!

 

[BertL]

I no longer try to guess. When it comes, it will arrive on "Elon Time" and then I'll be most interested in seeing what he has to say.

As people have said, does "this coming weekend" mean by EOD today as it normally would, or is it EOD tomorrow because Labor Day is a US holiday? But then again, Tesla is a global company HQ'd in the US, where that may or not be a consideration, yet Elon pre-pre-announced it via his personal Twitter feed, so IDK. We also have time zones to consider, so the more precise definition of when a day ends can come into play. Elon may physically be in another part of the world, so that could skew his POV and the timeline. Also, does "this coming weekend" really have to mean THIS weekend, or maybe in a very loose definition, it's just a future one to come?

Whenever the pre-announcement appears, I'll be absorbing it closely like I suspect most of us will -- dreaming about the possibilities, and wondering about all the things that could be, but are not specifically discussed.

 

[BertL]

Perfect, just in time for my delivery!

I took delivery last year when 6.2 was the in-thing, to then receive 7.0 OTA a short number of weeks later. Talk about extending my enthusiasm for my greatest toy. Having a 1 - 2 punch effectively receiving a new car twice in a month was awesome.

BTW congrats in advance on your new toy!

 

[Cosmacelf]

As a low-level OS engineer myself, I hope this is the real story of 8.0. I've seen some of the teardowns of the underpinnings of the Tesla infotainment system (X11 networked displays between the two panels?) and it looked like it was something slapped together using off-the-shelf parts that is probably largely to blame for the performance issues with the platform. They might be nearing the end of this architecture's capabilities and to move to something else would likely require rewriting a good portion of the UI, even if it is largely the same set of apps from the outside.

Yes, I was quite horrified to learn that the underlying OS was Linux. Which explains things like random UI slowdowns as the OS pages stuff in and out of RAM. Every time I say that on these forums, though, I get shot down saying there is nothing wrong with Linux. Whether or not it is Linux, the car should be running an OS with bounded memory programs such that things like memory paging is not done.

As far as Elon and software go, he's a bit like Bill Gates. Bill who was self taught in computer programming, thought that BASIC was the best language well after its expiry date, and didn't catch onto the Internet until way too late. Elon never formally studied programming, and the early PayPal APIs (which people still use) reflect that. Elon is very smart, but if he didn't put in a very competent software architect (not himself) early on in the Model S code development, the software will always be hard to maintain and be full of bugs.

Bill eventually retired out of his CEO and then CTO roles well after he should have based on competence, but at least he did finally exit. It will be interesting to see what Elon does.

 

[fallen888]

I took delivery last year when 6.2 was the in-thing, to then receive 7.0 OTA a short number of weeks later. Talk about extending my enthusiasm for my greatest toy. Having a 1 - 2 punch effectively receiving a new car twice in a month was awesome.

BTW congrats in advance on your new toy!

Thanks, Bert. I can't think about anything else these days. The Narcos new season marathon did help a little to take my mind off the car for a few hours here and there. But now that I'm done binging on that, it's back to the obsession for me. It also doesn't help that my awesome DS had to take a leave of absence for family reasons, and now I'm stuck with a shitty, unresponsive one, raising my anxiety levels even more.

But I digress, the one-two punch of a new toy and 8.0 update is like busting a nut twice in a minute.

 

[msnow]

I doubt it will be any time soon.

What really strikes me is that he seems to be the only one that can write that blog post... Is there no one else in the company that knows what's going on on the firmware side?? Or could it maybe really be that at least the 8.1 part only exists in Musk's head at this point in time?

I think it just proves that a) Tesla is Elon's baby b) Tesla is still a relatively small company c) Elon is still their #1 salesman. Think Jobs and Apple, Gates and Microsoft, Zuckerberg and Facebook - big news and product announcements are going to be coming from Elon even if others in the organization assist.

 

[flashflood]

Yes, I was quite horrified to learn that the underlying OS was Linux. Which explains things like random UI slowdowns as the OS pages stuff in and out of RAM.

Paging can only happen if the OS is configured with a swap device, which I would find shocking in the modern age. Paging and swapping were important OS concepts back when DRAM was scarce, but the answer to running out of memory has been "buy more" for years now.