Holiday Update (2021.44.25.2)- A Big Disappointment

[sleepydoc]

I'll be different. I actually like v11 overall myself. I like the direction its going towards. Is it perfect, no. neither is Windows 11, Neither is E-Mach, the list goes on and on. That's is the sole reason we have OTA's to give us updates, and changes items, make things better. What is good for one isn't good enough "perfect" for another. So much to like about this update...

1. Waypoints which people were saying for last few years was the most craziest, stupidest thing ever to be imagined that Tesla didn't have.
2. Customizable tray, the concept and the ability to do this is a great idea and loving it.
3. Editing Waypoint's at first they only had just Waypoints (Model S/X) but they made it editable, major points in there favor.
4. It appears that AP has made some great improvements. Less phantom braking (in my car)
5. Expanded driving visualization (drag the window to make the map smaller (if you want to)
6. Blind spot camera view. Owners screamed and screamed, may not be perfect, but I had nothing at all 2 months ago!
7. Subwoofer control, you can now edit your subwoofer.
8. A reorganization of the controls in the menus. Needed to be done, v9, v10 added a lot and some seemed to be random, and this moved items together in a logical order (maybe)

That's just some. Why people don't come on and say they love it? because then they get slammed for how dare they say that. Its like todays culture.. you don't believe what others then you get ridiculed, slammed and told you don't know what your talking about.

Sure v11 needs some rethinking and reworking. But I actually like it. I have no issue with the heated seats, and I live in Ohio, where its cold. Doesn't hurt my feelings to swipe up and click the heated seat. Others it does, I am fine with that, to each and his own. But the sky is not falling, the world is not ending. No other car can change this much, just like that... for the good or the bad.....

I agree with a lot of what you said - V11 has some improvements; adding waypoints is nice, and AP has incremental improvments.
My (and others’) complaint is the changes they made to the UI were very poorly thought out and make it more difficult to use. Most importantly, none of the features they added required any changes at all and the problems they supposedly fixed didn’t exist. “A new cleaner interface” is nice, but it really wasn’t cluttered before and no one was complaining that they couldn’t see the map because of the icons at the top of the screen.

What Tesla did is change the interface from one that was intuitive and easily learned to one that you have to ‘figure out’ If Tesla had simply made it so you could drag the existing controls off the screen (or drag them back) I think most people would have been fine. (How many people were complaining that the defrost control was cluttering up the screen?)

 

[sleepydoc]

“Tesla is already behind the curve with no tactile switches, just to try to save money.”
Lol you are joking, right? Everyone else is behind with their’s outdated nubs and buttons. One of many reasons I never liked American made cars interiors.

”outdated nubs and buttons” have a lot of advantages. Tesla has the ability to change and adapt with the screen. This can be good or it can be bad (as we’re seeing right now.) The biggest advantage of physical switches is they give tactile feedback. You can easily operate them without taking your eyes off the road.

Just a simple thought, technically when we say UI, aren’t we referring to a touch screen type interface or even simpler a software interface? Suggesting the UI can be improved by adding physical buttons doesn’t work. Those physical buttons aren’t part of the UI so you aren’t improving it by adding them. You are bypassing the UI much like using voice commands which are activated by a button. Just wanted to stir the pot a bit.

Hopefully no one on here tries to upgrade to a Plaid vehicle. There are even less buttons and levers there…

The user interface includes everything the user interacts with to drive the car and absolutely includes physical buttons and switches. The scroll wheels on the steering wheel and the turn signal stalk? They’re just as much a part of the UI as the touch screen is. All of these are integrated together and are part of the driving experience.

Personally, I never want to drive a plaid simply because they took away the turn signal stalk. Another gleaming example of “just because you can doesn’t mean you should” The best review I’ve seen of it is “well, after you get used to it it‘s not so bad.” Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

 

[Big Earl]

Fine. Find me any other car with heated seats that takes more than one button press.

I'll wait.

Current model Jeep Cherokee.

 

[EmbersDC]

Current model Jeep Cherokee.

Then the Jeep has horrible design. I lease all my vehicles. Last five have been: Audi, Infiniti, Lexus, Acura, and now Tesla. Besides the Tesla ALL the other vehicles had ONE TOUCH to turn on heat/AC seats.

Functions that are used regularly should ALWAYS be ONE TOUCH and easy to find. That is the core concept of user centric design.

 

[Vin_L]

Then the Jeep has horrible design. I lease all my vehicles. Last five have been: Audi, Infiniti, Lexus, Acura, and now Tesla. Besides the Tesla ALL the other vehicles had ONE TOUCH to turn on heat/AC seats.

Functions that are used regularly should ALWAYS be ONE TOUCH and easy to find. That is the core concept of user centric design.

Then maybe go back to them??

 

[rjpjnk]

Did I miss the thread about how great the holiday update is? Oh wait, there isn't one because people who are happy with it aren't going to take the time to come on here and post about it.

This one has 84 likes on first post. That's saying something.

Sorry, I actually like the new UI :)

After playing around with this for two days, I'm really starting to like the new UI. Actually, pretty surprised by so many negative comments here, to me its very intuitive. I think we're getting a view of the direction they're going in, I don't see it bad at all. It's not the perfect start...

teslamotorsclub.com

 

[damonbrodie]

Then maybe go back to them??

What a dumb comment.

The point is Tesla is pushing the envelope with its simplify, simplify, simplify mandate. In principal this is good and has included everything from physical buttons, to the stalks and now the screen. However, this has to be weighed against safety, and on top of that people bought cars that had a certain user experience and that is being changed from under them without recourse.

So - from a safety perspective - does the car automatically sense windshield is fogging or freezing over and automatically defrost it? NO? Then don't push that safety feature further away from the user. To a lesser extent the same holds true with the wipers. Yes, you can push the stalk and then touch the screen to make a change to the wiper settings, but this requires a coordinated and quick movement (you only have a second or two before the wiper card slides away). Not every driver is a young coordinated person that are touchscreen gods.....

It is reasonable for people to be upset when safety features are being made harder to access.

Tesla/Elon immediately sensed the anger and frustration and Elon's tweet says they will continue to evolve the UI. I have no idea how there isn't some UI overlord in Tesla that didn't catch V11 before it went out and put a halt to its release until its configurability is complete and allows the user to put the safety features back to where they are comfortable with.

(I'm a Tesla fanboy, and I mostly love V11 - blindspot camera, homelink improvements, waypoints - all good!)

 

[Hexo09]

One thing I was thinking yesterday, for all the ways the climate interface has been made worse (according to a lot of people, including me), they could at least have given us the option to turn off the passenger or driver vents while the other is on. That's why I laugh when people say that Tesla reads feedback on their UI, that's a feature that has been wanted for years now, seems fairly simple to implement, and yet it hasn't shown up. But hey, we get Sonic and a light show that no-one asked for!

In all seriousness, there isn't really the need to continue beating a dead horse. We will begrudgingly get used to the bad aspects of this UI while hopefully it gets improved a bit over the months, while we take for granted the improvements. And then we'll do it all over again at the end of 2022...

 

[Jimt29]

Remember the old adage "Oil the squeak that squeaks the loudest". The more posts concerning how pleased we were with the previous version and the negative responses to the current version the better.

Keep the posts coming. Maybe some good will come of it. I think the latest version is mostly awful especially the light show and more games. It is after all a car first and a toy second. And let us not forget the wonderful ability to fart on command. Another questionable use of time, talent and financial resources.

 

[Tman317]

Perhaps Tesla should make the software upgrades like those from computer companies. On my MAC OS I can and do elect to not upgrade right away; I have the option. I sometimes wait 6mo to a year so I can avoid the initial bugs, waiting until they are fixed. That way the car stays the way it was when you evaluated it's features and bought it.
Someone on here suggested just shut off your Wi Fi but I'm not sure that works. I have a detached garage that had no reception so I had to run a cable out to it. I unplugged the cable but still had a software upgrade. Not sure how that happened.

 

[CaseyL]

You must have a very different experience. Mine is so awful at night from the blinker washing out the picture that I turned it off. Turn signal at night = flashing purple box on the screen, extremely distracting. I keep seeing this from a ton of people, though also some that say they don't seem to have the issue. There is obviously still work here to be done.

Yes, something is different. There must be a hardware difference in the camera and/or blinker. I see you have a Model 3, but I would have guessed that assemly would be the same as my Model Y.

 

[Alan_F]

My disappointment with V11 is mostly down to the multiple cases where they either took something that was just fine and made it worse, or where they added something new and could have so easily made it even better with just a little more thought or effort (like putting the blind spot camera higher on the screen).

I found another miss today. Every time I get into the car lately there's a box offering cold weather driving tips at the bottom left of the screen. Clicking on it just goes to the cold weather driving tips part of the owner's manual. I was driving earlier and using navigation but had the controls menu full screen over the map. I realized I was approaching an intersection and looked to the bottom left of the screen for the next turn prompt, but the cold weather driving tips prompt was there instead. There is no reason that prompt should stay on the screen once you go into drive. If you haven't clicked on it and read the tips prior to putting the car in motion, you shouldn't do so once moving. I didn't see any way to dismiss the prompt other than to click on it which brings up the owner's manual.

The next turn prompt used to be above the car visualization, which was a better spot as I didn't have to look as low on the screen to see it. Also, as far as I can remember, nothing else in the UI ever covered it up. The next turn was always either on the map, or above the visualization when some other app was covering the map. So with this update they not only moved this info to a worse spot on the screen, but they created a conflict where other messages can hide the next turn prompt.

This is a huge screen. The car visualization is mostly a waste of space. It looks really impressive but doesn't do anything for me while I'm driving. It could be set up as a better blind spot warning system, by zooming out the view to show cars to the rear or by changing the lane indicator color BEFORE I've put on my turn signal and started to change lanes, but it doesn't do that and simply takes up space that could be used for something else. The map is huge. It looks really impressive, but it is much bigger than needed to allow me to use it for navigation. It could easily be reduced to 1/2 its current size and it would still get the job done while opening up a lot of screen for other uses.

So the designers don't get a pass for making things harder to use just because they also add new features or fix prior problems. Some people have compared the UI update to a cell phone update, and in some ways it is. The problem is that some of the elements of V11 are like if Apple decided to take the volume keys that used to adjust the volume up or down with a simple push, and decided that you first had to click an icon on the screen for "side buttons", then select "volume control", then use the up or down button to change the volume.

 

[sleepydoc]

What a dumb comment.

The point is Tesla is pushing the envelope with its simplify, simplify, simplify mandate. In principal this is good and has included everything from physical buttons, to the stalks and now the screen. However, this has to be weighed against safety, and on top of that people bought cars that had a certain user experience and that is being changed from under them without recourse.

So - from a safety perspective - does the car automatically sense windshield is fogging or freezing over and automatically defrost it? NO? Then don't push that safety feature further away from the user. To a lesser extent the same holds true with the wipers. Yes, you can push the stalk and then touch the screen to make a change to the wiper settings, but this requires a coordinated and quick movement (you only have a second or two before the wiper card slides away). Not every driver is a young coordinated person that are touchscreen gods.....

It is reasonable for people to be upset when safety features are being made harder to access.

Tesla/Elon immediately sensed the anger and frustration and Elon's tweet says they will continue to evolve the UI. I have no idea how there isn't some UI overlord in Tesla that didn't catch V11 before it went out and put a halt to its release until its configurability is complete and allows the user to put the safety features back to where they are comfortable with.

(I'm a Tesla fanboy, and I mostly love V11 - blindspot camera, homelink improvements, waypoints - all good!)

I’d call it a completely asinine comment. Apparently anyone who purchases a Tesla does so at their own risk; if Tesla changes the software after you’ve spent $60k on the car you should just sell it?

 

[Big Earl]

Perhaps Tesla should make the software upgrades like those from computer companies. On my MAC OS I can and do elect to not upgrade right away; I have the option. I sometimes wait 6mo to a year so I can avoid the initial bugs, waiting until they are fixed. That way the car stays the way it was when you evaluated it's features and bought it.
Someone on here suggested just shut off your Wi Fi but I'm not sure that works. I have a detached garage that had no reception so I had to run a cable out to it. I unplugged the cable but still had a software upgrade. Not sure how that happened.

Installing the software update is entirely optional.

 

[OxBrew]

are like if Apple decided to take the volume keys that used to adjust the volume up or down with a simple push, and decided that you first had to click an icon on the screen for "side buttons", then select "volume control", then use the up or down button to change the volume.

Great analogy. "You just have to learn to hit an icon 2x, what's the big deal, boomer????"

 

[sleepydoc]

Installing the software update is entirely optional.

Not really - you can defer it somewhat, but eventually you’re forced to install it and if you’re part of the FSD Beta program you can’t install only the FSD software, you get the crappy interface to go with it.

 

[S3XY1138]

I’m loving my Tesla with no complaints. Life is short, don’t sweat the small things!

 

[FredMertz]

I can deal with most of the new things that suck, but grouping together "Favorites" and "Recents" and not having all of your favorites always visible is atrocious.

I have random albums that I listened to for 2 seconds on my main screen and I can't find the god damn radio presets.

 

[sleepydoc]

I can deal with most of the new things that suck, but grouping together "Favorites" and "Recents" and not having all of your favorites always visible is atrocious.

I have random albums that I listened to for 2 seconds on my main screen and I can't find the god damn radio presets.

I’m sure there’s a voice command for it!

 

[S3XY1138]

I’m sure there’s a voice command for it!

Or an easy double tap…