I STILL think this is not incompetence at all. This thread is helping convince me of the opposite actually. I believe this is all going according to plan. The UI is gradually becoming less driver (human) centric, and more focused on the computer and autonomy. This is whether we have FSD or not. Elon has said he believes humans must merge with AI or become irrelevant. I will try to find some video examples of him saying that.
Our cars are a non-invasive example of them working toward that goal of merging AI and humans. Neuralink is the invasive example. The Teslabot fits in there somewhere. And all these projects are surely connected - sharing knowledge and data - building upon each other.
For us, each iteration of the UI is going to suck more because of this. They're trying to go as fast and get away with as much as they can. Lack of competition is allowing a pretty fast pace from them.
I'm struggling to reconcile all this in my head. At this point i'm thinking we can't fight it and we should try to find ways of thinking about it that don't make us mad. I may be completely worng and this is just me reading and watching too much sci-fi. But i don't think so. Elon absolutely has been influenced by sci-fi. First, we just have to hope he's acting in humanity's best interest, like he says.
Elon's biggest Sci Fi influences aren't movies, but books. He read lots of Science Fiction as a teen and I read a lot of the same stuff he did. He was influenced by authors such as Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C Clarke. I have known people who have a lot of compassion for the human race, but don't really like people much. I think Elon is sort of like that.
Unlike his billionaire competitors in the space race, he's focused on a goal that is more noble. He's trying to buy an insurance policy for the human race by establishing a self supporting colony on a different world. If we had not given up on advancing space travel after the moon landings and sticking to manned orbital flights only, we probably would be technologically ready to send people to Mars now. As it is, I think it's going to be a longer time frame than Elon would wish, though his advancements in space flight is a real benefit to humans.
As a concept, having a viable colony on another world is a good idea. Something could happen to cause civilization on Earth to crash, and/or do serious damage to the Earth. And most of those things are things we have no control over like getting smacked with a large asteroid or a super-volcano eruption. The last super-volcano eruption reduced the human race down to a few thousand people. Genetically the entire human race is less diverse than different troops of bonobo chimps in one region of Africa because of this event.
The most likely next super-volcano eruption is here in North America: Yellowstone.
I am very concerned about Neurolink. I know someone who personally knows some of the founders there who were working on this before Elon got involved. He thought it was cool tech until I threw out a couple of big problems off the top of my head like all computers connected to any kind of network can be hacked given enough time and effort. What happens if the computer in your head gets hacked?
I doubt his thinking about neurolink is affecting the interface for cars right now, but I do think his thinking about FSD is affecting his thinking. Same with the software development team. The thinking is probably "everyone will be using FSD soon, so why bother with the driver interface?" Even if FSD capability is just around the corner, not all Teslas can use it. Older cars will never be able to use it, and some people with FSD capable cars didn't pay for that upgrade. Some people will never want to use it.
Even if FSD is working perfectly, regulators will have to approve FSD without supervision and that could take years and may never happen. Even at that it will be a long time before FSD makes its way to the lower ends of economy. Until unsupervised FSD becomes a reality, the working poor are going to be driving their old ICE to work because there will be no robotaxis. Robotaxis are going to take a very long time to penetrate into rural areas. A lot of rural areas don't have good broadband yet!
Additionally are robotaxi owners going to allow their cars to go into poorer neighborhoods in cities where the cars could be stopped and stripped in the street? If FSD cars are programmed to not hurt anyone, all it takes is one person to position themselves so the car would have to run them over to get away while others take the wheels off or disables the car in some other way.
Most of the people talking about the utopia of self driving cars are upper middle class who have forgotten how most people live.
Steve Jobs death 2011. Apple Watch released 2015. AirPods 2016. Pro Display XDR. HomePod. Apple Silicon (M1) chips are the best in their class.
I have read that the Apple Watch was very far in the development cycle when Jobs died. It was the last project he piloted. Maybe AirPods are an advancement, but they just seem like a wireless form of the old wired ear buds. I'm not familiar with the Pro Display or HomePod, but the M1 is an evolution of the processor they developed for the iPod many years ago.
In any case, Apple does not generate the buzz they used to. I live with an Apple fan who has one of the original Macs with the case signed by the development team she bought new and back in the day and she had a first generation LaserWriter. Her computing equipment today consists of 2 Mac Minis, the newest from 2017, an older iMac, an iPhone 6s, and a 4 year old iPad Pro. She has no plans to update any of them. She doesn't like their new tech.