v11 software update SUCKS

[Boza]

Nowadays every interface is aiming to look ‘cool’. Not ‘simple and intuitive’.

And also “new” - whatever that means.

 

[wdolson]

It seems like that you want Tesla to become just another automobile manufacturer...remember when Apple first lost Steve Jobs...a visionary company needs a visionary boss. Some want to lose all that in return for a dealership in their town and quick service appointments. My council is be careful what you wish for...

The Apple board replaced Jobs with a bean counter whose experience was in the food industry (Pepsi). It was a terrible choice for and tech company.

There is a wide range of creativity and vision between a bureaucratic bean counter with an MBA and no brain and a genius like Elon who brings a high degree of instability with him.

Tesla doesn't need am extreme idealist now. They needed Elon to get established. Somebody with a good imagination, a fair degree of vision, but much less controversial and much better at running a large organization would help the company going forward.

This was in the Oil and Gas Journal back in the 1980s, but the article stuck with me because it's so true. The article made the point that companies (primarily tech companies) go through three phases:

1) Entrepreneur
2) Engineering phase
3) Bean counter phase

In the entrepreneur phase the company is a dynamic place with lots of growth and changes. The people running the company are the founders who are full of vision, but not always great at organization. Companies often fail in this phase for many reasons by both internal and external problems.

In the engineering phase the company is run by someone who has done the jobs they are overseeing and often came up the ranks in the company. In this phase growth is much milder, but the company is very stable and companies in this phase rarely go out of business.

When bean counters take over the company, and the company becomes much more focused on things like the stock price or flogging old products rather than investing in R&D. Companies in this phase die off like dinosaurs whose days are past.

Apple went right from entrepreneur to bean counter when they got rid of Jobs. The company was on life support when Jobs came back and he moved the company into a hybrid engineering/entrepreneur phase. Since Jobs' death they moved into an engineering phase with Tim Cook at the helm. Cook doesn't have the vision of Jobs, but the company is stable. Apple doesn't have the pizazz with the public it had when Jobs was running the show, but it will be around for a long time to come.

Microsoft is further down this track right now. New releases from MS barely get much notice these days, but the company has a strong presence in the business world and is still very profitable.

The people who run companies in the entrepreneur phase are not usually the people who can take a company into the engineering phase. Tesla is at that point. The entrepreneur phase is over. Maybe JB Straubel is off to other adventures, but there are other good engineers who can take the company into the next phase.

 

[_Redshift_]

The Apple board replaced Jobs with a bean counter whose experience was in the food industry (Pepsi). It was a terrible choice for and tech company.

There is a wide range of creativity and vision between a bureaucratic bean counter with an MBA and no brain and a genius like Elon who brings a high degree of instability with him.

Tesla doesn't need am extreme idealist now. They needed Elon to get established. Somebody with a good imagination, a fair degree of vision, but much less controversial and much better at running a large organization would help the company going forward.

This was in the Oil and Gas Journal back in the 1980s, but the article stuck with me because it's so true. The article made the point that companies (primarily tech companies) go through three phases:

1) Entrepreneur
2) Engineering phase
3) Bean counter phase

In the entrepreneur phase the company is a dynamic place with lots of growth and changes. The people running the company are the founders who are full of vision, but not always great at organization. Companies often fail in this phase for many reasons by both internal and external problems.

In the engineering phase the company is run by someone who has done the jobs they are overseeing and often came up the ranks in the company. In this phase growth is much milder, but the company is very stable and companies in this phase rarely go out of business.

When bean counters take over the company, and the company becomes much more focused on things like the stock price or flogging old products rather than investing in R&D. Companies in this phase die off like dinosaurs whose days are past.

Apple went right from entrepreneur to bean counter when they got rid of Jobs. The company was on life support when Jobs came back and he moved the company into a hybrid engineering/entrepreneur phase. Since Jobs' death they moved into an engineering phase with Tim Cook at the helm. Cook doesn't have the vision of Jobs, but the company is stable. Apple doesn't have the pizazz with the public it had when Jobs was running the show, but it will be around for a long time to come.

Microsoft is further down this track right now. New releases from MS barely get much notice these days, but the company has a strong presence in the business world and is still very profitable.

The people who run companies in the entrepreneur phase are not usually the people who can take a company into the engineering phase. Tesla is at that point. The entrepreneur phase is over. Maybe JB Straubel is off to other adventures, but there are other good engineers who can take the company into the next phase.

Very well stated. Great post.

 

[Xdama]

.

Nowadays every interface is aiming to look ‘cool’. Not ‘simple and intuitive’.

There are many acronyms in all armed forces, one that springs to mind is KISS or Keep It Simple Stupid

Looking “cool or new” is a joy of the Me Me generation, Instagram, FB, Twitter etc etc or as they’re known around my neck of the woods “ I want it I want it NOW” generation. Everyone wants instant gratification nowaday, no one wants to actually wait. They “follow” people on YouTube who actually have done bugger all worth following in most cases
Grumpy old Yorkshireman rant over

 

[Huskyf]

It's dookie in every single way. Music sources used to be together, now it's all disparate. Climate controls are awful, and don't get better with music memory.

Not sure if it's related to v11, but talking to navigation often results in "no search results found" recently... I typically have to ask again. It translates it the same way both times, just doesn't find a matching place. Seems like a connectivity issue, but if that's the case why not give me a loading animation and wait for a connection?

I think the price of the car should be lowered by 10% as long as v11 is installed, the car is definitely much worse with it.

Since two last updates the music source is coming back you can choose your music source like version 10. What's the problem with Climate control the only real change is to not make in front seat heather and defroster for me it's the only problem, don't have navigation error.

 

[Boza]

Yes, that is one of the major problems they introduced while focusing on things that were of questionable benefits (I.e. Sonic The Hedgehog) instead of fixing real V10 issues. On top of that, instead of fixing the issues they introduced, they gave us car icon colorization. From driver’s point of view I couldn’t care less for car colorization (that does not work on my car anyway) if my climate controls are so much harder to use than before.
V11 seems to be a symptom of a much more fundamental issue that sparked this whole discussion about Elon and Tesla, management priorities and company mission.

 

[_jmk]

Slightly off-topic, but there is currently no way to get rid of Elon unless he decides to go himself as he is still by far the largest Tesla shareholder. It's pretty likely that hes not going anywhere as he also considers himself to be invaluable, almost semi-god like person who no-one can replace. He even attempts to micro-manage small details he really doesn't have the bandwidth to think through properly anymore.

While Elon has been, and to some degree still is, Tesla's greatest asset he is also slowly becoming Tesla's greatest risk. Tesla already won the EV battle and the only way they can loose it at this point is via Musks lack of focus, extremely risky adventures and side-steps like the dancing spandex robot.

 

[Bouba]

Like many here, I have never even opened a video game in the car (or anywhere else)..so I couldn’t care less about these ‘bloatwares’...but...the other day I was at a supercharger and I noticed that those Teslas with kids in the back..as soon as their car was plugged in the kids would scurry to the front and play games...while dad walked the dog

 

[Alowan]

Yes, that is one of the major problems they introduced while focusing on things that were of questionable benefits (I.e. Sonic The Hedgehog) instead of fixing real V10 issues. On top of that, instead of fixing the issues they introduced, they gave us car icon colorization. From driver’s point of view I couldn’t care less for car colorization (that does not work on my car anyway) if my climate controls are so much harder to use than before.
V11 seems to be a symptom of a much more fundamental issue that sparked this whole discussion about Elon and Tesla, management priorities and company mission.

and even Sonic is not available to a large % as they disabled it in cars without data on center console

 

[Xdama]

Like many here, I have never even opened a video game in the car (or anywhere else)..so I couldn’t care less about these ‘bloatwares’...but...the other day I was at a supercharger and I noticed that those Teslas with kids in the back..as soon as their car was plugged in the kids would scurry to the front and play games...while dad walked the dog

Never opened a game, but I have watched Netflix while sat on the (free) 7kW charger at work over the weekend. Heated seats, surround sound, cup of coffee ... it's better than the flat I rent when away from home for work lol.

 

[sleepydoc]

I actually feel most software app interfaces are designed by sadists, nowadays.

Steve Jobs, in 1998:

”That's been one of my mantras - focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

I doubt most of the UX people even understand this concept.

Even Apple itself. The infamous iTunes update that made the earlier simple and elegant version become inexplicably complicated.

Nowadays every interface is aiming to look ‘cool’. Not ‘simple and intuitive’.

Steve Jobs was right, as he often was. Anyone can do simple. A lot of people can do powerful. Simultaneously doing powerful and simple is incredibly hard. Years ago a friend dismissed the iPhone saying "it's all old technology." That was true - nothing in the iPhone was new in terms of hardware. What Apple did was put that hardware together with an interface that was very intuitive and easy to use.

Many of the controls are somewhat standardized on most cars - the blinker stalk, most cars have a stalk for the wipers, etc. Tesla's challenge with moving most things to the touch screen was that while they had total flexibility they also needed to make something intuitive, easy to use and overcome the lack of physical knobs and switches which provide both visual and tactile cues and feedback.

As I and many others have noticed, one of the big and obvious fails with V11 was how it made no distinction between controls needed while driving (climate control) and those needed when not driving (games). That's an incredibly basic distinction to miss and tells me they had a bunch of novices designing the system.

 

[Msjulie]

As I and many others have noticed, one of the big and obvious fails with V11 was how it made no distinction between controls needed while driving (climate control) and those needed when not driving (games). That's an incredibly basic distinction to miss and tells me they had a bunch of novices designing the system.

And/or Elon in his reality distortion field believing, as he has claimed for some years now, that FSD is just around the corner so why do you need driver controls anyway.

Not only is that not likely to happen immediately, it's an interesting conflict to the notion of creating driver-focused cars like the Roadster (well if they ever do) or Cybertruck. Do you really buy one of those to play a video game while shuffling home with the robot driver at the helm?

 

[Merrill]

This whole attitude by Tesla is done for FSD and guess what I do not want it and not even sure my 2016 Model X can support it, I did not pay for it so why are you messing up my car. It bothers me that I do not have any control over the software updates and now I have a car that I did not buy or want. I was a big fan of Tesla and now I probably will look to purchase something else in the next few years. If they fix this V11 mess then I might keep it.

 

[bobby g]

and even Sonic is not available to a large % as they disabled it in cars without data on center console

Can that be worked around with a phone hour spot?

 

[Msjulie]

Can that be worked around with a phone hour spot?

Should be - V10 at least even allows you to keep connected to hotspot while driving which may allow me to avoid V11 longer

 

[jabloomf1230]

Should be - V10 at least even allows you to keep connected to hotspot while driving which may allow me to avoid V11 longer

That wasn't changed in the V11 UI.

 

[Msjulie]

That wasn't changed in the V11 UI.

Yes I know, my point was you do not need to get V11 if you wish to use your phone as hotspot ie for me, I do not want V11 even though the fix for 3G decommission is supposedly only in V11 thus my comment about using phone hotspot

 

[OxBrew]

And/or Elon in his reality distortion field believing, as he has claimed for some years now, that FSD is just around the corner so why do you need driver controls anyway.

Not only is that not likely to happen immediately, it's an interesting conflict to the notion of creating driver-focused cars like the Roadster (well if they ever do) or Cybertruck. Do you really buy one of those to play a video game while shuffling home with the robot driver at the helm?

Plus, we just got 4 inches of unexpected snow this morning, no plowing likely today.

Yesterday, traction sand from all winter obscured most lane lines around town. I've been watching, about 10-20% of my daily driving has AP available, even on dry clean sunny day roads.

Robotaxis or cars without steering wheels will not ever happen outside of tightly controlled areas in temperate climates.

Charging network and battery thermal management are the only things tipping the scales right now. Next EV will likely either be a Subaru or Mercedes crossover, whoever gets the battery right first.

 

[H2oV]

I have to perform an extra action to turn on seat heaters since the icons are gone from the home screen....and I can't turn on seat heaters without turning on the HVAC as well. Dafuq?

This had me baffled.

 

[H2oV]

I have to perform an extra action to turn on seat heaters since the icons are gone from the home screen....and I can't turn on seat heaters without turning on the HVAC as well. Dafuq?

This had me baffled