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Why can't Tesla make a decent media player?
- Thread starter srthomas21
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- Model S User Interface
youlikeadajuice
P 9130
I took my car in for service today, and I was given a brand new BMW 7 series to drive around. I'll tell you what, the media/navigation on that thing is awful. Confusing, cumbersome and has so many layers of menus! The Tesla media/nav is not perfect, but it was an excellent reminder that it's actually pretty good imho...
I wouldn't say the original version worked perfectly, since it too was missing some stuff (such as shuffle). IMHO it peaked around V6.2
I do like the sound with the 5 part EQ, but the frustrations of all the silly bugs kills my enjoyment
I do like the sound with the 5 part EQ, but the frustrations of all the silly bugs kills my enjoyment
As of now 85% of people that have voted are not satisfied with the media player. It's a small sample size and I'm not sure how many participants it would take to be statistically valid but that's a pretty staggering number. Most of the fixes we want should not be hard to implement. Tesla just doesn't care about it for some reason.
Boatguy
Active Member
I beg to differ. My other car is a 2014 BMW and for starters the entire Bluetooth interface for podcasts, music, etc. is much better than Tesla. Second, it has 20GB of onboard storage for a music library, and then excellent support for external devices (e.g., USB). Plugging in a telephone provides access to all the music on the phone; the Tesla doesn't even recognize a plugged in phone for anything more than charging it. Third, the entire interface can be accessed through one dial with four rocker positions and a "push to enter" button. The CID looks good in the showroom, but it's difficult to use while actually driving a car, particularly when controls are placed as far as possible from the driver (do they reverse the display in right hand drive countries?).
I'm here. But I would add that virtually all of the CID apps are pretty pathetic. I could go on for pages about navigation (no maps today when I was just 20mi from home), lack of route planning (current location to one other location is not route planning) and comically bad directions if it were not for the fact that sometimes we get tricked into following them (it has driven me around the block more than once), phone app with no favorites, media player with poorer UI and functionality than a 10yr old iPod, energy displays that use different units so nothing can be compared or cross checked (SOC vs RM), energy display that suggests predicted range based on 290W/mi that is entirely at odds with the de facto reduction in range of 1RM = 274W/mi (S90D), to say nothing of the lack of accounting for consumption when the car is not being driven. It goes on and on and on.
I have to agree that the caliber of engineering and/or management (both h/w and s/w) applied to the mechanical aspects of the car far exceed the caliber applied to the apps on the CID. This car is absolutely world class from a mechanical standpoint, and the s/w that controls the mechanical aspects of the car. CID apps, not so much.
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Akikiki
A'-Lo-HA ! y'all
Tesla just doesn't care about it for some reason. Do you care about world peace? I will jump to the conclusion that you do. So then, why have you not done something about world peace? Why don't we have world peace?
youlikeadajuice
P 9130
The BMW may have more capabilities (it had a CD player too LOL), but as I said, I found it cumbersome to navigate the many many menu layers. I suppose maybe with practice it would get better, but I find the Tesla system easy to navigate with no instruction and more than capable. To each his own! Can't wait to get my car back from service!
Akikiki
A'-Lo-HA ! y'all
But should we applaud Tesla that their Media Player is less terrible than BMW? That's a fairly low bar to set. I know I sound like a broken record, but my Empeg of 15 years is damn near perfect with a 1x4" VFD, 4 buttons, and a rotary knob. That software was designed for minimal interaction, maximum performance, all on 16MB of RAM and a 266mhz processor. Hell, you could do queue exact music just by hitting a single button on your remote and not even look at the screen. It had individual buttons for album, artist, genre, and year. So if you were listening to Michael Jackson, you could hot-key press a button to queue a matching result for album, artist, genre, and year. Sooo easy.
Tesla has had complaints about the missing media player and navigation features since the first Model S cars were produced.
Starting with the first major software updates (to support sleep mode), the navigation software has become increasingly unreliable. With 8.x, there are multiple problems with the software - forgetting what it was playing.
And the loss of easy-to-understand features like changing the media source from the steering wheel or having pre-sets for each of the radio bands - it's hard to understand how any of those features got through beta testing without major complaints.
The "improvements" in 8.0 were mostly visual - they look nice, but overall it's a step backward in usability - and it's even less reliable than 7.x was.
Tesla has long known about these issues and concerns - and evidently doesn't believe it is important enough to fix.
Though, we can hope they'll surprise us with the media player improvements they are promising for 8.1...
Starting with the first major software updates (to support sleep mode), the navigation software has become increasingly unreliable. With 8.x, there are multiple problems with the software - forgetting what it was playing.
And the loss of easy-to-understand features like changing the media source from the steering wheel or having pre-sets for each of the radio bands - it's hard to understand how any of those features got through beta testing without major complaints.
The "improvements" in 8.0 were mostly visual - they look nice, but overall it's a step backward in usability - and it's even less reliable than 7.x was.
Tesla has long known about these issues and concerns - and evidently doesn't believe it is important enough to fix.
Though, we can hope they'll surprise us with the media player improvements they are promising for 8.1...
I've always heard rumors that there was
I look forward to being surprised. As someone else pointed out, the development priorities might need to get adjusted if you are doing Easter eggs instead of adding a shuffle button.
AP, EAP, FSD, summons and autoparking are all software features.
If Tesla can't get the much simpler media player and navigation software to work well, without obvious design flaws and bugs - can owners have confidence in the more complex software operating the car?
Tesla's strategy for distributing AP 2.0 software this week only reinforces the impression that Tesla doesn't have confidence in their own released software, because they limited to AP 2.0 software to only 1000 cars, because they didn't want to risk distributing a major software problem to all of their cars.
This is how they distribute every software release (except for the stealth release several years ago when they instantly disabled the air suspension system, without any warning). Each release is distributed to a small number of cars, and then dribbled out to additional cars - with the process paused and then restarted every time a major bug is found (which seems to happen for every release).
Tesla can do better - other companies have figured this out - with a more effective development strategy, it is possible to deliver new software features quickly, without sacrificing product functionality or quality.
If Tesla can't get the much simpler media player and navigation software to work well, without obvious design flaws and bugs - can owners have confidence in the more complex software operating the car?
Tesla's strategy for distributing AP 2.0 software this week only reinforces the impression that Tesla doesn't have confidence in their own released software, because they limited to AP 2.0 software to only 1000 cars, because they didn't want to risk distributing a major software problem to all of their cars.
This is how they distribute every software release (except for the stealth release several years ago when they instantly disabled the air suspension system, without any warning). Each release is distributed to a small number of cars, and then dribbled out to additional cars - with the process paused and then restarted every time a major bug is found (which seems to happen for every release).
Tesla can do better - other companies have figured this out - with a more effective development strategy, it is possible to deliver new software features quickly, without sacrificing product functionality or quality.
Akikiki
A'-Lo-HA ! y'all
You know what? You are right. If you own one of these cars, maybe you should sell it. That way you can go start your own company, design your own history-making, futuristic vehicle and develop your own media player and auto pilot. Which brings me to my question. Why are you wasting your time here complaining about what you don't like when you can invest that time doing making your own?
I guess you are wondering why I am coming down on you? I just read the thread here, Leave Tesla Alone by Jack Baruth. Take a minute before you comment back and find that thread, read that Road and Track article and maybe you will reconsider.
Boatguy
Active Member
Having purchased the car, we have a vested interest in the success of Tesla. When I managed product managers for about $4B of products, customer feedback was considered invaluable. We spent a significant amount of money running focus groups and traveling to talk to customers face to face to learn what was working and what was not. What changes were embraced, what needs were not being addressed, etc. TMC provides a pathway for customers to provide feedback, and a very inexpensive way for Tesla to receive customer feedback. If I was managing product managers at Tesla, I would require them to read these forums on a daily basis, and then mix what they read here with other sources of customer input (salesforce feedback, professionally run forums, customer sat surveys, etc.).
When I owned my last Porsche, I was paid to come and provide comments on proposed features and model changes. I've never even seen a customer satisfaction survey from Tesla (Apple sends one after every contact with me). I've never heard of them running focus groups or seeking customer input, other than an email address which gets a "thank you for sharing" reply no matter what you tell them.
What you call "complaining", product managers call customer feedback.
You comment would be relevant if Tesla provided an SDK or some other platform to develop UI apps on. But they don't, so we are stuck petitioning them to make changes that their owner base actually wants. You know, the people who purchased their product, remember them?
I'd like to see the car be better for me, better for you, better for every future owner, and that includes Model 3. There is no downside to Tesla adding requested features and fixing real-world software bugs.
Most of us who spend time on the forums are here because we want Tesla to succeed, and despite the flaws, most of us will likely consider purchasing another Tesla (we're planning to purchase a 100D and a Model 3).
But for Tesla to be viable long term, they have to appeal outside of the early adopters, who continue to accept design flaws and bugs in their $100+K cars that they wouldn't accept in any other product.
Tesla can do better - and if they are going to sell 500K to 1M cars per year, they have to do much better on their software. And because it takes time to make the software and development process improvements needed, the longer they wait, the greater the risk this could start impacting product sales - especially for the Model 3.
As suggested above, Tesla's product managers should be searching the forums to find constructive feedback - and use that as another source of input on what they do next (which I suspect they are doing).
But for Tesla to be viable long term, they have to appeal outside of the early adopters, who continue to accept design flaws and bugs in their $100+K cars that they wouldn't accept in any other product.
Tesla can do better - and if they are going to sell 500K to 1M cars per year, they have to do much better on their software. And because it takes time to make the software and development process improvements needed, the longer they wait, the greater the risk this could start impacting product sales - especially for the Model 3.
As suggested above, Tesla's product managers should be searching the forums to find constructive feedback - and use that as another source of input on what they do next (which I suspect they are doing).
You can sure as hell bet that Model 3 owners aren't going to be too impressed when their hipster podcasts start over to the beginning or their emo music blasts them automatically when they get in the car.
Saw thread, wondered if any fix to stalling on internet station favorites has been found? I was used to using steering wheel controls, and don't want to delete internet / TuneIn stations in order to re-gain normal radio seek, and then have to go through sources on the center screen for my TuneIn favs.
As far as the above specific problem, I know the same issue exists with GM where radio and XM favorites mix and ordinarily easy station surfing gets stalled.
As far as the above specific problem, I know the same issue exists with GM where radio and XM favorites mix and ordinarily easy station surfing gets stalled.
Boatguy
Active Member
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