8 ms·

I remember when Tesla issued that paid software update to make your car accelerate 0-100 a 0.1 seconds faster. If the hardware is there unchanged, why should th

• thefounder 6y ago
  You pay for software updates/upgrades on your PC, right? Like it or not you don't own rhings anymore. Neither software or hardware. Everything is going towards subscription models.
  • FpUser 6y ago
    >"You pay for software updates/upgrades on your PC, right" only if I want to. In many cases I keep using old version. >"Everything is going towards subscription models." That is a wet dream that will not materialize for many vendors or will fail after a while.
  • Okawari 6y ago
    Sure. But I wouldn't accept my motherboard supplier locking hardware features behind software updates either. Like if my can do pci express 16x. I wouldn't think it is right that it only does 8x unless I pay for a software unlock
    • Pet_Ant 6y ago
      Happens all the time in electronics. They usually built the top end and then burn off or snip the wires to produce the lower end.
      • jaclaz 6y ago
        A few years ago there was the known Quadro/Geforce videocard issue: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398555 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398555 basically adding or removing a few resistors made card performa like other models costing hundreds of dollars more.
    • tedunangst 6y ago
      You just described basically every consumer motherboard with raid. It's there in the chipset, but requires a key to unlock.
      • teraflop 6y ago
        Every consumer motherboard that I've bought in the last decade or more has supported RAID, and none of them have required any additional purchase to "unlock" it.
        • tedunangst 6y ago
          Correcting myself: I was thinking specifically of intel vroc, which is actually more an enterprise thing.
        • gjvc 6y ago
          I've seen supermicro boards in the past 5 years which have this.
  • sudosysgen 6y ago
    I have never paid for updates of the drivers in my PC. The software to control the motors of a Tesla is akin to that, and should therefore not be compared to software sold purely.
    • thefounder 6y ago
      >> I have never paid for updates of the drivers in my PC. Surely you did. You just didn't pay attention. You paid for a bigger package (i.e new UI)that included driver updates as well.
      • sudosysgen 6y ago
        No, no I didn't. All of the money from that I paid upfront with the hardware.
  • Silhouette 6y ago
    Or... We could change the law to make it clear that when you buy some hardware you do own it, and to punish businesses that attempt to abuse their customers with owner-hostile retrospective software changes (to hardware products or otherwise). Consumer rights laws exist, and they can be strengthened if necessary to ensure fairness in the market.
    • thefounder 6y ago
      >> We could change the law I think the law will only change for worse. It all starts with the DRM/DMCA.
      • Silhouette 6y ago
        I'm not from the US, and as an outsider it appears that the US political system is largely dysfunctional at the federal level. I'm afraid solving a problem of that scale is outside the scope of a discussion like this! However, some parts of the world are more enlightened when it comes to consumer rights. For example, the EU has at least attempted to make constructive regulatory interventions in the interests of consumers as technologies have evolved, even if their success has been mixed. Here in the UK, aside from EU rules we're inheriting after Brexit, we too have some solid basic consumer rights laws of our own. The EU+UK market is already larger than the US one, so that's a pretty big incentive for Tesla not to try those sorts of games around these parts. And if we get reasonable treatment, maybe that's enough for customers in places like the US to demand the same standards.
  • Nullabillity 6y ago
    > You pay for software updates/upgrades on your PC, right? No...?
    • thefounder 6y ago
      How is that? Every new Adobe Creator package used to have a different price(e.g cs3, cs4) Now you can't even upgrade. You pay monthly subscriptions. You pay for OS upgrades as well(i.e win vista, 7, 10 etc)
      • shi314 6y ago
        Adobe Suite is a subscription based software solution. It is an inappropriate analogy. Does Microsoft asks for money for performance updates in Windows?
        • jkepler 6y ago
          Depends on your license.
        • MertsA 6y ago
          Err well actually depending on the edition of Windows Microsoft has long had limitations on the amount of RAM and IIRC multi socket support. Not as part of some architectural change within Windows, literally just a limit on the amount of usable RAM like Windows 7 Home Premium would only allow 16GB.
      • wolco2 6y ago
        That's the subscription model. I don't think Telsa falls under this unless they let you take a car for free and require you to pay monthly for the car to actually turn on. That's more of a zipcar.
      • jen20 6y ago
        > How is that? By using Free Software? And one has not needed to pay a separate fee for OS upgrades in quite some time. Linux has obviously always been free. macOS since at least Mavericks - if not earlier - is also free of additional charge.
  • jdeibele 6y ago
    I remember hearing that IBM shipped computers with extra processors installed that could be activated if you paid the fee. In searching for more information, I found https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/POWER5/ipha2_p5/ipha2book.pdf https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/POWER5/ipha2_p5/... which talks about activating and deactivating not only processors but extra storage. It doesn't seem like that would work very well for most laptops and phones, given how people won't pay for online backup or anything above the minimums. Anyway, IBM had a vision of "computing on demand" many years ago but it wasn't in the cloud, it was in your data center.
• agumonkey 6y ago
  Bro hardware with improper software can break or kill. They pushed the hardware in advance because .. it's 'hard'ware. Then they tried optimized motor control. If they gave you beta motor logic they'd have to fix whatever would burn or fail.
  • dragosmocrii 6y ago
    Sure, software and hardware come together. However the price of software should be factored in the price of the product itself (hardware + software). I am paying for both to own the product. If they issue a software update that makes better use of hardware, it means they failed to release good software to begin with (ofc perfect software doesn't exist). Now imagine if they found a way to increase battery life just with software, and asked you to pay for it.. kinda not fair right?
    • agumonkey 6y ago
      First, sorry as I misread your comment and was cold. Indeed they're trying to milk the software side. But it's business as usual I believe. You paid for some specs, everything else is off contract. Unless they promised otherwise.
    • jliptzin 6y ago
      On the flip side, what if they have an idea to improve battery life through software, but it will require significant R&D. If everyone were like you and refuses to pay for any software updates whatsoever, they wouldn’t want to make the investment.
      • wolco2 6y ago
        Normally a big improvement with additional costs would go into the next model. I think charging for a hardware replacement is acceptable. A pure software update fixing an existing issue I would say no. Car companies have recalls all of the time paid for by the company when something doesn't work as expected. A software recall should be treated the same as a hardware recall.
• Pet_Ant 6y ago
  Maybe it required new algorithms to control the torque to not cause stress on the frame. Better algorithms and fine tuning are real work that deserve compensation. Maybe the intial algorithm was just simplistic and conservative.
  • toxik 6y ago
    Algorithms which only Tesla can give you. That is why it’s a dick move to sell it to you.
    • amelius 6y ago
      I think the definition of monopoly should be updated to include this case. When a company sells you hardware without documenting the API or making it fully accessible, then they have a monopoly over selling software for that particular hardware. (A similar thing would hold for business models like selling printers for cheap but making the cartridges expensive, etc.)
      • fastball 6y ago
        Meh, to me this is only reasonable if they're using some form of integrity checking to prevent you from fiddling with the bits. To my mind, any product sold can have integrity checking, but as the owner I should be able to disable it if I want to.
• kccqzy 6y ago
  How is this different from any other paid software upgrades? You pay to get better features.
  • kccqzy 6y ago
    I can't edit my comment now but it seems like HN thinks once you buy a CPU, you should get all software for free, because that general-purpose CPU can execute any arbitrary programs, so whatever new software you use is merely exercising the functionality that is already present on the CPU, which you paid for. Ergo, all software must be free (free as in beer).
    • saagarjha 6y ago
      Hacker News is generally pretty bad at metaphors.
• illumanaughty 6y ago
  Owners of photoshop don't get free updates even though they own their computer. Software costs money to develop so saying all updates should be free simply because they already own the hardware doesn't makes any sense.
  • bonzini 6y ago
    The hardware and software manufacturers are different, no? IBM mainframe owners do get updates for free.
    • rescbr 6y ago
      IBM mainframe customers pay software subscription and support/maintenance fees.
  • simon1573 6y ago
    I don't agree with the analogy. Tesla manufacturers the whole package and you buy the car as a package. You don't buy the metal from your local car dealer and the software as a separate thing from Tesla. A more fitting analogy would be Apple charging you to upgrade your BIOS.
    • paulryanrogers 6y ago
      Except they're selling incomplete software and preorders of may-never-exist software with complete/finished hardware. Updates to things I trust my family's life and health to should be classified like recalls, a sign of manufacturer failure and not a consumer privilege.
      • a1369209993 6y ago
        > Updates to things I trust my family's life and health to should be classified like recalls, a sign of manufacturer failure and not a consumer privilege. To be scrupulously fair, that's true of all software; it's just more important for safety-critical software, because safety-critical software is more important.
• jojo2333 6y ago
  uhh lol, just because you own an iPhone doesn't mean you get all the features like Apple Music, etc. I can think of a ton of examples where what you're saying is nonsensical.
  • wolco2 6y ago
    I bought this android phone. I can download games and play them whenever. If I want phone service I have to hook this phone up to a service provider. If I want music I have either put an mp3 on the phone, visit youtube, subscribe to a service like spotify or google music. Apple Music is a seperate service like spotify correct? Venders will bundle in their own services into the os menus in order to extract additional cash. Apple Music isn't a feature of the iphone os. It's an ad designed to trick you.
• dogma1138 6y ago
  On one hand they shouldn’t on another hand “performance modes” are often priced based on the wear and tear they induce and it’s impact on the manufacturer warranty in terms of servicing costs. Even before Tesla you already had car manufacturers that basically locked out performance behind a pay wall even tho the car itself was identical to the “sport model”. Many of the German manufacturers had this practice for a decade if not more, the extra price difference is basically their estimated cost to the changes in MTF between when you push your car to 80-90% of its capability to 100%. And even before Tesla you already had aftermarket products and services that were designed to unlock that extra performance and yes they did often at least in principal voided the warranty.
  • dmurray 6y ago
    Sounds like once the car is out of warranty and the cost of maintenance falls on the owner, the incentives change and the manufacturer should pay you to run your car in "performance mode".
    • dogma1138 6y ago
      When the main warranty of the car is gone you still get warranty on the parts and service you pay for out of pocket, from BMW's perspective the cost of the "performance mode" is amortized beyond the initial warranty period too. We also see this in other things too you have differential pricing in say electronics and electronic components too, sure some of it is binning but not only quite often the "enterprise" tax is just the fact that these parts will be run longer and under more stress so their MTF is different. An HDD in a home computer will be under very different loads than one in a NAS. And quite often there aren't many physical differences between the drives in some of the lower end models there are no differences at all and in some cases non-NAS drives might actually be "better" than their lower-end NAS counterparts. What you are paying for when buying a WD RED isn't necessarily a more durable drive, you are essentially paying a premium for future warranty claims, it's essentially an insurance scheme in which WD RED NAS drives are defined as higher risk than say their Black or Blue series.
  • nickserv 6y ago
• Silhouette 6y ago
  It might be helpful to distinguish a few different principles here, as it looks like some people are talking at cross-purposes in this part of the discussion. Personally, I would argue that the most important principle to protect the customer is that they should get what they pay for when they choose to buy a product. That product should not then be retrospectively nerfed through software shenanigans, either for them, or for any future owner they sell the product on to. This is one idea that car manufacturers have been flirting with recently, and IMHO we should stamp on it hard. Another idea, but to me a clearly distinct one, is that a manufacturer of a combined hardware/software product might develop software-only improvements after the product has been purchased. In this case, I would distinguish explicitly between fixes for problems where the product wasn't performing as expected at the time of purchase (things like safety issues or security vulnerabilities that clearly shouldn't have been there in the first place) and enhancements (things like performance improvements or additional functionality). Again IMHO, the former should be supplied free and unencumbered to all customers, as they are essentially fixing a defective product. For the latter, I don't have a problem in principle with the manufacturer charging for the upgrade, as potentially it incurs additional costs and risks, and it brings a genuine benefit to the customer that they didn't have at purchase time. A third idea is a manufacturer deliberately shipping a product that isn't using the full hardware capabilities because of artificial software limitations. They might also then offer upgrades for sale later, which is really just a special case of the enhancements-after-sale idea above. Once again IMHO, charging for these enhancements is still OK even if they manufacturer knew in advance that they might ship that software later on, as long as they were honest about what the customer was actually buying at the time of purchase and they didn't claim or imply that those enhancements would become available for free or on any other specific terms that they don't then honour. There are at least two good reasons for taking this view. One is the general principle that if someone has bought a product of a certain specification for a certain price then that transaction is then concluded. Just as I don't think the manufacturer should be allowed to move the goalposts after the sale in a way that harms the owner, I also don't think the owner is entitled to free extras from the manufacturer that weren't part of the sale. The other is the practical reality that hardware+software products are enormously complicated, software is never perfect, and the idea that a manufacturer should be liable for not shipping optimal software from day one or prohibited from continuing to do work that might develop useful improvements that benefit customers in return for further revenue is kind of silly if you think it through. One very important issue I'm glossing over here is whether the terms of the original sale were fair to the customer. This is a standard problem in any sort of retail environment, and we usually rely on some combination of competitive markets and government regulation to protect the little guy. But these are also separate issues to the ones above that would have to be considered on a case by case basis.
• Spooky23 6y ago
  This is from a company that has charged for future access to a feature that hasn’t existed for years.