3 ms·

> I don't suggest that at all. What Tesla did was to create an electric car with good user experience without developing any revolutionary tech. Not sure what

> I don't suggest that at all. What Tesla did was to create an electric car with good user experience without developing any revolutionary tech. Not sure what you mean. They are the ones that made the tech good enough for mainstream adoption. Your post reads like the “iPhone didn’t have any revolutionary tech” types.

mrtksn 3y ago
The iPhone didn't have any revolutionary tech, in fact, it was quite lacking when you compare what was out there and that's why many people claimed that it will fail. What iPhone had was a revolutionary user interface that provided the outstanding user experience despite lacking a lot of features and functions.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  Its capacitive touchscreen was revolutionary. That's what enabled the UI to be done in a different way. This isn't some "great design creates great product" thing. It's the underlying tech that did it, and if the UI had been different, it would been just as revolutionary. I would argue that the addition of the app store is what made the iPhone really jump phones forward.
  - mrtksn 3y ago
    Nope, capacitive screens and multitouch were 30 years old tech. Sure, Apple did engineering to actually make it into the product they shipped but that wasn't what Apple invented with iPhone.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      Everything is built from something else. Not doing the fundamental science that leads to a product doesn't mean that the product itself isn't innovative. Apple's interface elements[0] and interactions[1] were no doubt derived from elsewhere too. Getting UI elements on a screen wasn't new. Cramming a capacative touchscreen into a phone was very new. [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/button https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/bu... [1] http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html
      - mrtksn 3y ago
        Right, people were buying iPhones because they wanted to touch two or more fingers. Everyone was trying to make screens that can register multiple touches but Apple was the first to crack it and this led to natural success of market demanding multiple touches and they having it.
rsynnott 3y ago
> They are the ones that made the tech good enough for mainstream adoption. So, this is a common idea, but it doesn't _really_ gel with reality. The Tesla S, Nissan Leaf, VW's first electric car platform, and the Renault Z-E platform are contemporaries to within about a year (iirc it was Leaf, then an unsuccessful Z-E-based car, then eGolf in limited quantity, then S, then mass-market eGolf and Renault Zoe). Of these, the Leaf sold far more units than the S over its lifetime; the Zoe was about the same as the S, the eGolf somewhat less. Tesla didn't have a _true_ mass-market car until the Model 3 some years later.
- kortilla 3y ago
  Your chronology is screwed up, we didn’t hit mass market until the model 3. The litmus test is what cars you see on the roads of Wyoming. There are plenty of model 3s, and a leaf was an extremely rare site because the car was nearly useless outside of a city commute.
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    > The litmus test is what cars you see on the roads of Wyoming. Given that US adoption of electric cars lagged other developed world countries, and thus early electric cars were generally designed for European, Chinese, and to some extent Japanese, market preferences, that seems like an extremely weird litmus test. Tesla _was_ the first company to release a mass-market car aimed at the _US_ market (or at least the first credible attempt; the Leaf was available in the US but was just too far from US market preferences), but the Chinese and European markets already had mass-market electric cars.

mrtksn 3y ago

The iPhone didn't have any revolutionary tech, in fact, it was quite lacking when you compare what was out there and that's why many people claimed that it will fail. What iPhone had was a revolutionary user interface that provided the outstanding user experience despite lacking a lot of features and functions.

robertlagrant 3y ago
Its capacitive touchscreen was revolutionary. That's what enabled the UI to be done in a different way. This isn't some "great design creates great product" thing. It's the underlying tech that did it, and if the UI had been different, it would been just as revolutionary. I would argue that the addition of the app store is what made the iPhone really jump phones forward.
- mrtksn 3y ago
  Nope, capacitive screens and multitouch were 30 years old tech. Sure, Apple did engineering to actually make it into the product they shipped but that wasn't what Apple invented with iPhone.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    Everything is built from something else. Not doing the fundamental science that leads to a product doesn't mean that the product itself isn't innovative. Apple's interface elements[0] and interactions[1] were no doubt derived from elsewhere too. Getting UI elements on a screen wasn't new. Cramming a capacative touchscreen into a phone was very new. [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/button https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/bu... [1] http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html
    - mrtksn 3y ago
      Right, people were buying iPhones because they wanted to touch two or more fingers. Everyone was trying to make screens that can register multiple touches but Apple was the first to crack it and this led to natural success of market demanding multiple touches and they having it.

rsynnott 3y ago

> They are the ones that made the tech good enough for mainstream adoption. So, this is a common idea, but it doesn't _really_ gel with reality. The Tesla S, Nissan Leaf, VW's first electric car platform, and the Renault Z-E platform are contemporaries to within about a year (iirc it was Leaf, then an unsuccessful Z-E-based car, then eGolf in limited quantity, then S, then mass-market eGolf and Renault Zoe). Of these, the Leaf sold far more units than the S over its lifetime; the Zoe was about the same as the S, the eGolf somewhat less. Tesla didn't have a _true_ mass-market car until the Model 3 some years later.

kortilla 3y ago
Your chronology is screwed up, we didn’t hit mass market until the model 3. The litmus test is what cars you see on the roads of Wyoming. There are plenty of model 3s, and a leaf was an extremely rare site because the car was nearly useless outside of a city commute.
- rsynnott 3y ago
  > The litmus test is what cars you see on the roads of Wyoming. Given that US adoption of electric cars lagged other developed world countries, and thus early electric cars were generally designed for European, Chinese, and to some extent Japanese, market preferences, that seems like an extremely weird litmus test. Tesla _was_ the first company to release a mass-market car aimed at the _US_ market (or at least the first credible attempt; the Leaf was available in the US but was just too far from US market preferences), but the Chinese and European markets already had mass-market electric cars.