On 16 Mar 2021 at 20:12, Peri Hartman via EV wrote: > Where I disagree is your comparison of tesla and apple. What apple did > is terribly disingenuous. And they got nailed for it. But it's very > different from tesla stating that, if you want "self driving," you need > to pay $10k for it to be enabled. They didn't try to misconstrue > anything, they aren't being deceptive.
That's not what I meant. I wasn't comparing Apple's deception to Tesla's $10k autopilot charge. Sorry if that wasn't clear I'll talk about that separately below. When I mentioned Apple, I was pointing out that when a manufacturer has effective control of a product that you think you own, they might be tempted to do underhanded things. I hope we can agree on that much. Apple has an excellent reputation for high quality, innovative, easy to use products. Yet at huge risk to their reputation, they succumbed to temptation and deliberately crippled Iphones. They were caught, but how many other highly-regarded manufacturers have done something similar and NOT been caught? How would we know? If as sterling a company as Apple abused their control of their products, how can we be sure that Tesla might not - for example - gradually reduce the range of older cars to get their owners thinking about an "upgrade"? It's nice to think that the tech-savvy Tesla community would catch on, but what if they didn't? Again, how would we know? And even if they did, what would happen to Tesla? Like Apple, they have something of a cult following. Some of their fans would deny that it happened, or if it did, that it even mattered. Some of them would probably aver that Tesla did it for the owners' benefit! Understand, I'm not predicting that Tesla will do something like this. I'm just saying that because they have such tight control of the cars, it's quite possible, and not unprecedented. > I suppose you could argue that they should actually have to download > the software rather than enable it, but that's getting terribly > nuanced. OK, now we're specifically talking about advanced autopilot (sorry, I refuse to call it "full self driving" 'cause it isn't). If they had to add $5000 worth of hardware to make advanced autopilot work, then I'd allow that $10k might make sense. MIGHT. If they had to actually rewrite the software to give it advanced capability, then I'd be OK with paying them for that effort - though I'm having trouble seeing $10k for it. I'd expect to pay $10k for semi-custom computer software that sold in the hundreds of copies. For a chunk of code for a car that sells hundreds of thousands of units per year, IMO $200-500 might be a reasonable figure. For sure not $10k. If the software is already written and in place, and all they're doing is flipping a bit in memory to activate it, nope, sorry. How about $50? Now that's my own percept ion of value. If advanced autopilot is worth $10k to you, and you don't care that you're paying them $10k to do no additional real work at all, who am I to argue? > > I'll go even further: by having the software installed but not enabled > allows them to build "experience." That's a trick worthy of Google! Every time I solve one of those bloody infuriating captchas, I'm working for Google and they're paying me nothing. So if I'm a non-advanced-autopilot Tesla owner, I give up my privacy and let Tesla keep a record of everywhere I drive and everything I see around me. They get to use my data to improve the software they're charging $10k for. I'm working for Tesla and they're paying me nothing. Right. They should be paying me for that. Or give me the advanced software for free for doing some of their work for them. David Roden, EVDL moderator & general lackey To reach me, don't reply to this message; I won't get it. Use my offlist address here : http://evdl.org/help/index.html#supt = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = In politics, stupidity is not a handicap. -- Paul Graham = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub ARCHIVE: http://www.evdl.org/archive/ LIST INFO: http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org
