Steve Wozniak says Tesla 'is the worst in the world' at improving its technology | Hacker News Reader

Steve Wozniak says Tesla 'is the worst in the world' at improving its technology

fortune.com

59 pointsdoener32 comments

Maybe try using the "myToyota Connect" app for a day, or most any legacy carmarker's touchscreen UI, and tell me who's the worst at improving their technology.

Although I do agree with Woz that not having a physical latch for opening the glovebox on the Tesla is the stupidest thing ever.

The Model Y, 3 has no physical latch in the back seat to exit. As an owner who primarily sits in the front seat this was a significant oversight on my part. And I won’t be making it again.

What? How does one exit the car then?

One often doesn't.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91227786/teslas-latest-tragic-fi...

Four friends died on October 24 in a Tesla Model Y that caught fire after crashing into a safety barrier on Lake Shore Boulevard in Toronto. After the crash, it appears the car’s electronic opening mechanism stopped working, preventing the occupants and others from opening the doors.

There are emergency release latches. The location of the front one is obvious-ish, the rear one is not obvious at all.

https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_us/GUID-A7A60DC...

I agree that the lack of a latch was dumb, but effectively having two gloveboxes in the center console, that are bigger and closer than the tiny glovebox has left me never actually needing to open it.

Using? That's already advanced. Try to login to myAudi app for a day, then we talk. Everybody on HN chats on fancy new frameworks and AI and languages, while whatever they let out in the word is laughable at best.

Except you don't nees to. On a Toyota tou van just use Android auto, and never deal with the Toyota infotainment thing.

Also, the car hás plenty of physical buttons, so I only ever interact with touchscreen for maps.

I have the mstick4. If you have android auto, it is amazing. https://www.m-gears.com/

> or most any legacy carmarker's touchscreen UI

Cars do not need touchscreens to operate. They never had to so far and worked just fine.

23 Miata, generally mazda is good with physical controls on safety/driving apparatus.

Once a week (more lately), a random picture takes over car's entire UI. As in, it is stroring backup cam data, and randomly showing a photo from weeks ago until I restart the car.

Not a "deal breaker", but I functionally cannot use maps, music, the clock.

"cars do not need toiuchscreeps to operate" yeah but i paid to be able to use the car's features.

I own a Mazda CX30 since 2021 and the most important buttons are all physical. There is still a screen of course, but it is not a sensitive one. Basically, after a few weeks, you reach most of the buttons through muscle memory. You never need to move your sight out of the road to start your music or anything else... So far, it has been a great experience

It's a great experience when the head unit and screen work.

My muscle memory is very much fine, however I can't put it into practice when the screen turns into a static photo from my rearview camera from some date in the past, until I restart the car.

I have experience the same on a few cx30 rentals in same age range, you def got lucky. Or me and a few thousand others got really unlucky.

> Cars do not need touchscreens to operate.

Any car that requires me to interact with a touchscreen to do anything that I want to do while driving is, in my opinion, not fit for purpose. Of all of the malfeatures that have been incorporated into modern cars, I think touchscreens are in the top three list of the worst.

or you can just talk to the car and voice-control whatever you need done - safer than both touchscreen or physical buttons

* argue with the car as misinterprets everything

Why? It’s perfect - I can keep sweets and some sharp items away from kids behind a passcode.

What’s actually weird is you can’t disable/block Netflix. Kids didn’t quite figure out they can just have unfettered screen time in car just yet tho.

I’ll just add that adding second screen in back nowadays is bonkers. In my circle most of kids have 0 screen time. Screen is an antithesis of clean and quiet car.

As for rate of improvement - Tesla maybe got 1 or 2 decent new features over last 2 years of my ownership. My list of ideas when I bought it was about 20.

This story makes me laugh. The irony of an Apple co-founder chastising another company for updates that slowly and significantly make the experience worse everytime is too rich.

I don’t have a Tesla and I’m fully bought into the Apple ecosystem and my god, the recent updates to the HomePod line and Siri have made it genuinely unusable. Not a single speaker can stay in sync for a whole song. And god forbid you want to find a photo you took on your phone now

Photos app in iOS 18 is simply atrocious. Try sharing an album with friends. So many UX issues that it could be a case study.

I never understood why there’s such a huge disconnect between private albums and shared ones. My biggest gripe with shared ones is that they don’t provide full quality/res pics. I was going to ask why if a full quality backup is already in the cloud, but now I realize it might be because of the security architecture? Still, this should at least be an option, even if it means storing the data twice, especially since we’re paying for that storage anyway.

That being said it's funny that Wozniak left Apple before Apple era.

Nerds are generally disconnected from consumer tech.

The worst part is dweebs genuinely believing Woz was more important than Jobs…

Woz is 100x the net positive to humanity of Jobs.

Jobs collected a lot of money which just benefitted himself at the expense of everyone else. Everyone else just got handed shiny pacifiers that didn't actually enable, empower, or enrich them as well as other actual "bicycles for the mind".

Dweebs do indeed believe Woz is more important than Jobs, in the same way they believe actual tools are more important than toys and pacifiers no matter how pretty they are, and don't confuse "succeeds at extracting money from everyone else" with "important".

> the recent updates to the HomePod line and Siri have made it genuinely unusable.

I probably missed something. I thought that he stopped being involved with Apple development in 1985 (40 years ago).

This comment makes me laugh.

When was the last time Woz worked at Apple, and what was his rate of creation while there?

That's not the most important criticism of Tesla. R2R would be above and near the top. Maybe the failure to achieve significant marketshare vs. ICE, high cost, and/or specification (range) truthfulness would compete for that place too.

I bet fans will not react to this. They believe their genius is at work.

I don't think I've met a single Tesla fan who thinks getting rid of the stalks on the Model 3 Highland was a good idea. Even Tesla had to backpedal on this, since the new Model Y Juniper brought back one for turn signals (but not gear selections).

Well,in general, this must be something to do with Right to Repair ideas which is forbidden theme both for Apple and Tesla campuses.

These are radical changes that went too far for conservative buyers like me. Old model Y is the perfect balance between modern touch and classical usability with the stalks. I will definitely not buy another Tesla with yoke/buttons on the wheel/no stalls. It’s okay when one has private driver, but sadly I must drive the car by myself.

So the words of one the foremost pioneers in the tech industry gets flagged on HN ...

Pathetic.

just some old man ranting, nothing to see here

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