Firmware 7.1

[TaoJones]

... Tesla's release notes could be better...

There ya go. Took the liberty of running your post through the FUD filter.

Transparency does not have to be hard.

Documentation is not optional in the context of best practice. Cutting corners 20% is not best practice. Get it right or don't do it. That's the difference between good and great.

 

[msnow]

You have no idea what you are asking for. Only IBM (that I know of) has ever done this.

Factually incorrect statement. Many companies provide transparency via release notes. Apple and Microsoft are a couple of examples. It's not as uncommon as you suggest.

 

[AnonNJ]

+1 for forcing updates. Drove to SC, parked for 1 minute, car jumped onto Service Wifi, sat another 5 minutes, engaged drive and pulled away. Drove 7 more miles to office, parked. 2 minutes later App told me I had an update ready to install.

 

[chillaban]

Factually incorrect statement. Many companies provide transparency via release notes. Apple and Microsoft are a couple of examples. It's not as uncommon as you suggest.

I work for a large tech company and I have to say, while release notes sometimes highlight important / notable issues, often times "miscellaneous security / bug fixes" is the only descriptive statement summing up thousands of various bugfixes...

You're right (as well as Hank) that some companies maintain a split between security updates and new functionality, but in the long run that's very difficult to do unless you can source funding for separate teams for each, via enterprise support contract cash flow. Managing a lot of concurrent releases is complex, and patch-to-patch dependencies/interactions happen all the time in complex codebases.

I've even seen Microsoft move away from this in Windows 10 on the consumer side. Every few months they push down that they call a new "build" that's a culmination of all the patches and then other undocumented changes and it re-runs through the Windows installer workflow.


There's upsides and downsides to both approaches. Definitely, the approach of forcing everyone to be on the latest and "greatest" leaves some folks experiencing unfortunate regressions, but that kind of alignment also affords some engineering simplicity/unification for Tesla, which helps too.

 

[TaoJones]

The line "minor bug fixes and performance enhancements" is helpful because absent any other content in the release notes, it tells us that, for example, there are no UI or driver assist feature changes that would be evident in daily driving,

The point is not to provide a reason to not apply an OTA update. The point is to inform the owner about what they're installing *before* they take responsibility for so doing - since in part, there's no "undo" button.

 

[S100D]

I actually do know what I'm asking for (I actually develop software for a living). And Microsoft already does it for every Windows PC out there. How many hundreds of millions of PCs are out there? I can actually pick and choose exactly which updates are or are not applied to my machine. And for the most part, they all keep running just fine.

Hank, I have managed 140 software developers and quality assurance testers and it is evident that you do not understand software testing.
Let's say that there are 150 different software releases because owners have not upgraded their software to the latest level. Everytime Tesla creates a new software release, Tesla would have to test it against each one of the 150 different versions. They would also need to keep track of every version of software that each car is on. This is totally an unmanageable solution.

Microsoft used to send critical and non-critical software updates, with Windows 10 you can delay some updates but eventually Windows 10 forces you to accept all updates.

The difference between a PC and a Tesla, is that if I do not install updates on my computer, it may get a virus or the computer may stop working. If I do not install updates on my Tesla, this could create safety issues that could cause harm to the me, my Tesla, or other people.

I would much rather have individual software releases and I can make the choice of to install them or not. I know all software releases have been tested against the prior release.

 

[msnow]

The line "minor bug fixes and performance enhancements" is helpful because absent any other content in the release notes, it tells us that, for example, there are no UI or driver assist feature changes that would be evident in daily driving,

The point is not to provide a reason to not apply an OTA update. The point is to inform the owner about what they're installing *before* they take responsibility for so doing - since in part, there's no "undo" button.

But we do see both UI and driver assist feature changes in many if not most of the updates that are not called out. They may be subtle such as fixes to Media Player not playing after the car turns off or changes in AP but they are evident in daily driving.

Also to @S85D Microsoft has provided Release Notes for Windows 10 for a while now.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12387/windows-10-update-history

 

[Bet TSLA]

Factually incorrect statement. Many companies provide transparency via release notes. Apple and Microsoft are a couple of examples. It's not as uncommon as you suggest.

I was talking about single fix, not providing release notes. So the only incorrectness is in your reading.

Providing release notes is not all that hard. Providing good release notes is difficult, expensive, and slow.

 

[xG35]

Why put the thinking of what to update onto a driver? It is too complicated.

No one cares... People on this forum is only a small percentage of the tesla drivers.

This is the iPhone way, update or not.. Your choice.

I do know what I'm asking for (I actually develop software for a living). And Microsoft already does it for every Windows PC out there. How many hundreds of millions of PCs are out there? I can actually pick and choose exactly which updates are or are not applied to my machine. And for the most part, they all keep running just fine.

But I'm not even asking for that level of detail. I want just two categories. Just send out critical systems, life-dependent updates out, and label them as such, so people can choose to just update those systems. Then send everything else non-critical out as an optional upgrade. Like I just said, if their code is too dependent to do even that, they did it way wrong.

 

[Bet TSLA]

Took the liberty of running your post through the FUD filter.

You took the liberty of removing anything you disagreed with. Thus leaving nothing. If you can't actually address what I say, why bother responding?

Transparency does not have to be hard.

Everything's easy when it's somebody else who has to do it.

Documentation is not optional in the context of best practice. Cutting corners 20% is not best practice. Get it right or don't do it. That's the difference between good and great.

People who take that attitude never ship.

All software is broken. The only difference is in how much. Tesla is taking the approach of using a small, fast moving team, extensive use testing, and minimal customer coddling -- this results in fast turnaround and long-term greater progress. If they never put out firmware until it was great, we'd get one release a year with lovely release notes. And no customer would have yet tried auto-pilot.

 

[TaoJones]

You took the liberty of removing anything you disagreed with. Thus leaving nothing. If you can't actually address what I say, why bother responding?


Everything's easy when it's somebody else who has to do it.


People who take that attitude never ship.

All software is broken. The only difference is in how much. Tesla is taking the approach of using a small, fast moving team, extensive use testing, and minimal customer coddling -- this results in fast turnaround and long-term greater progress. If they never put out firmware until it was great, we'd get one release a year with lovely release notes. And no customer would have yet tried auto-pilot.

Lol. Well, let's see...

Because including "minor fixes and performance enhancements" as a pre-confirmation step in the workflow is so difficult. This is basic Release Management 101.

Because standards are important.

Because when the FUD in your posts is removed, there's not much left.

 

[Bet TSLA]

I do know what I'm asking for (I actually develop software for a living). And Microsoft already does it for every Windows PC out there. How many hundreds of millions of PCs are out there? I can actually pick and choose exactly which updates are or are not applied to my machine. And for the most part, they all keep running just fine.

You say you know what you're asking for and then show you don't. Or at least you didn't express it well. You suggested that Tesla "issue individual patches". Apparently you actually meant big batches of bug fixes, just segmented in some way.

I wonder how you think Tesla batches up their bug fixes today. Do you think it's completely random? I imagine it's done in a way to get fixes out there as quickly and safely as can reasonably be done. I also imagine they sometimes make poor choices and sometimes make mistakes. Do you think it's different from that? If so, why?

 

[chillaban]

But we do see both UI and driver assist feature changes in many if not most of the updates that are not called out. They may be subtle such as fixes to Media Player not playing after the car turns off or changes in AP but they are evident in daily driving.

Also to @S85D Microsoft has provided Release Notes for Windows 10 for a while now.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12387/windows-10-update-history

To be fair, it says "quality improvements and security fixes" and lists a few specific bugs while the MSU BOM shows around 10,000 files changed in the latest monthly update. So, it is marginally better than Tesla's release notes because it calls out some specific examples of bugs that are fixed, but it's still not a comprehensive overview of everything that could've changed in the update.

 

[BertL]

For me, I simply would like some amount of release notes to know what areas of my Tesla have been changed, so I can be a little more conscious of any differences that occur after new firmware is applied. Tesla isn't perfect -- bugs not only get fixed and new features provided, but bugs have also been introduced, to then hopefully be resolved in a future drop.

Tesla already provides more detailed notes when new features are introduced, which is great. I appreciate in complex products like our MS, there are many things that are constantly tweaked, where it's simply unimportant owners need to know or could even understand all the details -- but at least knowing e.g. that there have been "Miscellaneous bug fixes to Media Player" or some other major parts of the vehicle would be very helpful. How much detail is provided is a balancing act Tesla needs to work on to improve communication with their Owners -- no different than any other software developer and service provider goes through. From my POV, effectively "nothing" isn't sufficient, which I think most folks here agree with.

MOST IMPORTANTLY to me is, I have been told and its been documented in my service records that some problems I have with my MS (like S90D Rated Range, a growing list of Media Player issues, oddities with CID reboots or memory constraints, etc) will each be resolved by a future firmware release which has no known ETA. Given that, and that Tesla has no FUP process with customers who have acknowledged firmware bugs, every single firmware release I receive, I hope and wonder -- "is one of my growing list of unresolved problems addressed this time?" It becomes my job as the owner to then figure out if something I care about has been resolved. My more often than not false hope going through that process actually decreases my satisfaction more than if I had seen in the release notes e.g. there were no fixes to Battery Management, Media Player, or whatever I was needing resolution to...

 

[HankLloydRight]

I'm sorry, but I'm not going to continue in a discussion where your leading arguments are "you just really don't know what you're talking about". I actually do. I'm sorry if your experience is different from mine, and you feel like you need to launch ad-hominem attacks to support your counter argument. Separating core function and UI is such a basic tenet of software development, I really don't know else to say, if all you're going to say is "you're wrong." I've developed data warehouse and BI systems for fortune 500 companies for 15 years and was able design systems that completely separated the analysis and reporting tools from and backend systems. And when the management du-jour decides to trash their current reporting systems and clients for something else, it was trivial to swap in *any* front end software package or tools without changing the back-end. And after I left the BI world and got into web and app development, the same things all hold true, if it's done correctly.

I never said it was fast, easy or cheap, I just said that's the way it should have been done.

 

[SomeJoe7777]

My thoughts on these two separate issues being discussed:

1. Release notes. I think a simple bug fix statement or detailed bug fix documentation is not provided and won't be because of liability issues. If someone gets in an accident, citing the last release notes that said "minor bugs fixed" is enough to open a can of worms and lead to a lawsuit, even if said bugs had absolutely nothing to do with the accident. Tesla figures that it's better to not even open that door.

2. On patch releases instead of monolithic releases. Given that the vehicle carries a lot more liability risk than a phone, desktop computer, or DVD player, QA/QC is paramount. Allowing independent software/firmware releases for portions of the car's systems increases geometrically the number of unique running configurations out in the field, and there's no way to run all possible combinations through full QA/QC to ensure safety. Tesla already has enough problems squashing bugs in the monolithic release system, I feel there would be a huge drop in operational quality if the matter was further complicated with individual patches.

 

[chillaban]

My thoughts on these two separate issues being discussed:

1. Release notes. I think a simple bug fix statement or detailed bug fix documentation is not provided and won't be because of liability issues. If someone gets in an accident, citing the last release notes that said "minor bugs fixed" is enough to open a can of worms and lead to a lawsuit, even if said bugs had absolutely nothing to do with the accident. Tesla figures that it's better to not even open that door.

2. On patch releases instead of monolithic releases. Given that the vehicle carries a lot more liability risk than a phone, desktop computer, or DVD player, QA/QC is paramount. Allowing independent software/firmware releases for portions of the car's systems increases geometrically the number of unique running configurations out in the field, and there's no way to run all possible combinations through full QA/QC to ensure safety. Tesla already has enough problems squashing bugs in the monolithic release system, I feel there would be a huge drop in operational quality if the matter was further complicated with individual patches.

Of course I can't say anything specific, but I can say with some authority that #1 above is at least partly true. Release notes can be legally construed as a legally relevant guarantee, admission of guilt, or other legally significant statement. As such, they're generally run through the marketing / PR / legal arm of a large company. Unfortunately, lawyers do attempt to use such release notes from time to time as evidence of wrongdoing, etc, and obfuscating the release notes to nondescript statements prevents companies from opening themselves to legal issues.


It's not a very good excuse, but you can imagine how sensitive a company's legal department can be, especially if they work on machinery like cars.

 

[Doug_G]

Hank, I have managed 140 software developers and quality assurance testers and it is evident that you do not understand software testing.
Let's say that there are 150 different software releases because owners have not upgraded their software to the latest level. Everytime Tesla creates a new software release, Tesla would have to test it against each one of the 150 different versions. They would also need to keep track of every version of software that each car is on. This is totally an unmanageable solution.

They already have a complex situation. They don't just update the touchscreen computer; there are a large number of other processor modules in the car, many of which are upgraded remotely (a laptop has to be hooked up for some, like the 12V DC charger system for some reason).

Now realize that Tesla keeps upgrading the hardware as they go. Not just A/B/C... battery packs, but also touchscreen computers, door handle processors, etc., etc.

When your car gets serviced and they have to replace something, they often end up installing a newer version (e.g. I have a newer touchscreen than other cars of its vintage, and it's a different hardware revision. I have much newer door handles. I have one of the oldest battery packs. etc.). It's entirely possible - if not likely - that my car is running a different firmware load than every other vehicle on the road.

So they already have a big problem with configuration management and testing. That's more than enough to manage!!!

 

[msnow]

To be fair, it says "quality improvements and security fixes" and lists a few specific bugs while the MSU BOM shows around 10,000 files changed in the latest monthly update. So, it is marginally better than Tesla's release notes because it calls out some specific examples of bugs that are fixed, but it's still not a comprehensive overview of everything that could've changed in the update.

I'm not looking for a comprehensive list. I'm looking for a higher level of release notes like Microsoft, Apple and many other companies do. Example:
Improvements to the Battery Managemt algorithm
Various security enhancements
Media Player fixes
Navigation improvement
Etc.

 

[msnow]

I was talking about single fix, not providing release notes. So the only incorrectness is in your reading.

Providing release notes is not all that hard. Providing good release notes is difficult, expensive, and slow.

Nice try but scroll up, the topic was release notes. You can't prove you're right by changing the topic and insulting known experts with vastly more experience running large teams here.