Submitted by kishiki18_91 t3_z42jnn in worldnews
cballowe t1_ixp2bru wrote
Reply to comment by AltNationReality in Mercedes-Benz to introduce acceleration subscription fee by kishiki18_91
It may not be "performance degrading software" - you can maybe think of it like computer overclocking a PC. Though if you go back to mainframes, they've been doing that for decades - the physical hardware is often more CPUs/higher speed than what the company is licensed for and additional capacity can be enabled after the fact (sometimes even temporarily - need extra capacity for quarterly closing reports, you can do that with no downtime). Compute services have almost always been "pay for what you use" and you don't really think about how the vendor makes that happen, but when it becomes too obvious, people kinda freak out.
I don't know what the terms of warranty on Mercedes cars look like, but there would definitely be parts that wear faster when pushed to higher power output so having a "we give you the hardware with parameters tuned to last the lifetime of your warranty for $X and if you want to push past that, we'll let you do it but will charge based on expected additional costs to replace worn parts within warranty".
Some people really want the performance and would be willing to pay for a bigger engine up front, but the electric motors are probably cheaper to maintain one SKU and differentiate in software/pricing to account for the extra component wear - people who aren't pushing those limits don't pay for it.
skofan t1_ixp4lk4 wrote
this is not at all comparable to overclocking.
overclocking exists because chip manufacturing has always had a very high variance in product quality, due to extremely complex designs. instead of testing the limits of each individual chip, several sets of minimum standards, used for product segmentation due to performance differences, are put in place during the prototyping stages of chip design. chips are then tested against those minimum standards.
since the standards for each product segment are minimum standards, most chips will have additional performance headroom left over if the user chooses to tune that specific chip for its specific pecularities.
in contrast, electrical engines are very simple constructions, and the manufacturing tolerances are much much smaller, meaning that engineers know pretty much exactly what the performance limit is during the design phase, way before even prototyping.
cballowe t1_ixp650w wrote
Sure, but you can overbuild by 20-40% for not much more cost in lots of cases, but wear on things like bearings and other moving components can change in big ways if you push above some level. Imagine a car with a 5 year warranty but it will need an estimated extra $5k of parts and labor if you drive it hard (using the 5 second 0-60 instead of the base 6 second every time you get on the highway) vs keeping it to the lower limit.
And it's very much the same as overclocking (aside from the fact that you don't pay the original manufacturer to do the overclocking). They sell you a part for a price based on the performance they're guaranteeing. In this case they charge you a higher price to guarantee more from the part.
In a world where it's cheaper to manufacture one physical SKU and differentiate in software, you're going to start seeing more of this kind of thing. Not everybody needs the performance that sells for a higher price. I'd bet that at volume production the cost difference between a motor that can only do X and one that can handle more is pretty minimal and some is recouped by not needing to change over any manufacturing to manage the different production schedules. You would definitely lose some segment of the market if you didn't offer a vehicle at the lower price point, though.
[deleted] t1_ixp7s55 wrote
>And it's very much the same as overclocking (aside from the fact that you don't pay the original manufacturer to do the overclocking).
It's not though, this is essentially just unlocking features that are inherently there to begin with.
Overclocking is essentially exploiting the specific performance a chip may or may not have. That performance headroom isn't necessarily there to being with, and it's not necessarily something that offers any benefit to the consumer (stability issues, power consumption, compute errors etc).
cballowe t1_ixp8csn wrote
Overclocking is still... Get a motherboard that lets you tweak voltage, current, and clock settings, and push the buttons until you get somewhere. Most enthusiast chips are good for a fair bit over what the box says. Electric motors are similar - push more electric power through them and you get more power out at the wheel.
The only difference is that they charge you to flip the bits that the overclocking motherboards use as an up front feature for selling the board.
[deleted] t1_ixp8qqt wrote
>Get a motherboard that lets you tweak voltage, current, and clock settings, and push the buttons until you get somewhere. Most enthusiast chips are good for a fair bit over what the box says.
Lol that's been completely false for the last few years or so, so you're talking out of your ass.
There's basically no meaningful headroom available on CPUs unless you start cranking out chilled water or liquid nitrogen (how does the normal consumer benefit?).
GPUs essentially have to be modded on the circuitry side to get any additional performance (but highly unstable) due to the power limits they have.
AltNationReality t1_ixp97q7 wrote
Really.... It's about the "monthly fee" part. No car needs that. BMW took severe flack for a monthly fee for butt warmers. Sell the car... not a monthly fee schedule.
cballowe t1_ixp9lsq wrote
That might be, but would you be upset if you walked in and they were like "we have this car ... It's $80k, or we can install the performance software on it and sell it to you for $100k"? Or would you prefer "you can pay $80k and if you decide you want the performance upgrades you can have that for $100/month and take it for the months where you use it" or similar.
Or maybe you buy it and the fact that you never licensed that option helps maintain your resale value due to less overall wear, but the next person could have the option to turn it on if they wanted.
fatpandana t1_ixpbcam wrote
this perfomance software will also allow them to tune down the car to make consumer spend money on repairs and/or new vehicle. No different old iphones getting slower.
monthly fees for product you paid for already that every other vehicle have is beyond dumb.
cballowe t1_ixpbiyo wrote
Iphone getting slower made some sense - there's lots of weird considerations in UX, but getting slower to ensure that the battery lasts through the day makes a ton of sense as a default.
fatpandana t1_ixpbovi wrote
it doesnt when the version prior to that perfomed at peak capacity as long as user knew how to prevent updates. Problem is inability to go backwards in version made it impossible to go return to peak perfomance.
cballowe t1_ixpc0c2 wrote
Sure... I could make the case either way - the fact that I think someone doing UX research on the experience of having a phone run out of battery before the end of the day could reasonably find that a majority of users would prefer a little slower but not running out and make a product case that the best way to ensure people are happy with their phones longer would be a software update that does that.
The fact that it's a reasonable outcome makes it hard for me to say they did something wrong. The fact that I can also see how someone might disagree doesn't change that.
fatpandana t1_ixpc72u wrote
The fact that apply was forced to pay a fine for this bad practice basically it is illegal.
cballowe t1_ixpcqjo wrote
Just because the courts got it wrong doesn't mean the choice was bad. Also doesn't mean it was illegal, just means someone found a court that would listen and it was cheaper to just pay something than to fight it.
When a reasonable person could flip a coin and come up on either side of the outcome is an indication that it's not wrong. We'll have to disagree on this. Later updates, I believe, better tuned things and gave more options, right? The first version of the feature is rarely perfect.
fatpandana t1_ixpcyky wrote
That just means you were wrong in first place. If you can provide proof of non-deliberate tampering and take a fine, then yup, you purposely made mistake. If you cant fight it, then yup, you purposely made mistake.
This isnt a flip of a coin, this is deliberate. Unlike a flip of a coin, you can always roll back software. Apple doesnt allow that.
cballowe t1_ixpd9hc wrote
If it costs more to fight it than to pay the fine, you pay the fine and move forward. It's not worth wasting the resources on the fight, learn from it and improve the UX moving forward. They didn't break anything with the update, they just re-tuned some operating parameters.
fatpandana t1_ixpdd2l wrote
that retuning is what users complained about and they ignored it. Imagine retuning something and u end up paying 113million, because you cant win it in court.
cballowe t1_ixpdl1o wrote
You can win but it's going to take months and millions of dollars to litigate - it's a distraction and not worth fighting. Doesn't mean they did something wrong, just that they got to a number where it was cheaper to pay than to fight.
fatpandana t1_ixpdq1k wrote
if it was cheaper, they could just avoided the whole court cases long before it got to court. if it was just a retune, you could just fix it long before it even getting to court.
cballowe t1_ixpeewq wrote
Eh... Users complain and file suit or whatever and even if you fix it they still pursue the case. They had fixed the issue with additional controls by 2018, the settlement happened in 2020 based on a case filed in december 2017.
The states were charging that apple was making changes to cause people to buy new phones, apple was contending that they were trying to prevent unexpected shutdowns due to old batteries losing capacity over time.
fatpandana t1_ixpevfc wrote
it happened between 2014 - 2016. apple admitted in 2017. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42508300
It wasnt just shutting down. It was straight up perfomance lowering.
cballowe t1_ixpg088 wrote
The issue prior to that fix was that the phones shut down mid day due to running out of battery. Lowering performance on a phone with batteries degraded to the 80% level or worse in order to not have it shut down before the end of the day makes sense.
When the feedback you're getting is that people are complaining that their phones are shutting down and you then task some engineers to fix that, you get a fix. Apple said early on that it was a small number and it probably was, but lithium batteries have somewhere between 500 and 2000 charge cycles before they degrade to that level so over time more and more of the older phones would start falling into that mode.
But the accusations early on were "you're making my phone worse to force me to buy a new one" which wasn't the case. From an engineering perspective the change made the useful life of the phone longer (fixing the battery life issues).
fatpandana t1_ixpgf5b wrote
Cause and effect. Feedback forced statement. Statement forced lawsuit. Denial of the problem and hiding problem under the rug has consequences. that is full 3 years to admit fault. This is for things that are fully software controlled.
Imagine for cars. Normally perfomance u paid for now software controlled with pay 2 get getting perfomance. How easy it is to nerf perfomance to force a new purchase? even easier than an iphone.
skofan t1_ixpqhkk wrote
thats not anywhere near the same as overclocking. nor is it acceptable business practice.
if you want a suitable IT analogy, its like pre-installed ransomware, it locks down parts of your devices functionality until you give in to the blackmail and pay up.
AltNationReality t1_ixp8tlq wrote
Would you pay a monthly fee to "overclock" your CPU? I think not.
cballowe t1_ixp8y41 wrote
People do all the time. Look at cloud computing pricing, or old (even modern) mainframe stuff. Customers demand compute with burst capabilities that they only pay for when they use.
helm t1_ixpcz7p wrote
Think again, that’s not the same thing at all.
cballowe t1_ixpdbv4 wrote
Can you explain how people aren't constantly paying for features that they use only during the duration of their use?
helm t1_ixpdke0 wrote
This is a yearly subscription to unlock something in a car you bought. Cloud computing doesn’t involve equipment that you own. It’s rent.
You can rent a car for a limited time too.
A straight comparison would be to buy a throttled GPU and pay rent to unlock higher speeds.
Buy adding this feature, Mercedes isn’t improving their car in any way, they’re simply trying to get customers to accept a new pricing scheme.
cballowe t1_ixpdrj9 wrote
Mainframes are often delivered with more CPUs in the box then you're licensed for. You can call ibm and have them enable more at any time and only pay for them while you use them. The machine is sitting in your data center with double the power that you can use.
This has been how IBM does things for decades.
helm t1_ixpee6a wrote
I'm unfamiliar with this pricing model. But I'm quite sure a mainframe comes with yearly service fees, software licenses, etc, that makes it quite different from a one-off purchase in the first place.
I recently helped shut down an old Oracle database (physical + software) that cost our company $100k/year. Again, different pricing models, different expectation. If you buy a house, would you want to pay a subscription fee to have access to heated floors?
cballowe t1_ixpfean wrote
That's true. But also, you have hardware in your data center that can be turned on and off with a phone call to IBM (and assorted monthly or one time pricing). The maintenance contracts etc are tied to what you're licensed to use. Software licenses tend to cost way more than hardware, but in all of it you only pay for the things that you use. (Or ... You pay for the things you want to use, but they can be dynamically enabled or disabled.)
Other industries are trying to go a similar way. I've heard that some heavy equipment companies want to sell some sort of uptime/operating guarantees and not necessarily specific equipment. That might mean you need 5 trucks but they ship 6 to your site and some spare parts etc because that gives them the flexibility to have spares and deal with downtime/repairs while still hitting the contract requirements. If you put that 6th truck in service, those numbers might be missed or if you want to have 6 operating then the contract goes up.
helm t1_ixpgf32 wrote
Yes, but it's clear that your examples involve a negotiation in which the supplier is trying to more effectively match the buyer's needs.
This is all about building one car for everyone, but locking parts of it down with software. This reduces production costs. The value for the customer would be to upgrade/downgrade features at will. But so far, car makers haven't sold it very well, I think.
cballowe t1_ixphb2y wrote
I think the "car makers haven't sold it very well" is more of the issue than building one physical model and enabling/disabling bits with software to meet customer needs.
I don't need a <5 second 0-60, so the option to not pay for it makes sense. There's definitely some people who would pay for it. With gas motors you get the difference between the base model and the performance model, with electric - it's software and not a bigger motor. Seems fine to me. you need to have that base model spec available.
PSUSkier t1_ixqowmq wrote
That’s not overclocking, that’s renting a computer FFS.
lilhippieboi t1_ixpllen wrote
I’ll get you a funnel for Christmas so guzzle Mercedes cum faster
Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments