Submitted by kishiki18_91 t3_z42jnn in worldnews
cballowe t1_ixp650w wrote
Reply to comment by skofan in Mercedes-Benz to introduce acceleration subscription fee by kishiki18_91
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.
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