Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS • Hacker News Board

Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS

#311

Post by coev » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 10:00 AM UTC

Hamuko wrote: post #30

cjdoc29 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: Porsche offers this for some of its older generation models. https://newsroom.porsche.com/en_US/2023/products/porsche-cla...

Yeah, Porsche is the only manufacturer that I know of that actually cares about older cars they've sold. They even made an amusing ad to that effect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8-9oIq1hxw

Mazda upgraded 2017-2018 systems with carplay after sale. It cost some money at the dealership but it was a standard procedure they could do

Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS

#312

Post by csunbird » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 10:08 AM UTC

magila wrote: post #161

cameronh90 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I feel like German cars have an undeserved reputation for quality. German cars are superficially well built, quite fast, and make satisfying thunks when you close the doors. However, they are fairly unreliable, sensitive, and when they do fail, cost a lot to repair. I'll take a Japanese car any day, however, Hyundai, Volvo, Skoda, Kia, Peugeot and Ford are also better engineered than most German cars nowada…

Mercedes' reputation for reliability is mostly a legacy of the 60s and 70s. Their cars from that era were absurdly overbuilt, especially the diesel powered models. You will still find diesel MBs from the 70s on the road today, some of them having racked up 500k miles or more.

My father has a 98 S320, with over 1 million kilometers. The engine just recently started to have overheating problems and needs to be rebuilt with new gaskets, but otherwise runs fine!

Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS

#313

Post by izacus » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 10:19 AM UTC

nforgerit wrote: post #166

German Software Engineer here. I'd rather chop off my left pinky than working on any software product any German car manufacturer is developing: 1) Their management hierarchies only consist of MBA suits that think short term and treat their engineers like apes in a zoo. This frequently leads to engineers actually behaving like apes in a zoo. 2) German culture is deeply based on thinking in silos. They divide everythi…

> 3) My hypothesis of why German IT products are almost always horrible is that they're rarely thinking from customer's (or developer's!) perspective. They may be proud of some specs of their products but the overall thing is then often just a bunch of related subsystems "pragmatically" tied up with some duct tape.

While that is commonly true, I've also found that driving a modern Audi or a Mercedes is still much better thought out from UX and comfort perspective in comparison to many vehicular products from Sillicon Valley collaborators. Software might be a bit laggy, but many times there are plenty of nice user respecting features that you won't find in modern agile products (basic operations like "reroute me around this closed road" or opening a glove compartment are stupidly complicated or impossible on brilliantly developed products like Tesla).

The Germans also have one other benefit: my car UI doesn't just randomly completely change with updates like Android Auto or Tesla UI does. I'm not a guniea pig for some product manager trying to get his promotion with redesigns.

There has to be a balance somewhere between the dinosaur process of German brands and coked up 5-second attention spam of Sillicon Valley products.

Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS

#314

Post by throwaway61803 » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 10:19 AM UTC

ocimbote wrote: post #310

throwaway61803 wrote: post #287

throwaway account - the cheapest supplier/contractor gets the contract. Always! - the salaries in engineering are among the lowest on the market (at least in Germany). The headcount increased from 200 to 800+ in just a couple of years but so did the churn rate and focusing on the salary when hiring, means a lot of talent is skipped from the start (candidates should be happy with 20% less salary given that they work a…

MBition maybe?

bingo

Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS

#315

Post by bluecalm » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 10:22 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #241

qrohlf wrote: post #5

I was recently an owner of a Merced-Benz commercial van, and the software was by far the worst part of that whole experience. It had obvious race-condition type bugs when it came to the user interface layer, but most frustrating was its tendency to succumb to some kind of memory leak on long drives where the entire head unit would just lock up and crash to a black screen after 6-7 hours of being turned on. Because th…

Mercedes' crap software caused me to stop driving them, even though I love the handling, the reliability of the engine and the general lack of distractions. They really blew it, their software is a safety liability rather than an asset and I really wonder what caused them to drop the ball in such a terrible way.

Do you know any programmers who think it's cool to work for German car companies or that they at least offer a decent pay? I think that's the answer: those traditional German industries don't care nor understand IT. These days and entry level KIA has better software than a BMW (I owned several BMWs from different eras and will not buy anything from them again).

Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS

#316

Post by izacus » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 10:24 AM UTC

jagged-chisel wrote: post #15

Why does the automobile industry insist on keeping these things in-house when they are clearly terrible at them? I recall an interview with a Ford manager a few years back where they were asked something about adopting Car Play and the response was something like “we have people that can write software for us, so we won’t be using that.”

Maybe because we as customers don't really need a complete corporate consolidation and control of every product by a few software corporations?

Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS

#317

Post by fock » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 10:25 AM UTC

adornKey wrote: post #284

qrohlf wrote: post #5

I was recently an owner of a Merced-Benz commercial van, and the software was by far the worst part of that whole experience. It had obvious race-condition type bugs when it came to the user interface layer, but most frustrating was its tendency to succumb to some kind of memory leak on long drives where the entire head unit would just lock up and crash to a black screen after 6-7 hours of being turned on. Because th…

We had a young guy writing good software for us while he still was going to school. We still use it to get things done in production. Then he went to university. He came back for a summer job. He had the sudden urge to ditch everything he used to do and to use the newest unproven technology. Also he had a serious urge to install everything from Microsoft. Then he created a piece of slow software full of flaws and per…

MB is also famous for running Kubernetes. At a 1000 individual setups (all automated of course!). I had the pleasure of flamewaring someone who was very proud of this and couldn't really explain to me, why they would not just get two big physical machines with Corosync for like 70% of those (internal) applications. Doesn't seem much worse than a 3-node Kubernetes cluster (which is going to experience serious disruption too if anything goes down if it is running at full load......) and I doubt that scaling is an important concern with this setup.

Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS

#318

Post by izacus » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 10:25 AM UTC

jesterson wrote: post #285

osrec wrote: post #173

Mercedes has been disappointing me over and over again. Their car body designs are becoming difficult to look at, especially the electric range (the EQS is one ugly car). Their software is HORRENDOUSLY buggy. Their 2007 S-Class is a smoother ride than their 2022 model. I love what Mercedes used to stand for, but right now they are pretty much selling cars on brand value, not because they're actually great cars. The n…

Comments like this actually turn me off buying MB again. I used to have a lot of MB cars back in 90s- 200xs - C-klasse, S-klasse, and then a number of V-klasse and every time it was a pleasure in every sense. Never had any unreasonable problem with them. Buggy software? It was unheard.

Then again, this comment also calls EQS ugly (which it aint) so maybe take it with a grain of salt? :P

Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS

#319

Post by izacus » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 10:27 AM UTC

oellegaard wrote: post #60

maldev wrote: post #33

Everyones talking about alot of negatives. But I have a E53 AMG 4matic+ coup. It looks amazing, like constant compliments, i've even had people compliment it and give me their number in a wendy's drive through. But the OS(MBUX 2) is actually really good, at first I was a bit negative on it. But the way they have everything integrated that isn't really possible with apple play is nice. The dash is customizable, I have…

I have an EQB and I totally agree. I insisted on getting CarPlay but I used it once and I don’t see any need for it. Much happier with MBUX. However, this new Android based OS isn’t good news and I’m not sure I would want to get a new car with an Android based OS in it.

Android Automotive has been getting very good reviews in vehicles that has it (mostly because its performance is pretty good).

If you look at e.g. Renault, it's also highly customizable by manufacturers so it's unlikely you'd even notice it's Android without looking into it.

Although, as far as I know MB isn't on board for it - BMW is though.

Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS

#320

Post by bombolo » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 10:27 AM UTC

hackernewds wrote: post #189

lh7777 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if the system fails to detect any other vehicles for a period of more than about 90 minutes, it assumes that there is a sensor fault, and refuses to operate I have a current model Sprinter and this behavior is frustrating (thanks for the explanation, by the way, I thought it was a random bug). Cruise will also disengage in heavy rain or snow, with the system saying the sensor is dirty. It wouldn’t be so bad if trad…

> built-in nav system is useful for those times need directions and don't have a cell signal. You know you can also download Offline maps. One of Google Maps best features.

Have you heard of Open Street Maps?

You can keep offline all the maps you want.