Sure.

But I wouldn't accept my motherboard supplier locking hardware features behind software updates either. Like if my can do pci express 16x. I wouldn't think it is right that it only does 8x unless I pay for a software unlock

Happens all the time in electronics. They usually built the top end and then burn off or snip the wires to produce the lower end.

A few years ago there was the known Quadro/Geforce videocard issue:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398555

basically adding or removing a few resistors made card performa like other models costing hundreds of dollars more.

You just described basically every consumer motherboard with raid. It's there in the chipset, but requires a key to unlock.

Every consumer motherboard that I've bought in the last decade or more has supported RAID, and none of them have required any additional purchase to "unlock" it.

Correcting myself: I was thinking specifically of intel vroc, which is actually more an enterprise thing.

I've seen supermicro boards in the past 5 years which have this.

Or... We could change the law to make it clear that when you buy some hardware you do own it, and to punish businesses that attempt to abuse their customers with owner-hostile retrospective software changes (to hardware products or otherwise). Consumer rights laws exist, and they can be strengthened if necessary to ensure fairness in the market.

>> We could change the law

I think the law will only change for worse. It all starts with the DRM/DMCA.

I'm not from the US, and as an outsider it appears that the US political system is largely dysfunctional at the federal level. I'm afraid solving a problem of that scale is outside the scope of a discussion like this!

However, some parts of the world are more enlightened when it comes to consumer rights. For example, the EU has at least attempted to make constructive regulatory interventions in the interests of consumers as technologies have evolved, even if their success has been mixed. Here in the UK, aside from EU rules we're inheriting after Brexit, we too have some solid basic consumer rights laws of our own. The EU+UK market is already larger than the US one, so that's a pretty big incentive for Tesla not to try those sorts of games around these parts. And if we get reasonable treatment, maybe that's enough for customers in places like the US to demand the same standards.

> You pay for software updates/upgrades on your PC, right?

No...?

How is that? Every new Adobe Creator package used to have a different price(e.g cs3, cs4) Now you can't even upgrade. You pay monthly subscriptions. You pay for OS upgrades as well(i.e win vista, 7, 10 etc)

> How is that?

By using Free Software?

And one has not needed to pay a separate fee for OS upgrades in quite some time. Linux has obviously always been free. macOS since at least Mavericks - if not earlier - is also free of additional charge.

That's the subscription model.

I don't think Telsa falls under this unless they let you take a car for free and require you to pay monthly for the car to actually turn on.

That's more of a zipcar.

Adobe Suite is a subscription based software solution. It is an inappropriate analogy. Does Microsoft asks for money for performance updates in Windows?

Err well actually depending on the edition of Windows Microsoft has long had limitations on the amount of RAM and IIRC multi socket support. Not as part of some architectural change within Windows, literally just a limit on the amount of usable RAM like Windows 7 Home Premium would only allow 16GB.

Depends on your license.

I have never paid for updates of the drivers in my PC. The software to control the motors of a Tesla is akin to that, and should therefore not be compared to software sold purely.

>> I have never paid for updates of the drivers in my PC.

Surely you did. You just didn't pay attention. You paid for a bigger package (i.e new UI)that included driver updates as well.

No, no I didn't. All of the money from that I paid upfront with the hardware.

I remember hearing that IBM shipped computers with extra processors installed that could be activated if you paid the fee.

In searching for more information, I found https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/POWER5/ipha2_p5/... which talks about activating and deactivating not only processors but extra storage.

It doesn't seem like that would work very well for most laptops and phones, given how people won't pay for online backup or anything above the minimums.

Anyway, IBM had a vision of "computing on demand" many years ago but it wasn't in the cloud, it was in your data center.

>"You pay for software updates/upgrades on your PC, right"

only if I want to. In many cases I keep using old version.

>"Everything is going towards subscription models."

That is a wet dream that will not materialize for many vendors or will fail after a while.