Originally Posted by
Rowan
It's very easy to forget that MTB and CX development provides some of the needs for road and touring as well.
If someone's focus is entirely road, they may well be missing out on options in other cycling genres.
Now THAT'S a good point! I only do road biking; but the very invention of the MTB, and many of the on-going developments which relate to it, is truly an area where some useful stuff is still becoming available- such as disc brakes. And many of those developments- including the invention of the MTB itself, are indeed market-driven- i.e. cases where companies truly filled a need that existed, where consumers were demanding a product- often by making their own.
Trouble is, they [the companies] often take those developments, and foist them on the road market- like disc brakes: I never knew any roadies who were crying out for disc brakes- and while I am all for choices and options, the fact is, we will likely see disc bikes and disc wheels become the standard (it's already occupying a large segment of the new market), creating yet more incompatibility for all previous stuff- and not because people were demanding disc brakes ('cause probably only about 2% of current riders actually want them on road bikes) but because it's another "feature" they can market to noobs.
Originally Posted by
RomansFiveEight
Dunno that I get the conspiracy theories. Or the upseted-ness over new stuff. If you don't like it, don't buy it. A while back a man told me he would "Never own an iPad", I asked if he had an Android tablet, he said no; and for the same reason. I asked what that reason was, and he said "Because every year they come up with a new one and your old one is obsolete".
SO!? Your still WORKS! I still have a first gen iPad. Works fine. Now, with computers, software advances. So eventually, the newest software won't work on the oldest hardware. But that's true of PC's and Mac's as well as it's true of mobile devices like tablets and smartphones. New stuff comes out; if you don't want it, don't buy it.
Now
that's funny! I keep my computers a long time (The one I am using right now is 8 years old)- but then again, if I were a Windows or Mac user, I guess it would be obsolete. Luckily, purely mechanical devices present no such possibilities- but thanks to things like electronic shifting, I guess they've solved that "problem". (I don't use an iPad/Android/[not-so]Smartphone because I have no need nor desire for such things.)