Originally Posted by gcasillo
^^^ Yeah, and computer folk used to say 640k was all the memory you'd need. But applications changed. Became more complex. Stuff that wasn't intended to be digitized was digitized (e.g. video). You know the rest.
Problem with bike components is that, indeed, 10 gears are all you need. Or 9. Hell, maybe even less. Unless they make mountains bigger or figure out how to sneak a man past a headwind, we should have all the gears we need.
From a search I did last night, read post #21 by waltergodefroot:
http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=128032
Spot on.
yeah, but like you said--cycling conditions are the same, computing applications have become more memory and processor intensive (I'm sure Bill Gates wasn't forseeing adobe photoshop apply a gaussian blur to a 300mb cymk image with 15 layers--you get my point)--it's not like people are using 2ghz computers to run lotus 123, or whatever the 'killer app' was back then.
with more gears, the dropouts will get wider and the wheel will have more dish--pretty soon it's gonna get silly, imho
I think 90% of bike tech is making stuff lighter, which is no small feat--but again, weight is only ONE factor. Aside from STI/Ergo brifters and carbon-everything, what is the last "big thing" you can think of?