Originally Posted by
HillRider
I believe the intent of the linkage that made the pads travel in a straight path is that, without it, the pads tend to hit lower and lower on the rim as they wear and the arc of their travel gets longer.
That's not what Shimano advertised as the advantage, they claimed the parallel push design made the brakes more "powerful" (15%). Again, I have no idea how that could be, but that's what they claimed at the time they first introduced them. For a long time, the feature was only available at the XT and XTR level. FWIW, my XT parallel push brakes that are several years old appear to have a more complicated design than the current Shimano v-brakes that are listed as having the "parallel" feature-