My complaint with companies like Shimano and Microsoft is that they work on the basis of creating obsolescense in both their products and also interrelated products. Microsoft not only ensures that we have to buy a new more powerful PC every 5 years, but also must at least upgrade most of our software as well. When Shimano introduced 10-speed STI, they made all 9-speed and earlier drivetrain parts obsolete. At least Suntour had the decency to provide a knob on their Sprint 9000 indexed shifter, which allowed you to select between ultra (narrow) 7-speed, regular 6-speed or even non-indexed mode so you could use different freewheels. More than one time I've seen situations where racers have flatted, and have had to wait, losing precious time as the support vehicle fumbles around looking for a wheel with the correct brand and cassette type to work with their particular version of shifter. Since there is no way to disable the index mode, often times they are stuck in one gear for the remainder of the race.

Competition in the marketplace is always a good thing, and monopolies are bad. The most sophisticated innovation always comes from smaller companies with smarter people who understand that the best advances are the simplest ones. Large companies do design by commitee, where they simply throw everthing they know into the mix, and end up with complex, unserviceable and inefficient designs. Unfortunately, these small companies lack the large marketting and sales departments necessary to fend off the behemoths like Microsoft and Shimano.