Postby mattsccm » 23 Jul 2018, 8:47pm
Not sure about your dog comparison. The industry is the dog surely? As in everything in life we buy what's provided not what we want. Sure a few of us like to think that we are "above" marketing and are happy with what we perceive as superior. We all have our little preferences. I for one fail to see why we need to have phones that we can carry about with us. Stuff talking instantly, wait until you get home.
I think that many of us here, me included , forget or are blinded by our own impressions. For example, most new riders won't be able to tell the difference between a supple old 531 fork and a more rigid disc braked one.( Indeed a carbon fork tends to negate any stiffness anyway. Mine most certainly offers a nicer ride that my 531 forks. ) Most don't care anyway.
Many people won't worry if a component doesn't last a decade. The bike will be long gone by then just like our telly, car, fridge and the rest of modern life. And the majority of consumers either don't care a damn or actually want disposable things. To some extent I do. I get bored way before quality kit wears out. Hydraulic discs are the easy things to maintain. You bung pads in occasionally. If anything else goes wrong you bin them. Same as your telly or trainers.
As usual this thread has wandered off into personal experiences which, as in every case, emphasis the negatives as those people who have a grievance are usually louder. To balance that I would use as an example my own experience with disc brakes. My MTB has Avid Juicy brakes. Known far and wide as being ineffective, a pain to work on and fragile. Maybe so but mine are now 12 years old, have had a lot of abuse and never a service and are still fine. But as in all comparisons, those who are happy don't open their mouths.
Finally might I assume two things please? Firstly that those who condemn any product have had extensive use of it in all situations as theoretical condemnation has no value and secondly have never adopted any modernisation in technology. To condemn something but to use a more modern version of something else is plain daft surely.
Finally maybe we should stop assuming that every cyclist wants to save the world, by reducing carbon, road deaths and obesity. Most people don't give a damn.