Thanks for saying that Mark, I wish that I could actuate that clearly under pressure.
At 07:21 PM 6/7/03 -0400, you wrote:
Pĺl Jensen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Peter wrote:
>
>> There is no reason for Pentax to also alienate old users at the
>> same time, they just have however.
>
>You mean alienating those who never buy anything new from them anyway :o)
>I suspect the compatibility issue is nonexistent for 99% of potential buyers.
I think you're wrong about that. Or right about it but missing an important point.
Yes, the compatibility issue *is* nonexistent for 99% of potential buyers. But I don't think those buyers themselves think that way. In other words, buyers who don't own and will never own pre-A lenses will be put off - perhaps irrationally, perhaps not - by compatibility issues.
People *worry* about obsolescence. And *past* history of compatibility is how they decide how much they need to worry about *future* issues. (What else do they have to go on, in the end?) A person I know in the industry who was at PMA told me that almost *everyone* who talked to him about the *ist-D mentioned how they loved the full compatibility with all K-mount lenses. I'd bet almost none of them actually own pre-A lenses! Many of them weren't Pentax shooters at all (a lot were Nikon users).
The rise of digital has made people more concerned than ever about obsolescence issues. Perhaps it's mostly psychological; but if you lose sales for irrational, psychological reasons it hits your bottom line every bit as much as if they were lost for solid, rational reasons. Making yesterday's products obsolete in your system causes customers to worry about the lifespan of what they're buying *today* - especially if the word "digital" is involved.
Perhaps Canon did the right thing in totally ditching their old lens mount and starting from scratch rather than "nickel-and-dime-ing" compatibility to death like Nikon (and now Pentax, it seems) has done.
The fact that 99% of its buyers won't ever own pre-A lenses is a good reason why it *wouldn't* have hurt Pentax's bottom line to include full compatibility! (Other than the trivial extra cost it would add to a $1500.00 camera.) But those buyers would have felt a lot more confident in the company that sold them the camera.
-- Mark Roberts Photography and writing www.robertstech.com
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. --Groucho Marx
