April 22, 2015, 8:42 a.m. -  George

#!markdown While I completely share the sentiment of this article and think that these new axle standards are ridiculous, I think this article was very emotionally biased and lacked objectivity. For one, the apple analogy was a bad one. Apple maintained the old dock connector for 11 years and kept it on the iphone for 5 phone generations (5 years) and only replaced it when the technology was handicapping them. The same is true for screen size. Apple resisted increasing screen size for 5 years while every other manufacturer upped theirs nearly annually. And your marketers decision matrix was equally unfair. Your first option shows how you feel and your second options shows your biased view of the current state of the industry. Why are those two the only options? What about another option such as: "A design with new standards that will sell better and make you ride faster…or have more fun…"? I absolutely hate that there is now a 110×15 standard when 110×20 was deemed too heavy just a few years ago, and 148×12 is so unbelievably close to 150×12 but was somehow inadequate. But we should be blaming ourselves. The bike industry isn't immune to market forces and if the industry came out with something new that was crap, people wouldn't buy it and it would go away. Like Google+. But because we live in the internet world where every new minor product gets big time coverage and discussion, we find ourselves foaming at the mouth thinking about some new toy. It's a marketers dream.