I always find it funny how these threads devolve into a pile on. Shimano makes great products despite their pretty abysmal PR on this. Yes, their software needs work, but let’s face it, that’s not their bread and butter.
From a business perspective, the writing was on the wall when pioneer was bought out. Anyone who thought this would be a simple merger was naive. This was Shimano buying out a small competitor to gain market share and the intent was always going to be to kill the Pioneer products after liquidating current stock. They would fold whatever intellectual property that was of value into their brand and dump the rest.
This happens every day, and there are always people who end up on the losing end of this. To think SRAM or Campy would be above this type of behavior is absurd. None of these brands are in the business of making everyone happy, they are in the business of balancing a maximum level of revenue with customer satisfaction. This is how you compete in a free market.
I suspect that current users of pioneer products will end up with something usable, but simply won’t have a product that advances with new features that could be managed with firmware updates etc.
Always be wary of buying a product at a “great deal” during or post acquisition. If the acquiring brand already has similar products, it is almost a given that support will soon be dropped.
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