<story><title>Shimano Forces Hammerhead to Remove All Di2 Related Functionality From Karoo</title><url>https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2022/05/shimano-forces-hammerhead-to-remove-all-di2-related-functionality-from-karoo.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>black_puppydog</author><text>Apart from sharing the opinion here that this is a customer hostile move...&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m pretty happy that my bikes (MTB and Road) have zero electric components (not even light if I don&amp;#x27;t strap it on) and I want to keep it that way. I have yet so see an electric part that I &lt;i&gt;need&lt;/i&gt; or that even just provides me with enough benefit that it&amp;#x27;s worth the hassle of freakin&amp;#x27; &lt;i&gt;firware updates&lt;/i&gt;. Much less having a CAN bus on my bike? is this only for electric bikes or also for gears? I&amp;#x27;m confused...&lt;p&gt;Anyhow, I always thought that running a bike repair shop might be my plan B for when I finally get fed up with computers, but I recently realized bikes are now computers with wheels, just like cars and fridges and toasters and door bells... So I&amp;#x27;m looking for a new plan B.&lt;p&gt;FWIW, just as with fridges and toasters, I think this is a move in the wrong direction. It increases CO2&amp;#x2F;pollution footprint and reduces lifetime. And as we see here, it opens you up to a whole new class of customer abuse.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>taude</author><text>I was pretty anti-electronic shifting on my bikes...but once you have it, it&amp;#x27;s hard to go back. The automatic derailleur tuning to always have snappy, responsive shifts it pretty amazing. And then not having to change cables out is a nice bonus, though not a deal breaker. And even the aesthetics of a cable free bike begins to grow on you.  luckily, battery charging is pretty simple, and I&amp;#x27;ve been always having to charge a bike computer for the past 15 years anyway, so not a big deal to plug it in every couple of month. (This is coming from someone who used to single-speed mountain bike a lot, for the &amp;quot;simplicity&amp;quot; and because I was lazy to have to maintain much on my MTB).  I&amp;#x27;m kind of looking forward to a day when they get the internal hub thing dialed in and lightweight and can handle a lot of torq and not have the drag penalty, etc....&lt;p&gt;That said, I don&amp;#x27;t use any integrated shifting-&amp;gt;head unit functionality.  Not really sure what someone would use it for other than checking battery levels?  Which is super simple to see on the hardware itself.  And which is easier to just get off my phone.&lt;p&gt;Also, firmware updates are typically pretty simple these days due to the pretty decent phone app support.  I&amp;#x27;ve done firmware updates on both a Wahoo computer and SRAM shifting, and it was really straightforward, and never for a critical item, yet, only to get more features (though I&amp;#x27;m not an early adapter in any of this).  I guess I&amp;#x27;ll find out mre about Di2 specific integrations when my next bike arrives...</text></comment>
<story><title>Shimano Forces Hammerhead to Remove All Di2 Related Functionality From Karoo</title><url>https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2022/05/shimano-forces-hammerhead-to-remove-all-di2-related-functionality-from-karoo.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>black_puppydog</author><text>Apart from sharing the opinion here that this is a customer hostile move...&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m pretty happy that my bikes (MTB and Road) have zero electric components (not even light if I don&amp;#x27;t strap it on) and I want to keep it that way. I have yet so see an electric part that I &lt;i&gt;need&lt;/i&gt; or that even just provides me with enough benefit that it&amp;#x27;s worth the hassle of freakin&amp;#x27; &lt;i&gt;firware updates&lt;/i&gt;. Much less having a CAN bus on my bike? is this only for electric bikes or also for gears? I&amp;#x27;m confused...&lt;p&gt;Anyhow, I always thought that running a bike repair shop might be my plan B for when I finally get fed up with computers, but I recently realized bikes are now computers with wheels, just like cars and fridges and toasters and door bells... So I&amp;#x27;m looking for a new plan B.&lt;p&gt;FWIW, just as with fridges and toasters, I think this is a move in the wrong direction. It increases CO2&amp;#x2F;pollution footprint and reduces lifetime. And as we see here, it opens you up to a whole new class of customer abuse.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>alisonatwork</author><text>One thing I noticed after cycling across North America on a $500 hybrid and then Colombia on a $200 utility bike was that there is a wildly different class of cyclist that rides with computers and carbon fiber and shiny jerseys... They were as baffled by my setup as I was by theirs. It&amp;#x27;s almost an entirely different category of transportation. Or perhaps it isn&amp;#x27;t so much a form of transportation for them, it&amp;#x27;s a hobby - they often drive their bikes to the place they want to ride instead of just riding the in-between.&lt;p&gt;I imagine there is room to cater to both types of cyclist. Perhaps it was a self-selecting group for me, but I found every mechanic I visited on the road to be most busy with repairs of low-tech gear. It seems to me that low-tech bikes will continue to make up the long tail for many years to come, even if catering to those customers is less lucrative.</text></comment>