groghunter

not one of these is about aliens.

@smashbeast: absolutely not. those are toe clips. observe. https://www.amazon.com/toe-clips/s?k=toe+clips

safe to say, a lot of you assumed a lot more than i said. of course downhill is even less representative of typical riding. but most people are stoked about riding the downhills, not the uphills. look at how much grindy and steep climbing there is in your typical XCO race and tell me with a straight face that most rider seek out those rides, especially if there isn't a "good" downhill as a payoff. Enduro is the closest in profile. the variance is going to be in riders seeking out trails where the downhill is appropriate for their skill level, but "pedal up, fun down" is what most popular trails look like. As for XCO getting more technical? that's entirely down to the riders and the venues, and it was in spite of the UCI, not because of them.

If the price is giving the UCI justification for ignoring the gravity side even more, I'm gonna have to go with Jon Snow on this one: "I don't want it." XC is great as a racing format. but it isn't emblematic of typical mountain biking, and the UCI has shown a clear bias towards pushing MTB closer to road whenever possible. Enabling that attitude does none of us any favors. I get that they brought in Chris Ball to fight that perception. but it remains to be seen how much power he really wields.

@itslightoutandawaywego: Bingo. this has been a problem since 2014, when RS started basically making the Pike as a "one chassis for all" (keeping in mind that at the time, most bikes above 160 were running DH forks, and we were still a few years from the Zeb.) They did this by compromising negative air spring design (every fork has the same chassis, therefore the same location for the air transfer port, therefore the same negative spring size. prior to the Pike, forks were using a coil negative spring, which can be tuned by travel, or for rider preference, and critically, without changing the size of the positive air spring.) They didn't do this for performance. they did it to lower the cost of making the fork, and make that fork marketable for a larger range of bikes. All Pikes, Zebs, 34s, 36s, etc etc etc of any travel are the same except for the length of the air shaft and number of tokens installed (caveat: Fox has been known to not make all stanchions the same length within a chassis model, but the concept is the same.) and then they came up with a slick marketing strategy for the method they came up with to fix the problem they created: one positive air spring size does not work for a fork that can come in both 160mm and 80mm travel. but if we call them "tokens" and tell people they're for "tuning your progression" then we can pretend this isn't a hack to fix the problem. and in their defense, it isn't even entirely untrue, but they marketed the hell out of it. On the face of it, none of this couldn't work. but it's a compromise, especially on the longest travel setting, where it's hard to get enough volume for the positive spring. and at least in RS's case, it forced them into some damper compromises as well, especially in the first gen charger. if you liked that progression, it felt fine, which is why there were so many rave reviews at the time. but if you liked a more linear fork feel, the self-equalizing air spring has been a cancer on fork design since it was introduced. and that's ignoring the lubrication compromises that affect all users.

@Tambo: You're absolutely right. it is in their best interests. Unfortunately, the dream of "maybe we can win and force Shimano to pay us for every derailleur they sell, or force them out of business or something" is really appealing to investors. and to be clear, it's both brands. in some ways, SRAM has absolutely done some of this defensively, as Shimano has been just as guilty, if not more, of trying to lock people into their parts, both with patents and without. SRAM, way back in just the day as just a drivetrain startup, was essentially born out of Shimano's lack of will to make MTB components that were more than just "a slightly burlier road derailleur," in part due to their successful efforts in locking people into their ecosystem.

@jammers-1991: you can absolutely patent a configuration of holes and surfaces for an application, and that's exactly what SRAM did. you can make all sorts of arguments about ways to get around it, and some of them might even work. I would happily argue that "a derailleur but without a hanger" shouldn't have been granted a patent at all. but legally, if you measure a SRAM transmission derailleur mount, and make a derailleur (or frame) that works with that specific configuration of holes and surfaces, you must have a license from SRAM to sell that product.

@pmhobson: somewhat. the thing you're missing, as demonstrated by ethirteen's troubles with infringement, is that not mentioning components does not equal components do not infringe the patent. Patent law is pretty clear on this, infringement is infringement, regardless of how nicely SRAM may talk about it to get frame/hub companies on board.