Originally posted by Blue As far as you "degrading and judgmental" comment, that's your personal problem. You were pretty damn snide with your "shame on them" comment when you were being a bit self centered with your own opinions about your "wants" from Pentax.
Pentax has a pretty robust limited line of primes that are top-notch in the build quality department, the DA L series is smart because it gets young people to buy into the system, who will eventually spend their money on limited lenses and DA * lenses.
You can't expect new photographers to buy into a lens system that is primarily expensive glass. With no budget offerings, people will buy nikon or canon, who both offer entry level 28mm, 50mm, 85mm lenses in the f1.8 range. Pentax refuses to match them in speed (thankfully they do match in quality), but for gods sakes, they need more than just a 35. One option would be for a cheap 85, but I could understand if they did 55 instead. In fact, I hope they do.
If you think like a pentax exec, it's foolish to not introduce more cheap primes IMHO. Young people love portrait photography and an affordable fast 50 on a crop body does them just fine (even if it's not a perfect solution).