[eddie1960]

I would never buy a Canon because they screwed their entire user base in the 80s. Once bitten, twice shy. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me and all that.

Which is why I went back to Pentax when My FD kit got stolen in a break-in Not a hope in hell I was going to reward them for screwing the users

[RioRico]

I would never buy a Canon because they screwed their entire user base in the 80s.

They screwed their moderate-size FD user base (25 years ago?) in exchange for building their humongous EOS user base. Please don't think I'm defending their successful ploy. I'm no fanboi -- all my Canons have been film P&S midgets, and I've sold (at a nice profit) all the FDs I inadvertently acquired. I'm just not surprised that corporations screw their old customers when they see money looming. Oly screwed their OM users when they killed that line. Minolta too, when they switched from MD to AF. I'll posit that Kodak screwed 120 users when they introduced 620.

My mother-in-law is a classically-trained musician. She despises synthesizers because they put instrumentalists out of work. I didn't ask what she thought of all the wind players left unemployed after the pipe organ was invented. Point is, technology evolves, and supporting legacy technology forever is costly. Could Canon have made the EOS mount with the same or slightly shorter register than FD, for legacy support? I dunno; FD+EOS ain't my specialties. But screwing users (musical-photographic-etc) is richly rewarded. Don't be surprised by upcoming changes.

[Alizarine]

Somewhere down the line, I also think the K-mount has to die (not now, though, not yet). But somehow, I hope Pentax keeps their optics principles intact, even if they do change the native mount for future cameras;

The SMC, excellent color reproduction, non-bulky lens build, the Limiteds, camera body ergonomics, etc. are the things I've identified as Pentax cool. If these are to be housed in a new mount, well, I'm sticking with buying Pentax. The older lenses I have now can still be used with my K-mount cameras, so I will not consider it a loss (though it would be great if they can make an adapter for it! Even if everything will become full manual)