Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/09/06
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]All the talk about new M cameras from other competitors seems to centre around the assumption that they intend to compete with Leica's market share. I offer an alternative view: There are growing numbers of computer literate people in their young twenties today who use a text editor called "vi". This used to be a standard editor about fifteen years ago among programmers, until it was largely replaced by one called "Emacs". Both have a horrendous learning curve, but Emacs has a number of advantages that make it, on the whole, a lot more pleasant and powerful to use. Interestingly, the twenty-somethings are using vi specificially because it is more obscure, harder to use, somewhat antiquated technology. I bet there are a lot of twenty-somethings out there who wouldn't pick up the latest Canon Rebel if you paid them, but who would seriously consider taking up photography with a funky looking LTM camera, particularly upon learning that they can use lenses as old at 1924 on them! Clearly, these people are not interested in a $2000 camera, or the $2500 lens, regardless of what the name of the red dot is. At least, not yet. But in twenty years time, if they started out on LTM rangefinders? Who knows... Apologies to Christer for writing another non-entertaining message from MIT. ;) M. - -- Martin Howard | 2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large Visiting Scholar at MIT Media Lab | values of 2. email: mvh@media.mit.edu | www: http://mvhoward.i.am/ +---------------------------------------