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Zap "achieved neither technical success nor commercial application" and was beaten by two years by SunTour BEAST anyway.
You're funny, proper off the deep-end fanboy syndrome. Indexed shifting and STI shifters are the two biggest developments in groupsets since the cabled derailler was created by Simplex. Then we have Di2.
"The first commercially successful electronic gear shift system for road bicycles was introduced by Shimano in 2009, the Di2" followed six years later by those well-known innovators, SHAM.
hippy-
Well, as long as we're agreed that SunTour were first and Shimano isn't much of an innovator either. If I'm going to continue to fight this corner, indexed shifting and STI shifters are just incremental improvements on the cabled groupset; Di2 is a cabled groupset too, with some admitted improvements. I've made the comparison before between CDs / Minidisk / MP3, which I think is quite apt. Minidisk was an improvement on CDs in a lot of ways, but it was quickly sidelined by the convenience of digital music.
Wireless is a paradigm shift.
p.s. I'm not half as much of a fanboy as I make out. I think wireless shifting is cool, but I've got Shimano and SRAM cable groupsets on my bikes, and it'll stay that way for a long old time I recon. I prefer SRAM shifting and hood shape, but I've used Campag and own Shimano without complaint. I enjoy the discussion if I'm honest.
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"The first commercially successful electronic gear shift system for road bicycles was introduced by Shimano in 2009, the Di2" followed six years later by those well-known innovators, SHAM.
I can't see how you can claim SRAM aren't innovators. I mean, look at the pre-YAW Red and Force front mechs? Ever since Tulio nailed the parallelogram front derailleur, nobody else has managed to make and sell a front derailleur so awful that stopping, getting off the bike, and moving the chain with your fingers seems like a reasonable alternative. Particularly since trying to use the front derailleur will result in your chain unshipping itself a good proportion of the time anyway.
And the bonus 'surprise' function in the first series of hydraulic road brakes, which would cause them to fail catastrophically with no warning. A world first, I think.
And not to mention the Zipp hub recall farce. Not satisfied with managing to fuck up designing possibly the simplest part of a bicycle drivetrain, they even managed to cock up designing the replacement part. Having to recall the same product twice, for the same defect. Groundbreaking stuff, truly.
SRAM. Innovators in the art of ineptitude, reaching new depths of performance.
MechaMorgan
Brommers
cough Mavic Zap cough
I never said Sram invented electronic shifting, they just didn't bother with the pointless half-way house of a wired shifting system, and have been first to the bring a proper update to the groupset market since Tullio Campagnolo :)
@smallfurry I don't really think what the pro peloton want drives innovation any more; my point was that Shimano are scrambling for excuses. It's not hard (apart from expensive) to build a bike that confers some performance advantages over stuff allowed in UCI racing, even if that's only disc brakes and a lighter total weight.
Not really fussed about Shimano sticking a longer cage on their derailleur as some kind of worthy accomplishment in R&D.
p.s. this is all moderately tongue in cheek. I enjoy my position as resident eTap fanboy, but I'm totally happy with my various cable groupsets.