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@adroit
To be fair though Shimano have put a lot of those bikes out for people to try out, anyone they think they can relieve of a few bob will be given one to try.
The programmed shifting decides which is the sweetest shift to make, so it avoids the big jumps without you having to think about it, and it knows when to avoid chain crossover. It won't change at the back and the front at the same time. The clever part is that it is a switch, not the levers, that you use. You can have one or more switches. So you can just press up or down and the electronics does the rest. This means you don't need sti levers which means a bit of a weight saving, and frees up a lot of component options.
It is also possible to connect it to a GPS or cadence switch, so it will always stay within a certain cadence range, and for example stay in the inner ring on a climb and the big ring on a descent. We are only just beginning to explore the possibilities of electronic shifting.