I agree but remember, the first gen DA 10s di2 was unique and not compatible with anything after that, including 10s ultegra STI..BUT, I think 12s Campag EPS, with an interface and battery and perhaps a front der..is backward compatible. Not sure about that tho. :)

BUT with Campag 8s-9s and hubs, shimano 10s-11s hubs, now MTB 12s shimano and hubs, non compatibility and planned obsolescence is common..aggravating to be sure..but common. I wouldn't buy sram for other reasons..---->>>>:)

They could have changed the entire microcontroller setup inside the system making it expensive or ridiculous to support it with the new app.

Bikes should not have Apps period of course..

In any case even when these products are expensive you've got to remember they're making them for peanuts overseas. They sell small enough #s the price is partly for amortizing development. eTap 11 doesn't have many sales left, and software dev time to make that app work on eTap 11 doesn't have a clear path to amortization.

If enough riders want this stuff, expect the industry to move to something like a yearly maintenance fee like commercial software. YUCK!

I don't know, I feel like Shimano does enough of a job making stuff mechanically incompatible or weird across revisions that SRAM doesn't really deserve any extra hate here. Just the way they've all moved.

Gosh guys, why can't all the parts all work together all the time and a company support what I've already purchased indefinitely.

It's almost like there's reasons behind it or something.

Well there is that whole yearly maintenance fee thing.

There is some segment of the market that's already accepted it for trainers/spin bikes and treadmills.

How many generations of mechanical groups are compatible from one model to the next? I don't see what the big deal is.

Because software is fundamentally different from bike parts?

There's bike parts that don't work together on the regular. It's not like a lack of cross compatibility is somehow new or novel in the industry, whether its the electronic stuff or the mechnical stuff.

Seriously. And how is this any different a computer, or iphone (or whatever)? Don't really see a basis for complaint. I'm surprised the battery and/or charger works across 11/12.

It is true that there have been many times there have been incompatibilities between one model group and the next with mechanical systems, but often times, they will only be partial incompatibilities, or there are ways to adapt one model of part to work with another. With electronic systems, unless one can hack into the source code, incompatibilities tend to be absolute.

With mechanical systems, one can even sometimes get components from different manufacturers to work together (to one degree or another). And if worst comes to worst, mechanical derailleurs all still work in friction mode.

I’m still upset that my Arc En Ciel rims aren’t compatible with Compass tubeless tires and my 5-speed Regina freewheel doesn’t shift all that well with my Dura Ace 9000 groupset. Some of the shifts aren’t super crisp. And holy moly was it hard to get that freewheel installed on my new ENVE wheels. Really had to crank it on. Hope it doesn’t mean I cross threaded something. And try using Duegi wood soled shoes with Dura Ace pedals. I had to re-nail the cleats into the sole and they still don’t work that well.

i think people fail to realize how many generations of software are written with backwards compatibility in mind. it would be mindblowing and garner way more backlash if software *wasn't* backwards compatible.

the fact that we're okay with this in electronic bike parts, that can easily be retrofitted to shift 12 or 11 or 10 or 9 speed widths is honestly baffling to me.

Except that eTap 12 is all new hardware and software, not eTap 11.2. They built the rear derailleur from the ground up.

by design. you have plenty of systems with new hardware that is expected to work with multiple generations of software. my point is, in infancy, the bike industry treats software systems as disposable.

tech generally doesn't.

I have a cheap home computer that was bought for just a few hundred dollars in 2008, about the same time as Shimano Di2 was released. During the time I've owned it, its OS has been updated 3 times, from Windows Vista to Windows 7, then to Windows 8.1, and now Windows 10. It's processor and hard drive isn't as zippy as current computers, but it can still install and run the latest software.

Shimano Di2 components from the same time this computer was made are now no longer supported, and no compatible replacement components are being made. (And this is comparing a very low end computer even for its time, to the most high end components from Shimano.)

It seems like a difficult comparison to make. Games systems don't look back much, while phones and computers fall in the middle, and enterprise systems make every effort.

Perhaps the Internet-of-bikes is in its infancy with eTap 12, while that wasn't really much of a consideration in the rush by the big 3 to get electronic shift onto bikes and into stores.

So eTap 11 got the development engineering, while the real plan of departure was being held for eTap 12sp.

Bike components are more like hard goods - like appliances or vehicles. Automobiles, for example, are nearly completely computer controlled these days. Would you buy a new car, if compatible computer controlled components were only going to be available for a few years, and then completely obsoleted?