New Leica M8s not incorporating upgrade---you pay extra

Olsen,

I have no doubt that there's a slight edge to Leica.
The question is, is that slight edge worth the extra money?

To some, it is.
To others, well..... :D

Cheers
Dave
 
have to agree with kevin-g. i thought quiet shutters was what leica did by principle. they ought to be refunding folks if the original M8 shutter is not up to scratch.
 
There is a lot of discussion about the viability of the M8 being perptually upgradable - will this sensor fit in the body, or what that incompatible breakthrough comes about.

They may not be able to keep the M8 itself "working for a lifetime", but couldn't they live up to thier commitment by allowing perpetual upgrades in the form of swapping out the obsolete body for the new, totally different, body plus cash, as long as the company exists? I wouldn't see that as much of risk on thier part - after all the tradein/upgrade value is thiers to determine...
 
@rxmd - the newton failed because steve jobs knifed the baby. it was too far ahead of the time. my hope is that a future iPhone based newton is in the works. even the current iPhone would come really close if they opened up the ecosystem for others to build apps for it.
 
infrequent said:
@rxmd - the newton failed because steve jobs knifed the baby.
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I would have knifed it too.

Have you ever looked at a Palm Pilot and a Newton 2000? You could get a $300 device that fit in your pocket or a $800 device that didn't fit. One had a market, the other didn't. The Newton was fascinating, but it wasn't what people wanted to buy. That's always bad for a company.

Apple saw the success of the Pilot 1000 in 1996 and responded by building a more powerful, but significantly bigger (and costlier) device. People voted with their wallets.

Philipp
 
@rxmd - i think really understanding what the market needs (and not want) has been the hallmark of jobs' second coming. palm def understood it then but are definitely struggling now. of course there are many who believe that the real reason newton was killed was because it was not by jobs.

back to your point about upgrades and their effect on current sales is dead on. apple is pretty good at that too...in sharp contrast to every other pc manufacturer who announce months beforehand. of course the iPhone announcement was the exception but was prolly because of their self-belief that it was so far ahead of the competition.
 
infrequent said:
of course the iPhone announcement was the exception but was prolly because of their self-belief that it was so far ahead of the competition.
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Moreover, they had no current product that could have been endangered by announcing the iPhone early.

Philipp
 
rxmd said:
I would have knifed it too.

Have you ever looked at a Palm Pilot and a Newton 2000? You could get a $300 device that fit in your pocket or a $800 device that didn't fit. One had a market, the other didn't. The Newton was fascinating, but it wasn't what people wanted to buy. That's always bad for a company.
Click to expand...

At the time they were already working on smaller versions to compete with the Palm Pilot. I've seen a couple of the prototypes. They would have sold quite well if they could get past the stigma of poor handwriting recognition the early models left. It was killed off because the company was bleeding red ink and they had to concentrate their efforts on profitability. I remember when they were down to $13 a share just before the iMac was introduced. Apple spends more on R&D than any company I know and they just couldn't afford to have so many projects going at the same time back then. Now we have the iPhone and a new touchscreen device coming later this year.

What were we talking about? Oh yeah, the Leica M8. I really don't like the way the upgrade is being handled. Typically you would have a new model, M8-2, and then an upgrade for owners of the original M8 to bring in line with the new model. Instead we have no new model but rather an optional upgrade only. This will get ugly fast. I can see it now: If you have an original, upgrade 3 will cost $2000. If you have upgrade 1 upgrade 3 will cost $1700. If you have upgrade 2 upgrade 3 will cost $1200. At some point they are going to have to start clean with an M9.
 
Double Vision said:
What were we talking about? Oh yeah, the Leica M8. I really don't like the way the upgrade is being handled. Typically you would have a new model, M8-2, and then an upgrade for owners of the original M8 to bring in line with the new model. Instead we have no new model but rather an optional upgrade only. This will get ugly fast. I can see it now: If you have an original, upgrade 3 will cost $2000. If you have upgrade 1 upgrade 3 will cost $1700. If you have upgrade 2 upgrade 3 will cost $1200. At some point they are going to have to start clean with an M9.
Click to expand...

That is what many of us are fearing. If the warranty provided by the upgrade was a Passport warranty then things might be different.
 
Hacker said:
SDHC support is at the hardware layer, not at the software layer. No amount of firmware upgrade will give you the capability.
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Not saying you're wrong, but Pentax released a firmware update for the DS/DS2 that gave it SDHC capability.
 
To me , this upgrade thing is sort of a money grab, leica has probably sold most of the M8s that they are going to sell to all the people that were hunkering for one and their sales will decrease substantially from here, especially considering the financial quagmire the world finds itself in.
So what better way to extract some extra cash, than to hit up the existing M8 owners for another 1200 euros and for what ? a saphire crystal cover, 2 year warranty and a shutter improvement ?, this now is going to let you take pictures that you couldn't take before, or can now soooo much better ?
Of course there is also that little thought planted in you brain that now your M8
will never be obsolete, we'll see about that in a few years.
Just my take on the "upgrade"
 
chikne said:
Oh you can't be serious can you? "Flush those people out, reposess their homes..."
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I agree with you. To 'flush people out' is no solution. That's pure facism.

But the guy is good at describing the situation, but has no good solution (like Carl Marx!). Any support/solution should be directed towards those people not capable of paying their home morgages. Not bailing out shareholders and investors by reducing the interest rate. Tax cuts means sending the bill into the future. Taxes should be increased for the richest 5%. They are the ones that has prospered the most on the Big Spending Spree.
 
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