Impassioned to you seemed irate to me. Please accept my apologies.
No apologies necessary. I wasn't the one who made the "impassioned" remark. I understand there were a couple of people who were irate over this issue. My point was that it was
just a couple of people (and some of them, like you, are not even Summit owners but feel compelled to speak on our behalf). The truth is there are a lot more Summit owners on the forum who just didn't care about it or see it as an issue at all. This belies your notion that a "good number" of Summit owners were irate and no one was happy, proving that ML botched this up. That simply isn't the case.
Also, this is a small community of ML enthusiasts and is not necessarily indicative of the market at large. In other words, things that seem like a big deal after a couple of impassioned posts on this site may not actually be such a big deal in the real world of speaker manufacturing and sales.
The timing, lack of explanation and even the rumors of a Summit update path was not (IN MY OPINION) handled well. To me, it was botched.
I assume by timing you mean that the Spire should not have been released until the Summit was discontinued and they were ready to release the Summit X. Well, I guess maybe there is some merit to that argument. But I also know that things don't always work out that cleanly and nicely in a manufacturing environment. They finished the Spire first and didn't want to wait a few extra months to release it until they could finish the Summit X.
As for lack of explanation, this is standard ML policy and has been for a long time. If this was a "botch" then they have botched every product introduction they have had in the last few years. For that matter, so has Apple and a host of other companies that provide limited information about forthcoming products.
As far as I know, the rumors of a Summit update path started on this site because certain folks at ML made an offhand comment during our tour of the plant that they would provide an upgrade path if it was feasible. This was then taken as gospel by some members of this site and when it didn't materialize, they took ML to task for it. So the obvious flaw here was that ML provided
too much information about an upcoming product before they knew how it was going to pan out. Hmmmm? Sounds like they are damned if they do and damned if they don't, from your perspective.
Since this is an open forum, I have a right to voicing my opinion (especially when indicating what it is). You have the right to a different opinion and I respect that.
Why do people have to say this EVERY time someone challenges the basis of their opinions? We are all entitled to our opinion and we all know that, so instead of repeating the obvious, why not provide some information to add credibility to your opinions? If you want people to take you seriously, that is the only way to achieve it. I assume you do want to be taken seriously.
I think that we have gone beyond the purpose of this thread and won't post anything relevant to this again. I'll stick to thread's intent.
Understood.
