Seems cool you can mix and match again, but time will tell whether their improved wear and tear resistance is marketing dreck or actually pans out. I kind of get the feeling it's not going to be as good as using thicker 7/8/9-Speed chains.
Also kind of worried about parts for my traveling bike. Really don't want a 1x11 on that one, even if has similar range. Hope Microshift keeps cranking out 3x systems.
yeah if in 30 years we don't see the elimination of derailleurs entirely, I'm gonna be disappointed. Internal hubs are simply better in every conceivable way. I don't know if derailleurs are still more popular because of price, or supply chain problems, or cyclist ignorance, but something's gotta be done
They get stupidly expensive if you want more than 11 gears that the shimano alfine offers and even that's not cheap. Also seems fairly impossible to change because the mess of planetary gears required there is just hard to do, stick moves left/right is a lot easier to pull off.
You don't really need any more than that for just going around, if you like riding long distances though for cadence reasons alone you'll want more minute steps. They're also not great if you really wanna lay down the watts for some reason, even pinion only gets a max rating of 250nM in. Shimano has their stuff at 50, Rohloff is in the middle with about 130. None of these are particular hard to exceed if you're really hammering on it and if they break, they're broken.