I don't think the author is speaking so much of the goals of us in the "graying" demographic as much as he's commenting on how the market is driven by the expectations of those of us happy carrying around our 4-5 lbs of equipment, and questions whether or not companies are better off listening to other voices lest they be left behind.
I agree that is his point. The one part I particularly enjoyed was near the end, he says:
Where is photography going? Where it always gone. It's going along for the ride with popular culture. It's the traditionalists that feel a sense of loss but the sense of loss is from the constant evolution of tastes and styles. If you look at photo history you'll see generational warfare at every junction. Resistance to smaller camera formats! Resistance to color film! Resistant to SLR cameras! Resistance to automation!
He got that right, resistance to change old methods. All those of a certain age surely remember all of that, and I think it was his major point.
He left out the specific controversy about putting a light meter into the camera (a year or two before 1960). Nikon did not do it until middle 60s. Some of that was comparing incident hand held meters to reflected meters, and a tiny bit was about spot meters, but mostly was about how could such an embedded meter ever be trusted to be IN THE CAMERA? And then a bit later after a little acceptance, could the camera be trusted to zero the light meter, or should we zero it ourselves?
I was influenced back then to ignore color film for quite a few years, which of course was a huge and regretted mistake.
The one exception was that I think it was instead Kodaks manufacturing cost that kept pushing all the tiny film formats like disks and 110.. No one that understood anything wanted that. Those that didn't understand didn't know or care.
