Originally Posted by
DorkDisk
For the industry, it freed frame design from the constraints of having a centered hanger. This was huge and opened the way for modern suspension design. Marketing took over and pushed strong brakes on consumers, but this was a win win. Slight changes were required -stops and beefier stays but were minor.
This is a good point, about suspension fork design. Traditional cantilevers can work with suspension forks, but it's a more difficult design, with a cable stop required on a tall arch. It's not a very elegant solution (though some forks designed for this look pretty cool), and linear pull brakes made this a lot easier.
Originally Posted by
DorkDisk
Most bike parts are bolt-on; but to keep it relevant, suspension at this point in time had just been accepted as the way forward and was heavily marketed as an aftermarket item. However, many (including I) held out and rigid steel is still a thing - unlike cantis. Even thumbies are a thing, but not riding cantis on MTBs. Another example is X+1 speeds - its just a few parts away...
This is what I meant about "disruptive". Most bike parts are bolt-on, but disc systems are not. They required fundamental design changes to bicycles, including considerations for fork design (including blade structure, etc), frame design, etc. It started with simply welding on an IS tab on the rear seat stay, but this has evolved slowly into disc-only frame designs. Disc brakes took over the MTB world fairly rapidly, but have seen much slower adoption in the road cycling world. I think a lot of this has do to do with the nature of the two segments. MTBs themselves grew out of a very non-traditionalist mindset, where cyclists cobbled together whatever they needed to build something to go off road. There was no tradition, no "right way" to do something. You made what you had work and any new component that improved your performance was welcomed. Linear pull brakes and front suspension in the 1990s. Disc brakes and full squish in the 2000s. Etc. In comparison, road cycling tends to be driven by tradition and provenance as much as anything else...and of course the heavy hand of the UCI.
Back to cantis, there are some very good ones made today, and many feel that their performance is every bit the equal of linear pull brakes with similar pad compounds and correct setup. That's where linear pull brakes really took an edge -- they're dead easy to setup. Traditional cantilevers can be very enjoyable to tune and use, if you're inclined to that. With some understanding of the maths involved, one can tune the mechanical advantage in a variety of ways, and really get superb performance out of them. It takes time and effort, though, which are two things linear pull brakes don't require to set working well. You bolt them on and go. I'm not saying that's a bad thing -- quite the opposite in fact. It make good braking accessible to those who didn't know how to, or what to, fiddle with their cantilever brakes all day.
I have a set of modern cantis on my 1997 Trek 750. Great bike, and great brakes. I had linear pulls on it for a while, but switched back to cantilevers for the more traditional look. And I still have my first "big boy" bike, a 1993 gas pipe MTB. It came with low profile Shimano cantis back in the day, and I put Avid linear pull brakes on it some years ago. I still use that bike some, though admittedly fairly infrequently.