Steve, I see your point, but please look at this from the standpoint of a consumer.
Have you logged onto the internet lately and seen the amount of marketing that phase are putting into C1, I see more of it than I do from Adobe. If I didn't know better and was an average user shooting say a Canon DSLR of medium spec, saw their advertising, took it onboard, I would think that they are a direct competing offering to Adobe (which clearly they are not if they choose to stiff the competition)
I would view their well promoted training videos, read Kevin Raber rave about it on this site, download the trial version, use it, like it, trial it and become excited to use it. I would then compare it to Adobe and purchase a one-off license and away I go. 3 years in I would become more enthused and cash rich and decide to take a look at the Pentax MF offering at my local camera store and go "wow" look at what it offers for the money. I can "NEVER" afford or justify one of those P1 systems, but this, this is nice!
After taking my $9000 camera home, taking some sample files and loading them into C1 I would find that it doesn't work. Then I would spend countless hours going through forums like this only to find that I have to change to adobe, change my workflow, re-learn, keep an existing application running on my pc for my old already edited files.
This is not the experience that the consumer wants to go through, not when the company that has plastered their advertising across camera sites and facebook, touting their product as a competing product to adobe, when in fact its not a competing product.
What it clearly is, its an image editing program that P1 design for their backs so that they had complete control over the file process from start to finish, only to have a company exec look at it and say "can we make more money from this and make it available to everybody and compete with Adobe?" yes they can but lets cripple every competitor in the MF space along the way, just to say "screw you" cos' we can.
And before anybody says, "well that consumer in question should do more due diligence before spending $9k", true. But every camera salesperson (except for the great ones like you Steve), actually knows less than the average person on these forums and will answer any question with a yes to get a sale, its the way of life.
Any to top off my point, Phase should be more scared about loosing sales to Sony FE and Nikon D8xx cameras and Zeiss lenses then they ever should be about Pentax. They offer support to these customers and they represent a massive market. Phase are dollar grabbing where they can and stiffing the apparent immediate competition along the way. Phase are more likely to get the future business of a Pentax 645Z user than they ever are out of a Nikon or Sony FE user.
The real world is so far detached from these forums and the consumer is far less educated than what we think. I think phase are a great company for doing what they do with their systems, its just frustrating to see something mis-represented.
Rant over.
NB: the above is not a tale of what happened to me, I was already aware of the above when getting into my 645D and now 645Z
