Those words, from an insane John Houston to Jack Nicholson as Jake Gittes in the classic movie "Chinatown" could be applied equally to the "big three" digital camera manufacturers and their new product releases. Who are the big-three, you might ask? When it comes to DSLRs, that would be Canon, Nikon, and Olympus oops, make that SONY... With SONY's announcement and subsequent quick release of the new Alpha DSLR, the company has jumped to the top of the heap. Sales of the camera in Japan have already made it number-3 in the DSLR market, eclipsing other manufacturers in the process. Many might argue that this is simply a re-bodied Konica-Minolta, and while it's true a lot of the technology came from that manufacturer's intellectual-property, this camera has enough new features to warrant an "all-new" sticker as it is displayed on store shelves. SONY came out swinging and was smart-enough to bring the camera out with a full lens line in both consumer and professional levels and pricing (unlike the beautiful Olympus which came out with VERY expensive lenses and is already a dinosaur when it comes to resolution and noise-reduction). They packed it with innovative features to please both the pros and Cons and also got the camera out there to the testers and blog-sites plenty quick. Yes, this camera was probably under development well before the Sony acqusition of this part of Minolta, but, unlike the other manufactures which announce products to fit with the upcoming show schedules, SONY also delivered a product shortly after their announcement. Have you tried to get that Nikon D200 body-only? That Nikon 18-200VR lens? The Nikon 105mm VR Micro? How long ago were these products announced? Now Nikon has announced the D80 and have already pushed the "release-date" back a couple of weeks. The reasons for Nikon's delays in delivery are probably the best-kept secret in the world, and I'm sure it's for a good reason, but if you can't deliver, don't announce! What does this unkept promise do to the retailers who have to get tired of telling customers that they can't get product that was announced almost a year ago? (Photokina is almost here!) What does this do to customers who made up their mind to buy their first DSLR and find the one they originally picked is unavailable until who knows when? I'll bet that many might just switch brands, especially if they don't have a vested interest in a particular brand because of a previous heavy investment in a particular lens-mount. If a manufacturer can set his hooks in you at the lower-end of the DSLR market, and get you to buy some (or a lot) of their lenses, they probably have you as a customer for a long-time. Why do you think the competition at the entry-level of the DSLR market is so hot and heavy? Nikon trounced Canon at that end of the market with the introduction of, first, the D70 and the the D50 (don't ask me why the heck they didn't put compact-flash drives on all their cameras...maybe they'll switch to SD in their pro-cameras in the future?). They knew if they could lock in the consumer at the low end, they could bring them up the product-line in future purchases. Obviously, if you are fixed on one brand or another, that's the brand you'll buy. But this isn't really about a particular-brand, this is about what these guys will do in the near term future. Will SONY be able to INNOVATE, ANNOUNCE, and DELIVER thier future products with the speed that the Alpha came out with? Will the other manufacturers stop announcing until they can DELIVER products in a timely manner? Will this have enough of an effect to change what place the top-3 manufacturers hold in the marketplace? New product annoncements are always fun. I subscribe to many magazines (and RSS feeds) JUST to see the new product announcements. But if it's announced, and not delivered, what good does it do anybody. I could tell you right now that I'm going to make a 50-megapixel camera, that has a dynamic-range that will give you 18-stops of latitude, no noise for ISO 5400, and a depth-of-field from here-to-eternity, but if I never deliver, I might as well say I'm opening up and Apple-store on Mars. We'll see what happens at Photokina and in the near-term future, maybe all of this "way-pre-announcement" will become a thing of the past, just a marketer's gimmick for grabbing market-share. It's a gimmick that the public won't take for too long, and in the end, it'll be the manufacturer that will suffer. "It's about the future, Mr. Gittes, the future...."