Wouldn't it be great if S&W just stuck to what they did best way back in the 1980s? Why, if only they would keep making heavy all-metal 9mm autos with an olde-tyme DA/SA trigger system, why they could sell a handful of them to the old folks who pine for the good old days. Why, that aught to keep the company in business!
It just sucks that S&W doesn't make museum replicas of what was relevant way back when, and are so stupid, old, impotent, and doddering, that they insist on making very capable modern service sidearms that compete successfully with the most relevant, modern designs available. Shame on them for making the kind of guns law enforcement agencies want to equip their officers with! Shame on them for making the kind of guns that competition shooters use to push the limits of speed and skill.
Boy are they dumb. They're so stupid that they might just survive instead of fading into irrelevance (*cough*... COLT...*cough*).
Design moves forward. Designs become MORE SIMILAR as we understand more about human mechanics and ergonomics. As we constantly test and retest and experiment with how humans shoot -- specifically, how to get the most effective hits in the least amount of time -- gun designs will continue to evolve toward a set of optimum characteristics.
To say innovation has to be, above all else, radically different than what came before is wrong-headed. If what exists is close to perfect, than innovation should be in continued refinement of that concept. Not in revisiting the grande olde past, or diverging from what works bestest for the mostest, just for the sake of being different.
