Ironic that digital photographers desire the print that their cameras were meant to replace.
I like print too. Spent the better part of my professional career creating print for my clients only to see the demand for printing dry up as digital media became its replacement. Software publishing is a growth industry in today's economy, as is internet publishing, broadcasting and search. Among industries that were hardest hit by the recession last economic downturn is commercial printing and those jobs will probably never come back.
You could blame Canon for being "too cheap" but the truth of the matter is that printers have gone out of business in droves and the remaining printers face less competition and that constrains pricing. In addition, there are fewer print jobs to go around, which increases the cost of producing that work. (Paper pricing, ink, bindery services, and other materials and related services are priced, in part, on demand.) So, where you see a company that is cutting corners unfairly, I see a company that is backed into a corner by fundamental changes in media.
Frankly, anyone that argues that they have room for a manual but not a "reader" of some sort, is shouting foul into the blare of modern trends. The argument against printed manual has always been that it is difficult to separate what you need from what you have to carry, especially true when you physically carry to the info. No one needs everything printed in the manual "all the time," just those pages that are pertinent to the inquiry. As such, manuals are regularly left behind. IMHO, it would be wiser to "put" the manual where it is most readily available and therefore most like to be used rather than try to "train" photographers' to rely on printed manuals.
I am convinced that no one cares about such stuff as a "book" per se. Except those suffering from nostalgia or are wickedly inflexibe.
