I would like to point out that it has kinda already been confirmed that upgrades like the heated bed will at some point become available for the original UM. As long as they keep releasing upgrades for the original UM, I won't really compare them to Makerbot.
For most of us that assembled the UM ourselves, we paid 1194 euros for the kit and perhaps 80 euros for the controller. That leaves 621 euros for other upgrades before we reach the price of the new version. That's quite a bit of money for upgrades. I could easily make my UM run silent and add a nice heated bed for about 200 euros. That still leaves 421 euros for other upgrades, such as the new UM2 hotend (if it gets released for the original UM).
The point I'm trying to make is that many owners will actually be able to buy a lot of upgrades before reaching the price of the UM2. Also, for those of us who buy a lot of PC hardware, we know that new products are released every 6 months. Unfortunately, that's how the market is but I still think that the UM team does a decent job in supporting previous products, kinda like AMD in the PC world.
Even though I'm quite happy with my UM, I would still suggest that the UM team hints new releases a lot earlier. Hinting a release like 1 week before it becomes available is a bad idea, especially since a lot of new owners will become frustrated. You can still hint a release a lot earlier without releasing the details about it.