It was the 'unrivaled' bit that I found a bit odd, hence my italics. Sure, there's a lot of lenses that are 'compatible' within the Nikon system, but there's more than a few caveats, limitations, ifs, buts and maybes involved.
There are other systems that offer far more compatibility between old and new, Leica being the ultimate example of backwards/forwards compatibility. Though as they've never moved away from manual focus this is not that surprising. I could name another system that has greater compatibility.
