(Vanity) What superior products were defeated by inferior ones and why

01/13/03 | self

[rudy45]

Some examples come to mind, such as Betamax vs. VHS. Can you think of others? I'm doing a presentation on how an inferior product, with the right strategy, can overome a superior one.

Thanks.

[savedbygrace]

IIRC, the playlength of the cassettes is what really turned the tide. VHS's 120 minute cassettes could hold a feature-length motion picture (although some say the over-riding reason was that porn flicks were all on VHS, which meant tons of VHS rentals almost overnight.)

[ThinkDifferent]

Netscape (better) v. Internet Explorer

Gotta disagree there. Netscape 4 sucked, and rather than improve its terrible standards support they spent time adding such vital features as a "Shop" button to the toolbar. Much as I have issues with some of Microsoft's business practices, Netscape deserved to get its butt kicked by IE. Today, things are starting to get interesting again with Mozilla.

[Skooz]

Beta wasn't really better than VHS. Beta featured a far more complicated mechanism to roll the tape through the tape heads for display. VHS is much simpler and easier to repair. The repair costs for Beta machines were quite high.

[dep]

and, come to think of it, whatever was on opposite it beat "northern exposure," and, in an earlier day, "he and she."

dep

[tet68]

Republican Guard All Weather Protectant, defeated by
Green Marine Scrubbing Bubbles.

[dep]

and another: windows defeated geoworks.

dep

[MonroeDNA]

Haven't read the book, but took assembly language programming for both the x86 chips (Intel) and the 68000 series (Motorolla).

The intel chips are insanely complicated compared to the Motorolla series. The Motorolla series was so good, the VME bus (mostly Europe) developed around it. Here in the US, Apple chose Motorolla; MS stayed with the Intel.

Apple made the stupid decision to keep their system "closed." They would have dominated the world if they ahd opened it.

Marketing weenies at Apple wanted to control the "3rd party" cards.

Lesson: NEVER let Marketing make major decisions about stuff they know nothing about. They'll kill your company.

[bvw]

Zenith PC beat out by IBM PC. The Zenith had dual processors, a Z80 and a full 8086. Much better hardware and documentation too.

The original IBM PC's detestable "CGA" graphic standard beat out the advanced mix of mapped and raster color graphics that the DEC Rainbow PC demonstrated commercially. Took ten years to come back to where things could have been from the start.

Fortran 77 beat APL.

Piston gasoline engines beat out Steamers.

[af_vet_rr]

windows defeated OS/2; the latter was tremendously superior.

And unfortunately, it's not all MS's anti-competetive actions, IBM marketing really dropped the ball. Commercials with Nuns are not enough.

[clamboat]

X Windows vx. NeWS

[Caipirabob]

Internet file swapping versus the syndicated music industry.

Unless they shut down the whole internet (ya never know...)

[bvw]

You win.

[Karsus]

That must be why IBM is selling a ton of them running virtual copies of Linux.

[theFIRMbss]

>windows defeated OS/2; the latter was tremendously superior.

Windows NT was
OS/2. Check out Torvalds'
story, Just for Fun

[Senator Pardek]

Diamondbacks over the Yankees.

[ThinkDifferent]

windows defeated OS/2; the latter was tremendously superior

Good one. It lost due to bad marketing by IBM, and I also believe its impressive ability to run unmodified Windows programs contributed to its downfall. I recall a number of software vendors who had no interest in making an OS/2 native version because they said OS/2 users could just use the Windows app.

[MonroeDNA]

OK, I hearby declare myself the winner:

Nuclear power (hands down the best) v. everything else.

*taking a bow*

[spectre]

The 65 Ford Mustang and the 57 Thunderbird.

sw

[new cruelty]

Van Halen v. Van Hagar v. Van Sharone v. Sans Halen

[Skooz]

Florida State over Nebraska, 1993 Orange Bowl.

The worst officiated game in the history of organized sport. Period.