(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.

[dep]

no, it wasn't. they were similar and shared a common lineage, but they were different in numerous important ways, and in all of those OS/2 was superior. particularly when you consider that OS/2 offered features in 1992 that nt never got round to providing, not least of them being the wps.

dep

[Neanderthal]

Front-wheel drive defeated rear-wheel drive cars. Front-wheel, although inferior, was developed so that automakers could shrink cars to fulfill EPA mileage mandates.

Rear drive cars are balanced better. All sport cars are rear drive. Front drive cars have complicated doo-dads like "constant velocity (CV) joints" that eventually break down. The only advantage of front drive, except lower weight and smaller size, is better control on snow and ice.

[MonroeDNA]

I sense the beginnings of a loooong thread. :)

[Centurion2000]

Fission versus Oil/Gas. Makes TOTAL sense to use fission but politics is trying to kill that technology.

Microsoft vs every other desktop operating system

Cisco versus all other routers. The Juniper killer switch/router should be out later this year.

Internal combustion engines versus advanced steam power (external combustion).
The internal combustion engine is insanely complicated versus a decent steam engine. Using steam engines would have also made every single engine a multi-fuel drinker. The drawback? It takes 30 seconds to start (and heat) the car versus about 4)

Zepplins versus airlines.

Orion drives or laser launch versus chemical rockets is a good example of a superior technology losing to a more primitive one.

[Revolting cat!]

Late 60s computer operating system named Eunuchs defeating superior OS' that came after it! Cryptic, write only programming languages derived from the Eunuchs hacker culture defeating user friendly natural language!

(Is this enough to start WWIII?)

[dennisw]

Today, things are starting to get interesting again with Mozilla.

Just yesterday Mozilla made a website look better than my internet explorer. Mozilla made a table (erroneously) written at 120% width fit into the browser window. While internet explorer had to use a horizontal scroll bar.

[dead]

The Giants lost to the 49ers last week.

[dep]

there's actually a pretty good history of OS/2 here. it explains both how and why it was superior and how and why it lost.

dep

[Revolting cat!]

Ron Wood vs Mick Taylor vs Brian Jones!

[JebBush2008]

Bill Frist over Trent Lott.

[bvw]

That could have been what HTML can't be (a unified standard), as I remember.

[Luis Gonzalez]

Here's a different viewpoint:

What inferior product hung around until the superior replacement turned up?

Kathy Lee Gifford and Kelly Ripa.

[new cruelty]

the astrodome v. reliant stadium and minute maid field (aka enron field)

[bvw]

Nothing handles like a low slung mid-engine car though.

[dep]

no friggin' way. trent lott was, is, and always shall be nothing more than a pork farmer. which is fine if you're just about anything except senate majority leader. even byrd, the most effective pork farmer of them all, knows that.

dep

[Revolting cat!]

Stereo vs Mono!

(Just axe Phil Spector!)

[templar]

QWERTY keyboard layout vs. the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard.

Ever try a dvorak keyboard? I did once. Everything came out either misspelled or gibberish.

[mt tom]

front wheel drive is alright going uphill but you watch your rear pass you going down hill

[ZGuy]

Anything the environmentalists supported would qualify, such as low-flow toilets and the replacing of good insecticides with lousy ones

[dennisw]

http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid456.php

External-Combustion Engine

External-combustion engines include steam engines and Stirling-cycle engines. Stirling engines may be a promising technology for HypercarSM vehicles. They burn their fuel in a single chamber or furnace, with the heat from this combustion driving the pistons up and down in their cylinders to rotate the crankshaft. This arrangement allows for increased efficiency over internal-combustion engines because the combustion takes place continuously, instead of in a series of explosions (which inevitably leave more unburned fuel). Efficiencies of up to 60 percent are theoretically possible, compared to 45 percent for diesel engines and not much more than 30 percent for standard Otto engines.

Although Stirling engines haven't yet been used in any production vehicles, most early problems of bulk and reliability appear to have been ironed out, and current prototypes offer the prospect of lower mass, fewer parts, less noise, and much lower emissions than diesel counterparts


http://www.howstuffworks.com/engine1.htm

There is such a thing as an external combustion engine. A steam engine in old-fashioned trains and steam boats is the best example of an external combustion engine. The fuel (coal, wood, oil, whatever) in a steam engine burns outside the engine to create steam, and the steam creates motion inside the engine. It turns out internal combustion is a lot more efficient (takes less fuel per mile) than external combustion, plus an internal combustion engine is a lot smaller than an equivalent external combustion engine. This explains why we don't see any cars from Ford and GM using steam engines.

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It seems to have to do with where the combustion takes place relative to the engine. All engines must be open to the outside at least part of the time, or else they would explode.