Quote from: Johnny Mnemonic on February 13, 2017, 12:39:13 AM

Quote from: Hueristic on February 12, 2017, 08:35:50 PM

Failures that were ahead of their time. some were just not marketed and some were over priced.

http://listverse.com/2013/01/12/10-innovative-pieces-of-technology-that-failed-miserably/
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2325931,00.asp
http://www.businessinsider.com/startup-failures-2011-5

Underfunded and facing a Monopolistic opponent.

https://fee.org/articles/the-tucker-car-did-the-big-guys-do-it-in/

Just saying the best doesn't always get adopted, it's a shame really but most people lack the drive to research anything and just use whats easy and what everyone else is using.

Most of the example 'failures' you reference are the products themselves, and not their underlying technology. In almost every case, the better tech does win, or is eventually superseded by something even better than that.

For example, the underlying Laserdisc technology did prevail (through CDs and eventually DVDs), though the Laserdisc format did not catch on due to practical limitations that made it inferior to other options at the time. The superior image quality of Laserdisc was largely unrealized on consumer TV displays, coupled with the fact that users were unable to record onto the disk. But this is still an example of the better tech winning, as optical disk formats have since dominated in consumer media storage.

Even the VHS/Betamax example is terrible, because although Betamax lost the consumer videotape format war, it survived successfully as a professional and commercial video format.

Laserdisc was first by a long shot and would have been adopted but the cost was through the roof, I remember it clearly. And that was a quick google for more on spot examples feel free I'm know your able to google. I'm not interested in getting into a protracted discussion on semantics.