I can't answer the question of technical merit, but things hardly ever win public appeal based on technical merit. The appeal of x86 is the mountains of backwar

I can't answer the question of technical merit, but things hardly ever win public appeal based on technical merit. The appeal of x86 is the mountains of backward compatible software, which is due to how well-known its programming methods are, which is due to how incredibly popular the CPU type is. If we keep switching to the best possible CPU architecture every time a new one popped up, nothing would ever achieve what x86 has done. English is far from the best language, but everyone on this site speaks it. Gasoline is far from the best source of fuel for a vehicle, but every corner has a gas station. x86 is far from the best architecture, but basically every OS at leasts supports it in some way.