Important topic but strawman examples in many ways. In most of the important cases, you will have never heard of what could have been. Also, often the problem

Important topic but strawman examples in many ways. In most of the important cases, you will have never heard of what could have been. Also, often the problem is that better ideas weren't developed as much as they could have been. That is, we look back and compare the inferior but dominant product that was revised and revised because of it's problems and dominance, and the superior but abandoned product in it's unimproved state, which is some sort of survivorship bias. The OP has a point but it's exaggerated.