MiniDisc was definitely cool -- so cool that I bought a portable deck, and dubbed some CDs down for travel because it was smaller than carrying a Discman -- but

MiniDisc was definitely cool -- so cool that I bought a portable deck, and dubbed some CDs down for travel because it was smaller than carrying a Discman -- but it was also clearly doomed from the start. CD adoption was incredibly rapid because it was so obviously better in every way than cassettes, and offered (or could offer) superior fidelity vs vinyl. Minidisk didn't have either of those going for it -- plus, Sony's complete (?) control of it meant nobody else was making equipment. That nearly everyone brought CD decks to market in the early/mid 80s meant that, over the course of maybe 4 years, CD went from "rich dude toy" to "I got a CD boom box for high school graduation". You probably nail it with "Sony Hubris." To think they could recreate that perfect storm of demand and success was bananas. People duplicated their music libraries on CD, but no WAY were they gonna do that AGAIN after having bought into "perfect sound forever" on CD. (Well, at least "perfect sound for decades;" my oldest CDs are from 1987, and the ones I still want to listen to still sound fine.)