Your comment forced me to think harder about what makes an "inferior" product. Yes, Betamax was the first example that came to mind. But, as you say, it was sup

Your comment forced me to think harder about what makes an "inferior" product. Yes, Betamax was the first example that came to mind. But, as you say, it was superior only to engineers since picture quality mattered most to them. In the same vein, Fahrenheit vs. Celsius, metric standards in general -- in my mind, it's so absurdly clear which one is "better." However, in the pro-Fahrenheit camp, there are lots of reasons (which are irrelevant to me) why people think F is better. PAL is (arguably?) better than NTSC. Linux is better than Windows. So, I should amend my original statement and say that there are lots of products which were superior in engineering terms but lost the battle on other grounds, whether it's user-friendliness, price, availability, installed user-base -- all of which I (incorrectly) grouped into the term "marketing" in my original post.