> Mass adoption is rarely a quality indicator. I wouldn't want to pay for the mainstream VHS model(s) when I could use Betamax (perhaps even cheaper).
Oh, but it is.
Imagine you were then, back in those days. A few years after VHS won, you couldn't find your favorite movies on Betamax. There was a lot more hardware, and cheaper, available, for VHS.
Mass adoption largely wins out over almost everything.
Case in point from software: Visual Basic, PHP, Javascript, Python (though Python is slightly more technically sound than the other ones), early MySQL, MongoDB, early Windows, early Android.
Oh, but it is.
Imagine you were then, back in those days. A few years after VHS won, you couldn't find your favorite movies on Betamax. There was a lot more hardware, and cheaper, available, for VHS.
Mass adoption largely wins out over almost everything.
Case in point from software: Visual Basic, PHP, Javascript, Python (though Python is slightly more technically sound than the other ones), early MySQL, MongoDB, early Windows, early Android.