I'd say it's more an illustration of how "technically superior" can be difficult to measure on paper.
It's easy to compare specs, it's harder to compare the things that really matter: usability, elegance, workflow, functional performance, robustness, and aesthetics. These are the enduring characteristics of every product, and often it's easy to ignore such things given that they are very difficult to objectively measure.
Performance, for example, can be measured easily in terms of responsiveness of the UI, etc. But that doesn't reflect the actual end-to-end performance and perception of performance as experienced by a user performing real-world tasks. The same goes for usability, which is almost impossible to fully objectively measure.
It's easy to dismiss a product as inferior because it lacks features or has a different set of characteristics compared to an existing popular product, but that only works when there are no significant underlying differences in the above meta-features.
When Japanese car makers started to introduce their automobiles to the American market a lot of people made fun of their cars. Often the cars were small and underpowered in the muscle car dominated American market. But what those detractors didn't realize at the time was that those cars were extremely reliable and efficient, even if they lacked power and "cool" points. And eventually those types of cars came to be hugely popular.
It's easy to compare specs, it's harder to compare the things that really matter: usability, elegance, workflow, functional performance, robustness, and aesthetics. These are the enduring characteristics of every product, and often it's easy to ignore such things given that they are very difficult to objectively measure.
Performance, for example, can be measured easily in terms of responsiveness of the UI, etc. But that doesn't reflect the actual end-to-end performance and perception of performance as experienced by a user performing real-world tasks. The same goes for usability, which is almost impossible to fully objectively measure.
It's easy to dismiss a product as inferior because it lacks features or has a different set of characteristics compared to an existing popular product, but that only works when there are no significant underlying differences in the above meta-features.
When Japanese car makers started to introduce their automobiles to the American market a lot of people made fun of their cars. Often the cars were small and underpowered in the muscle car dominated American market. But what those detractors didn't realize at the time was that those cars were extremely reliable and efficient, even if they lacked power and "cool" points. And eventually those types of cars came to be hugely popular.