Originally posted by Sliver-Surfer These lenses use ground breaking technology. This tech will likely one day be used by Pentax and other Lens brands.
To be fair, Sony has, had and (likely will always have) superior advantageS over competition, but as I have previously mentioned, in more recent times, these advantages didn't translate to anything tangible as far as the stockholders are concerned, and Sony had to inevitably drop the ball.
Again, Betamax was far more superior against VHS in almost every aspect (size, clarity, etc.), except for one thing, it couldn't handle anything more than an hour, and VHS could. We all know who won that war. In the end manufacturers, (Sanyo, Philips, Panasonic) went for the inferior technology of JVC.
The DAT vs analog cassette tapes. Sony was years, or perhaps at least a decade ahead of its time in this fight. Yet, I have yet to know somebody who have/had more than 10 DATs in a collection. (I used to have around 200 cassette tapes)
The Minidisc was so much better than Philip's CD. Lightining fast ROM, beautiful design, sturdier than CD, uses ATRACs. Again, history repeated itself. (I still have around 400 CDs.)
Now ATRAC, where do I begin? This was revolutionary in its time, superior compression leading to almost lossless quality, vs. what the crappy, lossy, cheap MP3? Sony bet that people would rather spend for the expensive Minidisc and ATRAC rather than suffer the horrible, revolting sound of MP3. Oooppps, it was a David vs. Goliath.
Memory sticks, yes, it's an entire family vs the USB (or CF/SD for camera) Memory sticks are again superior, and Sony was again hopeful that that would be the de facto standard in flash storage.
Ah, the UMD, I guess that was another miscalculation, though for a while digital downloading was slow, erratic, and supposedly could/would never compete against the UMD. Right! The UMD never stood a chance.
Now VAIO vs Macbook? Digitized walkman vs iPod? Sony's phones vs Samsung/Apple's? Sony's Bravia? PS3 vs Wii/Xbox?
The fight has now shifted from audio to gaming, and now imaging and video.
I will accede to the fact that historically Sony has always the superior technology, but in a string of bad lucks, or perhaps miscalculations, they may have forgotten that in the end consumers will not always go for the superior technology especially if they'll be asking an arm and a leg for it, sometimes people will accept a lossy, crappy MP3 if it means that it will better suit their needs and pockets.
Last edited by drypenn; 02-11-2016 at 09:16 AM.