I agree, to an extent. It reminds me of the Simpsons meme[1]: it's the children who are wrong!
But sometimes timing is indeed wrong, not because of anything you did, but just because no one wanted it _yet_. Google Glass from a few years ago comes to mind. Now Meta has a similar idea and it does seem successful, much to society's dismay.
But sometimes it is worth asking, "does the idea actually suck and that's why no one likes it? Or is it actually a good idea that is muddied with other issues that no one likes?"
The article doesn't make it clear that they were that introspective.
yeah I agree -- There are countless examples with almost every invention of someone else who got there first but couldn't market it successfully at least partially because of timing.
For most examples you need to squint pretty hard to make them "the same" though. In a world of "x, but for y" these are essentially new inventions, it's only our human brains in hindsight that look for the continuity. It's also an interesting question to ask if you can really seperate the idea from the execution when defining an "invention".
fair point