TMor,
No-one is disputing that the hardware and overall layout of the Rafale's cockpit isn't impressive.
It's simply that once you need to use the fully powered up cockpit, the MMI is not as good as that of the Typhoon - it has less intuitive modings, it's less streamlined, it requires more input and it imposes a higher cockpit workload.
It may be better for someone coming from the Mirage 2000, who will find it comfortable and familiar, but that represents a small slice of the potential user base.
Nor would anyone dispute that Rafale is ahead when it comes to the timetable of most equipment integrations and clearances. But that's a temporary advantage.
And you'd also have to be pretty pig-headed to ignore the disadvantages - the poor MMI, the 'dead end' RBE-2 (the French are spending €400m to replace the RBE-2/EW suite/cockpit/OSF combination ASAP).
And then there's the thrust issue. In S Korea, Singapore, AND Saudi Arabia, the lack of power in hot and high was mentioned repeatedly, and you may recall that the one area that was intended for a major upgrade on Rafale was the engines.
Throughout the 1990s, SNECMA were telling us that the M88 was intended to be at 20,000-lbs of thrust by 1998, with 22,000-lbs by 2002-03, and with a potential ceiling of 24,000-lbs being reached by 2006-08.
According to SNECMA today, the M88 actually produces 50 kN dry (11,500 lbs), and 75 kN (16,800 lbs) with afterburning.