Everything I have ever read about WWI - my favorite subject in the history of warfare - points to commanders failing to adapt.
Both sides failed to understand the consequences of digging long trenches during the Race to the Sea, and failed numerous times to outflank each other, resulting in the massive trench systems.
In fact, their entire objective was attrition, to force the enemy to crash in waves against their defenses. Which just resulted in losses on both sides. There were even generals that were bent on trying to use cavalry to break through trench lines fortified with machine gun nests.
They then failed - at least in the beginning - to understand the implications of aircraft. At first, they were only being used as scouts, and were not given any sort of armament until almost a year into the war.
Not because they couldn't carry weapons, but because there was a treaty to keep planes unarmed: "At the 1911 meeting of the Institute of International Law in Madrid, legislation was proposed to limit the use of airplanes to reconnaissance missions and banning them from being used as platforms for weapons.[1] This legislation was rooted in a fear that airplanes would be used to attack undefended cities, violating Article 25 of the Den Hague Reglement (the set of international laws governing warfare)"
However, two things about early WWI aircraft: They were primitive. The more you armed them, the more they weighed, and their primitive engines couldn't keep up at first.
Eventually effective bombers and attackers were developed, but never in large enough numbers to drastically effect the ground war. The allies mainly only used their air superiority to ensure their artillery scouts could bring back photographs of enemy positions, not to penetrate further into the front lines and cut off enemy supplies.
In conclusion, if you're going to call me out for /r/badhistory, you better be packing some sources. Below are all wikipedia because I'm tired as hell, don't have time to dig through an online or physical library, and don't trust sources from forums and blogs that in turn don't cite anything. At least Wikipedia has many citations on this subject:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_in_World_War_I#The_dawn_of_air_combat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_in_World_War_I#Notes