Yeah and they took a very long time to reload. Bowmen had armor piercing arrows and could fire rather quickly.
The armor-piercing arrows of the time we're not as effective as musket balls.
We're talking only an inch or two of penetration. Whereas a musket you could just plow through the armor and still create hydrostatic shock. Muskets also did not take as long to reload as people thought.
The immediate advantage was that it didn't require years of training, so it was a huge advantage in a battlefield as you could arm a lot more soldiers.
The huge significant advantage of the musket and other early Firearms was the ammunition. It was much easier to carry a ton of ammunition that was much easier to manufacture. Also the ammunition was more effective.
The first hand cannons were wildly inaccurate, you had to be nearly right on top of someone to be effective, as you only had one shot.
Yeah but this really wasn't a big deal given the tactics of the time. Early firearms and bows for used mostly in volley fire tactics. You're not trying to pit the ace with it, you are trying to get a bunch of men to spray projectiles at a formation. Bows were great for a while but even before the rise of firearms a lot of arrows were defeated by armor and shields.
So if you have an infantry of armored man with shields about to March down on you would you rather have a weapon that fired one or two shots within a minute but actually punch through their armor effectively or a weapon that fired at a higher rate but didn't quite effectively punch through armor?