Vaporware

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This article refers to the term as used in computer industry. For the company, see VaporWare (company).

Vaporware is software or hardware product which is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge, either with or without a protracted development cycle. The term implies unwarranted optimism, or sometimes even deception; that is, it may imply that the announcer knows that product development is in too early a stage to support responsible statements about its completion date, feature set, or even feasibility.

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[edit] Origins

The term originated with magazine reviewers in the late 1970s/early 80s, originally as a spoof on software marketers' tendency to attach "-ware" to whatever noun described the application of their products.[citation needed]

At that time the personal computer market was in its infancy, and it was common for computer manufacturers to supply the software that ran on them, which would rarely work on other manufacturers' machines. Contrasting to today's computing environment where there are only three major personal computer platforms, Mac, Windows, and Linux and most software is written by independent companies.

Software development would often lag behind the development of the system's computer hardware. As a result, some computer manufacturers advertised extravagant software packages that allegedly came with their machines, but had not yet been completed, or in some cases, hardly begun, in an effort to sell their hardware and encourage further software development.

[edit] Hoaxes

There is a similarity between vaporware and a species of hoax: both involve promoting a product or event which cannot later be produced. There have been a number of hoaxes in technological fields, wherein the hoaxer promises that proof of his offering will be forthcoming -- eventually.

Examples include any number of perpetual motion machine "inventors". The distinction may be that in vaporware, the proponent truly does intend to produce the advertised product, while in hoax, he knows the product does not exist or cannot be produced.

[edit] Types

[edit] Anticompetitive practices

In some cases, vaporware may be the result of a trial balloon which "doesn't fly". Subsequently the project is quietly cancelled, sometimes before any actual development work is done.

In other cases, vaporware may be announced by companies in order to damage the development or marketability of more real products by competitors, sometimes in combination with a campaign of fear, uncertainty and doubt; if customers believe the hype, they may put off purchasing the real product to wait for its vaporous rival to mature.

Another illegal use of announcing vaporware is to cause an uptick in the stock prices of a publicly traded company. This can then be used to gain more investment capital or allow officers of the company to sell shares on the "hype" of the software that may or may not ever be completed. (see pump and dump).

Allegations of anticompetitive vaporware, as well as concerns within the software industry prompted David Dranove (of Northwestern University) and Neil Gandal (of Tel Aviv University, University of California, Berkeley) to conduct an empirical study designed to measure the effect of the DIVX preannouncement on the DVD market. This study suggests that the DIVX preannouncement slowed down the adoption of DVD technology. According to Dranove and Gandal, the study suggests that the "general antitrust concern about vaporware seems justified."[1]

[edit] Overambitious hype

Many companies announce vaporware in order to prove that their R&D departments are still full of new ideas. The more ambitious the project, the better. One subtle variation of this strategy is to vaporise one particular much-touted feature of a forthcoming product. For example, the WinFS feature of Windows Vista generated a lot of enthusiasm, but did not make it into the initial release.

Sometimes vaporware is the result of over-optimism on the part of a well-intending organization, and may actually materialize after a long waiting time (sometimes years). One example of this was the long-delayed Apple Macintosh word processor FullWrite Professional, announced by Ann Arbor Softworks in January 1987 for delivery that April, and actually delivered in late 1988.

In the United Kingdom, Sir Clive Sinclair's Sinclair Research Ltd was quite notorious for its tardy product delivery cycle; various flat-screen displays, miniature televisions, the Sinclair QL business computer and Sinclair C5 electric car, the advanced Loki and several other projects were either late, unfinished, or entirely fictitious.

Several years before CD-R was introduced, Tandy Corporation had promised a fully recordable CD format called Thor-CD,[2] but after being pushed back for several years, it was finally shelved due to technical limitations, and then became known as "Vapordisc".

Sometimes the delays or eventual shelving of a software product may be caused by a corporate merger or internal strife within the company.

[edit] Falls short of expectations

Often vaporware that does materialize fails to live up to expectations. id Software's computer game, Quake delivered but a fraction of what was touted, and in particular the single-player aspect of the game delivered much less than announced.[citation needed] Another example is the computer game Daikatana, which was announced in 1997 but did not ship until 2000. Many who had waited felt the gameplay was disappointing. Another definitive example is the computer game Fable, which claimed it would practically be a life simulation game.

Ultima IX, another example, was poor consolation for those who had waited since 1994, only to find the version released late in 1999 was very buggy and impossible to run on many common graphics cards.

[edit] Obsolete on delivery

In other cases, vaporware never materializes because some other product fills its niche in the meantime, rendering it redundant or unmarketable.

One example is Project Xanadu, a hypertext project started in 1960 whose intended role has been mostly filled by the World Wide Web; or the GNU Hurd, the free software kernel whose place in the free software world has been (by and large) filled by Linux. (The Hurd may yet be completed, but its original intended role as part of a complete GPL Unix system has been fulfilled.)

[edit] Lack of focus

Main article: Development of Windows Vista

Microsoft's Longhorn OS was first discussed in 2001 as a minor update to Windows XP, and intended to be released in 2004, but multiple successive delays and changes in strategy led some to call it "Longwait". Longhorn garnered third place in Wired's Vaporware Awards in 2004, and was placed 4th in 2005. Wired quoted a reader as saying, "If Microsoft keeps on pushing back the dates for Longhorn and removing features from it, they might as well just promise to bundle Duke Nukem Forever with the OS."[3] The Longhorn project was eventually named Windows Vista. Microsoft released business versions of the OS at the end of November 2006, while home-use versions were delayed until January 30, 2007.

[edit] Vaporware Awards

In addition to historical examples, there are many products whose ultimate fate is unknown, and are considered vaporware.

One such example is the computer game Duke Nukem Forever, which has been in development for over ten years, announced shortly after the success of Duke Nukem 3D in 1996 and with an original projected release date of 1998. The game has since won Wired News' Vaporware Awards numerous times. It placed in second in 2000[4] and topped the list in 2001[5] and 2002.[6] Wired News created the Vaporware Lifetime Achievement Award exclusively for Forever and awarded it in 2003. George Broussard accepted the award, simply stating, "We're undeniably late and we know it."[7] It did not make the list in 2004, but Leander Kahney noted that they had received a lot of nominations for the game.[3] By popular demand, it topped the list again in 2005.[8] Currently, Duke Nukem Forever has been announced (once again) to be in full production, still however without a specified release date.[9] Wired once again awarded Duke Nukem Forever the first place in 2007.

Also worth noting are the Indrema and Phantom video game consoles. The latter took Wired's top "award" in 2004, and second in 2005. It was finally dropped by its developer in August 2006.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Dranove, David; Neil Gandal (November 1 2000). "The DVD vs. DIVX Standard War: Empirical Evidence of Vaporware". Competition Policy Center. Paper CPC01-016. 
  2. ^ Fasoldt, Al (1988). Why Tandy's recordable CD is a breakthrough even if it never makes it to the market. Retrieved on March 6, 2006.
  3. ^ a b Kahney, Leander. "Vaporware Phantom Haunts Us All". January 7, 2005. Wired News.
  4. ^ Kahney, Leander. "Vaporware 2000: Missing Inaction". December 27, 2000. Wired News.
  5. ^ Manjoo, Farhad. "Vaporware 2001: Empty Promises". January 7, 2002. Wired News.
  6. ^ Kahney, Leander. "Vaporware 2002: Tech Up in Smoke?". January 3, 2003. Wired News
  7. ^ Vaporware Team Null. "Vaporware: Nuke 'Em if Ya Got 'Em". Wired News. January 20, 2004.
  8. ^ Kahney, Leander. "Vaporware: Better Late Than Never". Wired News. February 6, 2006.
  9. ^ Duke Nukem Forever Dated (2006). Retrieved on March 6, 2006.

[edit] See also

Compare with: shovelware

[edit] External links

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