Vaporware

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

Vaporware (in British English: Vapourware) is software or hardware 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 implies 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.

Contents

1 Origins
2 Hoaxes
3 Types

3.1 Anticompetitive practices
3.2 Overambitious hype
3.3 Falls short of expectations
3.4 Obsolete on delivery
3.5 Unknown fates

4 Successful 'vaporwares'
5 Vaporware Awards
6 See also
7 References
8 External links

Origins

The term originated with magazine reviewers in the late 1970s/early 80s, originally as a wry spoof of the tendency of software marketers to attach the suffix "-ware" to whatever noun best described the application of their products #redirect [[Template:Fact]].

At that time the personal computer market was still in its infancy, and it was normal for manufacturers to supply both the computers and the software suites that ran on them, (which would rarely work on any other manufacturer's machines). This is in total contrast to the present situation where there are only two major hardware platforms, Mac and PC, with the vast majority of software written by independent companies.

It turned out to be much easier to develop good hardware than good matching software, and so the software development nearly always lagged behind the hardware. The result was that computer manufacturers would often advertise extravagant software packages that allegedly came with their machines, which had yet not been completed or even written in some cases.

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 Clonaid, the Raelian company which promised proof of human cloning, or 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.

Types

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 the customer believes 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.

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."

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 will not make it into the 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, 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.

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. 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.

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.

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.)

Unknown fates

Microsoft's Longhorn OS, announced for 2004 and now called Longwait by some, garnered third place in 2004, and was placed in 2005. Wired noted that a supposedly key feature, the WinFS file system (an extension to a feature which was initially planned in the early 1990s), may have been dropped from it, and quoting 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."

As of 28 April 2005 Longhorn will no longer ship with trusted computing either. The Longhorn Project was eventually named Windows Vista, and Microsoft promised a release date in the fourth quarter of 2006. However, in March 2006, Microsoft announced that only business versions of the OS would be available before the holiday season, while personal and home-use versions would be delayed until January 2007.

Successful 'vaporwares'

Another noteworthy mention on the vaporware field is the Blizzard Entertainment software company, whose games are notorious for being delayed for months on end, often being released a year late or more. StarCraft, Diablo II, Warcraft III, and World of Warcraft are all examples of such repeated release delays and each one of those games went on to win popular and critical acclaim.

Not all their projects were successful however, as their [[Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans|Warcraft Adventures]] game became true vaporware - cancelled in twelve months, shortly before release. Blizzard's most recent vaporware is Starcraft Ghost, which has been their flagship title at the E3 show since 2003. Blizzard Entertainment announced it has been indefinitely postponed, though many consider it cancelled.

Also equally in place in Sucessful vaporware field is the VALve, whose Half life 2 and Team Fortress 2 are delayed time after time, only to be praised by majority gamers when they went gold.

Vaporware Awards

In addition to historical examples, there are many products whose ultimate fate is unknown, but which as of 2005 are considered vaporware.

One such example is the computer game Duke Nukem Forever, which has been in development for over nine years, announced shortly after the success of Duke Nukem 3D in 1996 with an original projected release date of 1998. The game won Wired News' Vaporware Awards in 2001, 2002 and 2005, got second place in 2000, and in 2003 was given the Lifetime Achievement Award for its perpetual vaporware status. Currently, Duke Nukem Forever has been announced (once again) to be in full production, with an expected release in 2006.

Also worth noting are the Indrema and Phantom video game consoles. The latter took Wired's top "award" in 2004, and second in 2005.

References

[These Are the Days to Remember], Howard Baldwin, CIO Magazine, December 15, 1999 - article crediting Ester Dyson for the term.
[message by Paul Andrews], where he says Dyson credits Ann Winblad, and that Stewart Alsop.
[David Dranove and Neil Gandal, "The DVD vs. DIVX Standard War: Empirical Evidence of Vaporware,"] U.C. Berkeley Competition Policy Center Working Paper (2000).

External links

[3D Realms 2006 Announcement]
[Wired News' 2005 Vaporware Awards] ([2004], [2003], [2002], [2001], [2000], [1999], [1998], [1997])
[Where Is Phantom??] - "The site for all Critics, Cynics, Detractors and Doubters", a site about the controversy over Infinium Labs's Phantom
[30 reasons why vaporware is better than real software] Rec.humor posting.

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