Vaporware Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
- This article refers to the term as used in computing. For the company, see VaporWare (company).
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2 Varieties 3 References 4 External links |
History
The word vaporware was popularized in the trade press circa 1984, perhaps in response to Ovation Technologies' Ovation, an integrated software package for DOS. Ovation was announced in 1983. Company management was widely lauded for their skill in securing venture financing, generating "buzz", and giving superb demonstrations showing a product that, had it existed, would have been greatly superior to Lotus 1-2-3. Unfortunately, they neglected to arrange for development of an actual product.
CIO magazine[1]credits Esther Dyson as having coined the word in 1984. Paul Andrews[2], however, states that "Although 'vaporware' was perhaps popularized by Esther, she credits Ann Winblad, who in turn heard it from Microsoft's Mark Ursino... but Stewart Alsop (stewart_alsop@infoworld.com) may have been the one to turn it into everyday lingo with his P.C. Letter list."
Varieties
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 is announced by companies in order to damage the development or marketability of more real products by competitors as a form of FUD; if the customer believes the hype, they may put off purchasing the real product to wait for its vaporous rival to mature. Many regard Microsoft Windows as an example of this. Following the early 1983 release of the GUI-driven Apple Lisa and announcements about its upcoming consumer-targeted Macintosh, Microsoft released details and screenshots of their graphical user interface for MS-DOS, which they said was in advanced development; when Windows 1.0 was released in late 1985, it lacked many of the presented features.
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 Macintosh word processor FullWrite, announced by Ann Arbor Softworks in January 1987 for delivery in April, and actually delivered in late 1988.
Often vaporware that does materialize fails to live up to expectations. One example is the game Daikatana, which was announced in 1997 but did not ship until 2000. Many who had waited felt the gameplay was disappointingly uninteresting. 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.
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
In addition to historical examples, there are many products whose ultimate fate is unknown, but which as of 2004 are vaporware.
- GNU, a project started in 1983 to create a a free software replacement for Unix, remains unfinished. Much of it exists and is widely used in other operating systems, but the Hurd - announced in 1991 as a project to develop a kernel for GNU - is still in a very immature stage of development, and although development is verifiably still progressing, the free kernels Linux and BSD have arguably obviated the need for it.
- A notorious example of vaporware in the gaming world is Duke Nukem Forever, whose originally promised release date was 1998. The game won Wired News' Vaporware Awards in 2001 and 2002, got second place in 2000, and in 2003 was given the Lifetime Achievement Award for its perpetual vaporware status.
See also: List of cancelled video games
CIO article crediting Ester Dyson for the term
Paul Andrews says Dyson credits Ann Winblad, and that Stewart Alsop popularized it
This is an Article on Vaporware. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About Vaporware References
External links