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Vaporware is a 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. 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. 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. By contrast, in today's computing environment, 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. 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. 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 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 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. Peter Molyneux earned the dubious reputation of promoting games with lofty goals, such as '' Dungeon Keeper '', '' Black & White '', '' Fable '', and '' The Movies '', but often ended up having to remove copious amounts of features due to release date pressure or system limitations. Falls short of expectations The biggest example of this 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 '' was released to savage reviews in 1999 , due to numerous bugs, unbalanced gameplay and high system requirements. 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. A possible new role for the Hurd is the kernel of the complete GPLv3 Unix system.) Lack of focus 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." 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. 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 , 2006 . Currently, ''Duke Nukem Forever'' has been announced (once again) to be in full production, still however without a specified release date.3 ''Wired'' once again awarded ''Duke Nukem Forever'' the first place 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. It was finally dropped by its developer in August 2006. Another classic example of vaporware is Turbo Pascal for the Amiga computer which was announced when Borland placed a full page advertisement in the Fall 1985 premier edition of AmigaWorld magazine. It never shipped and was quietly dropped a few years later. Though it never formally received an award, it was periodically mentioned over the decade that followed in various computer-related magazines due to the notoriety of Borland and the splash that the full page ad created for the then just-released Amiga 1000. REDEMPTIVE SOFTWARE On occasion, some software titles that were initially classified as "vaporware" redeem themselves after long waiting periods. Games that had an unusually long development period filled with delays and restarts include '''', which is receiving glowing hands-on previewshttp://pc.ign.com/articles/780/780666p1.html IGN.comhttp://pc.gamespy.com/pc/team-fortress-2/782564p1.html GameSpy.comhttp://www.gameinformer.com/News/Story/200703/N07.0328.1722.34101.htm Game Informer, though as with all unreleased games, this remains to be seen. REFERENCES }}} SEE ALSO
EXTERNAL LINKS ; Wired Magazine Vaporware Awards
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