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Vaporware - the Tech That Never Was
An anonymous reader writes "CNet has published an incredibly detailed look at the most critical examples of vaporware ever seen in the tech sector. We're familiar with Wired's yearly round-ups, but this decades-long retrospective look at the most promising of all technologies that never saw the light of day, holds some fascinating technology I've never even heard of, including the wonderfully-named three-dimensional atomic holographic optical data storage nanotechnology. 'Continual delays, setbacks and excuses are the calling cards of a product that becomes vapourware. Windows Vista ran the risk of joining the club, and the terrific multiplayer first-person shooter Team Fortress 2 was in production for almost a decade before it was released in 2007. Devoted TF fans feared it would become a distinguished entrant in the who's who of vapourware. You might say Google Mail is in the running, having been in beta since 2004.'"
Nah, not Google Mail. Google's just redefined the meaning of beta...
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
Do they really think I'm going to press the 'Next Photo' button 11 times?
-- Cheers!
A large company can use vaporware as a strategy to fight smaller companies. Back in the 1980s, my brother's company was well on the way to producing a killer (for the day) graphics application. Lotus (iirc) announced that they were releasing the same thing in a couple of months. My brother's company quit working on the project because they didn't feel they could compete with Lotus. The Lotus app did not materialize in a month. It didn't materialize in a year even. My brother's product would have been first to market if it had been continued.
It's a good strategy. Tell a lie to scare everyone else off. Take your sweet time producing an app into a competition free market.