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.'"

Comments

Google Mail

[omeomi]

Nah, not Google Mail. Google's just redefined the meaning of beta...

Re:Google Mail

[Thelasko]

Gmail made a brilliant move by always calling their service a beta release. This way, when your email never arrives, or your personal information gets stolen, it's not their fault... it's just a beta release! Google can always argue that if you want reliable and secure communications, you should use a service that is a final release.

Disclaimer for Google fans: I'm not saying Gmail is not stable or reliable, just stating one possible business strategy.

Re:Google Mail

[Creepy]

for that matter, I don't think it's even their oldest beta -
the former froogle, now renamed google products), predates it by a year or so. I believe froogle entered beta around Christmas 2002 or 2003. Some google labs stuff (non-beta testing and ideas area) is even older.

Re:Google Mail

[knarfling]

While not an "official" definition, this has always worked for me.

Alpha Release - Unfinished software submitted for Internal testing. In other words, the bugs are going to be so bad that only people who have signed non-disclosure agreements are allowed to see them. Alpha is code-speak for "It doesn't work."

Beta Release - Unfinished software submitted to torture those outside the company. In other words, the bugs are ones we can either cover up, or actually admit to. Beta is code-speak for "It STILL doesn't work."

Re:Google Mail

[nacturation]

No, that's a release candidate. Sorry, you're mistaken.

Beta: Beta level software generally includes all features, but may also include known issues and bugs of a less serious variety.
Release Candidate: The term release candidate refers to a version with potential to be a final product, ready to release unless fatal bugs emerge.

Re:Google Mail

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

just because it's not open source, doesn't mean they can't use the "release early, release often" method.

for MS, CA, oracle, etc. to release a major version of their products, it's a pain. pressing CDs/DVDs, shipping them, retraing tech support, etc. now, for google, it's as easy as FTPing the new code to a server, that's why "release early, release often" works for GOOG, and not for the others.

and since it's in perpetual beta, they don't even have to bother with support. they're not obligated to give support for something that's essentially a prototype.

Re:Google Mail

[Dogtanian]

Sorry, you're mistaken. Sorry, you're mistaken if you think that a relatively uncited Wikipedia article constitutes authoritative and infallible proof of anything.

What "official" backing (in any sense of the word) do those definitions have? They're not cited, so beyond the fact that there is at best *perhaps* some consensus (possibly temporary)- or perhaps none- between the most recent WP editors on that article (who might just be ill-informed nerds with too much time on their hands), this doesn't mean anything.

Really, I like WP, and some of the more referenced (and less controversy-plagued) articles are really good. Even uncited articles can be pretty useful so long as you use common sense when judging their reliability.

However, your implication that just because something is on WP means *in itself* that it's correct is plain wrong.

Google Mail is not Vaporware

[romonster]

You might say Google Mail is in the running, having been in beta since 2004 According to this Wikipedia article (or, more specifically, its sources), Google Mail has 10s of millions of users. I'd hardly call that Vaporware.

Re:Google Mail is not Vaporware

[gilesjuk]

Indeed, being out there and being in beta isn't Vaporware. The term typically means it has been announced by a company's marketing department despite no work having been done on it.

Usually it's a way of confusing the consumer into sitting on the fence.

So for example people is about to buy an mp3 player from (for example) Creative, so Microsoft then announces a super improved Zune which probably hasn't even been designed yet. The design team knock up a nice 3D representation in a graphics application and release it.

Old vaporware

[russotto]

1) Commercial fusion power production
2) Practical flying car
3) Oil from shale and other low grade sources (promised to be viable at $40-$50/bbl)
4) Household robots (or robot overlords, take your pick)
5) Cure for common cold

Re:Old vaporware

[gnick]

4) Household robots Depending on how picky you are about you definition of 'household robots", there are a number of them commercially available. (Note: I would have linked to irobots's web page, but it appears to be experiencing difficulty. Perhaps one of their business robots washed the server...)

Re:Old vaporware

[SatanicPuppy]

It will absolutely go back down. That's just supply and demand.

The thing people miss on supply and demand is that demand isn't any more a constant than supply. As the supply shrinks, price soars, and demand drops. People find alternatives...They drive less, carpool more. In the 80's everyone dumped their gas guzzing american cars for more fuel efficient imports. The decrease in demand drove the price back down.

Then in the 90's along comes the SUV craze, so everyone goes back to buying gas guzzlers. Now we're back in the same boat. Eventually the supply will start constricting on the other end (e.g. "Peak Oil") and alternative fuels will become more popular. The increased demand there will push an increase in suppliers, increasing the supply and driving down the price.

Historically, you never see a price go up forever. Either the resource is finite, or the cost drives the adoption of alternatives, which become popular enough to pull demand away from the original resource.

Re:Old vaporware

[russotto]

The increased price of oil should make this more viable. It may not have worked out at $40 a barrel, but right now if they can produce it at $80 a barrel it would be a marketable source. It's tough referring to some of this as vaporware - most of them are good ideas, but economics and technology haven't quite caught up with them yet.

But that has been claimed about these technologies for decades. Commercial fusion is always 20 years off. Oil shale production needs oil at $40-$50 barrel. When these points are reached, either the goalposts are moved or LOOK, OVER THERE, A DISTRACTION. Hence, vaporware.

And I wouldn't consider the Roomba to be a household robot. It's hard automation, much like a dishwasher. The fact that it moves doesn't change that. A robot which could do the dishes or laundry without special help (e.g. RFID dishes), that's more along the lines of what I'm thinking of.

Re:Old vaporware

[maxume]

3, 4 and 5 are doing OK.

Oil Sands:

http://www.energy.gov.ab.ca/OurBusiness/oilsands.asp

(not a huge amount of output, but it has every appearance of being 'viable', it just isn't productive enough to satisfy demand so much that prices actually drop)

Roomba is a hit.

There are vaccines for the common cold. They aren't perfect, but they are either well marketed enough or effective enough that millions of people get them. If it's the marketing, they are vaporware, if they work, they aren't.

Re:Old vaporware

[MrNaz]

There is already a cure for the common cold. It was invented a while ago, they called it the "immune system". Not sure if it's still in beta though. I believe some l33t hax0r known only as AIDS has found an exploit, but requires root access in order to penetrate the system's perimeter. At the moment, the best defence is from a company called "Durex", who manufacture a patch for your hardware.

Re:Old vaporware

[Paul Carver]

A Roomba is a long way from a dishwasher. I agree, not full AI, but it's constantly getting closer. There is continual research into AI and robotics. Eventually this will result in more sophisticated home machines... or skynet. Unless some hard limitations are met in terms of processing power or manufacturing that makes intelligent robots impossible/not cost effective to build, it will happen. I agree. My dishwasher is 100% reliable and always does exactly what it's supposed to do. My Roomba is completely worthless. I couldn't find a single room in the house that it can cope with. It is completely unable to deal with area rugs or cords (lamp cords or computer cables). Its drop sensors usually prevented it from driving completely over the edge of a step, but it would just perch precariously on the edge of a step without backing away. Running an old fashioned upright vacuum cleaner is just much less of a hassle.

Re:Old vaporware

[kesuki]

number 3 is being beaten out by 'tar sand' production see, shale oil, isn't oil at all(it's kerogen), while most tar sands ARE oil. Heavy crude oil, still costly to process, so much so that they burn their own tar sand to produce the electricity (and steam) to refine the tar sand into oil, synthetic oil, or petroleum products. but Canada and Venezuela are the two largest tar sand producers (although America, russia, and the middle east also have large tar sand deposits) the only commercial use in the US is for road paving material.

Most of Canada's oil production is from heavy crude, and they are the number one exporter to the united states by volume of oil. so while people debate in the US about if Utah's tar sands are usable to make oil, we buy from Canada who've been doing this for years now, in fact they use a super large dump truck, the largest ever built, so large it needs cameras for the operator to see anything in front, behind or around him! Each tire is thirteen feet tall and weigh four tonnes each. They need to be replaced after approximately 35,000 miles; at a cost of $25,000.00 a piece.

Re:Old vaporware

[Anonymous Coward]

There is already a cure for the common cold. It was invented a while ago, they called it the "immune system". Not sure if it's still in beta though. I believe some l33t hax0r known only as AIDS has found an exploit, but requires root access in order to penetrate the system's perimeter. At the moment, the best defence is from a company called "Durex", who manufacture a patch for your hardware.

Must... resist... making jokes... about... back doors...

Re:Old vaporware

[m00seb0y]

Indeed. For more on the subject (and a pic of those cool giant trucks) see this Wired article.

How many

[Kelz]

times does C-net need to run the same story per year? It seems whenever they remember something else they come out with a new list (like once per month).

Oh, come on. GMail?

[ZorbaTHut]

Why do people say GMail is vaporware?

I mean, you can use it. You've been able to use it for years. It's on the web, it's easily accessible, it wouldn't surprise me if it's used by millions of people.

Google's calling it "beta" because they don't think it's worthy of a non-beta release. That's [i]all it means[/i]. Google has higher standards for "non-beta" than other companies do, apparently - they're still adding major features and I suspect that's at least partially related to its beta status.

Why does it mean so much to have it not be called beta anymore? Because, I mean, if that one word really causes you so much mental anguish, I bet I could provide a Greasemonkey script to get rid of it.

Google's decided it's not finished. I'm willing to defer to their judgement. Honestly, it's a nice change from "feature-complete 1.0 software" that crashes every five minutes.

Re:Oh, come on. GMail?

[lilomar]

Thank you for saving me from having to type out that post.

Re:Oh, come on. GMail?

[hey!]

Personally, I don't think it has anything to do with standards, higher or otherwise.

I think it has been in "beta" so long, that if it were ever announced to be "released", people would expect something new and whizzy, which completely destroys the point of distinguishing "beta software" from "release software". However its questionable whether these categories have much value any longer.

The reason the beta doesn't come off is that there isn't any such thing as released software anymore. In the early days, the beta label warned people that gmail might not work with their browser; these that warning is as close to superfluous as it will ever be. What has changed since the "beta/release" terminology was introduced into the common language is the discrediting of the waterfall project management model -- not that people are any better at project management than they used to be. Using agile methods, you're continually do small releases, so you never have a final "released" product.

Re:Oh, come on. GMail?

[teleriddler]

Actually I think the main reason Google calls most of it non feature complete software "beta" is for legal terms. Our company does the same thing. If we call it beta, we have legal language that severely limits what a client can demand and receive from both product performance and compensation should anything perform incorrectly. Chalk this one up to the lawyers. --TR

Re:Oh, come on. GMail?

[realthing02]

Do you know what the word everything means? I mean, I'm pretty sure airplanes, buildings, and software are under that umbrella.

Not so much vapourware...

[Toreo asesino]

I don't know about anyone else, but when I were but a young'un, I remember being told by various techie fortune tellers that when I grew up GAMES would be completely virtual reality based complete with headsets/central-nervous-system connections, and nothing like the cutting edge 8-bit bitmaps bouncing across the screen with cheesy 2 tone music of the day.

I still remember the huge disappointment at trying my first VR system in some crappy French arcade years after that...instead of bouncing bitmaps, it was no more than maybe 20 untextured polygons being rendered before my eyes on a headset big & heavy enough to crush a small mammal. Yeah ok, so I could look around, but at a glorious 15 FPS I got sick after about 2 minutes and probably would've come face-to-face with my breakfast for the 2nd time that day had the credit not have run out due to the fact I didn't know what the I was supposed to be doing (bitch slapping the "evil plain-red polygon" with the mechanical wand one presumed).

My question really is; has has gaming tech progressed any further in this area? Rare is the occasion I see anything remotely VR anywhere now, (apparently, even the French have given up on it - a sure sign it's a shit idea), and yet still I would love to fulfil my childhood dreams of running care-free through a futuristic sci-fi world with a Big Fuckoff LaserGun (tm)....in a virtual reality, not in my bedroom.

Re:Not so much vapourware...

[psychodelicacy]

Reminds me of the "feelies" in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World - a new kind of movie experience in which you feel what's happening as well as seeing and hearing it, which is mainly used for pornography. Any tech that appeals to the senses in a more intense way than previously possible is probably going to be used for porn. Unless it appeals to the sense of smell, of course - Eau de Sweaty Muscle Man, anyone?

Re:Not so much vapourware...

[argStyopa]

"has has gaming tech progressed any further in this area? "

Depends by what you specifically mean by 'progressed'.

Has gaming graphically improved? Hell yes. Look at the current tech demos for Age of Conan - particularly someone swimming in the water - and you'll be impressed. And this isn't some specifically rendered scene in a single player game. This is an open-activity world meant for hundreds and thousands of simultaneous players.

Has gaming developed substantially better tools in terms of multiple people interacting on the same virtual world? Hell yes. See my point about AoC above. The interactivity of multi user persistent worlds is miles beyond what you mention. (Note - I should mention Second Life. For some reason they get a lot of attention here and the pop-press, but they are at least a *decade* behind what I would say is the minimum standard today for Massively Online Persistent worlds. Don't use what you see there as any sort of benchmark for what is "today".)

Have VR tools advanced substantially? Again, yes. Recently I've seen 360-degree displays in extraordinarily high resolution, along with motion sensor technology that's amazingly precise, even some kludged from the Wii controller. What's really impressed me is that I saw a 'cage' motion simulator that was essentially a hollow-ball of a cage that you could stand in, so that you could MOVE in a VR world, from walking to running, and your avatar would move.

Has the synthesis of these things advanced? Less than you might think. I think the gaming industry has seen that there really isn't much of a market for VR systems. I could speculate on a number of reasons:
- most consumers seem to be perfectly happy with the current experience*
- most consumers couldn't currently afford even the top-end 2d-computer-vr gear, much less 3d stuff
- unsolved human equilibrium problems. If every sense is telling you you're riding in a spinning teacup, but your inner-ear disagrees, that's a recipe for motionsickness. Not many find that an entertaining time.

* because ultimately, it's about suspension of disbelief. Let's say I could have the ultimate home-VR experience - a headset that displays in perfect 3d, with perfect 3d sound, photorealistic resolution, I don't get dizzy, etc. I'm still just sitting there. There's still going to be a requirement for a user-interface that lets me move & function as if I was there. Will the increase in visual/audio realism (only) be worth the increase in price, while VR is hobbled by the need for some sort of human input device? Personally, I don't think so.

nothingforyoutoseehere

[davidwr]

move along

Political Vapourware

[davejenkins]

Politicians make their living off of the same vapourware every election-- and for some inexplicable reason, the masses keep buying into it. How about a short list?
1. Balanced Budget
2. Peace in our time
3. Raise education standards
4. Economic security

At first glance, this may seem off-topic, but I would submit that vapourware is inevitable to anyone who is asking for money/power and promises to give you something later. Companies release press 'early' (vapourware) in the hopes of bouying their stock price or raising VC money; politicians promise the moon to get campaign contributions (VC money). Same thing.

Re:Political Vapourware

[cbart387]

Companies release press 'early' (vapourware) in the hopes of bouying their stock price or raising VC money; politicians promise the moon to get campaign contributions (VC money). I agree totally with your post. However, I would like to add one other thing. I believe companies also announce products so that the consumer doesn't buy their competitor product (and get inundated) even before it's released. For example, Levono 'leaked' their X300. Yeah, you're telling me that wasn't calculated.

Re:Political Vapourware

[srussell]

Politicians make their living off of the same vapourware every election-- and for some inexplicable reason, the masses keep buying into it. How about a short list?

Well, some of these things have been achieved. They just aren't perpetual.

1. Balanced Budget

Done, during the Clinton administration. Subsequently undone.

2. Peace in our time

We've had presidencies during which the US hasn't been in any open conflict with any other country. But this really depends on what you mean by "peace." Are we at peace if, somewhere in the country, some guy is beating his wife? Are we at peace if we're not at war with anybody, but somebody, somewhere, is? Are we at peace if we have an embargo on some other country?

3. Raise education standards

You could argue that the US is more educated than it ever has been. More people have advanced degrees than ever have, and more poor people have degrees. Public K12 education certainly hasn't been improving overall in a long while, but again, it depends on what standards you're measuring -- what's your definition of education standards?

4. Economic security

The last time that happened was when social security was instituted. I don't even know what this would look like -- everybody gets a guaranteed minimum wage? Everybody is guaranteed a job? The stock market only goes up? What?

--- SER

Re:Political Vapourware

[AK Marc]

If you have a boarder in your house, and you balance your budget for your wife and children, is your household budget balanced? Everything you have direct control over balances. But the boarder could have an unbalanced budget. So, do you define your household to exclude such separate programs, or do you include them in your household budget? It's not just a separate line item, but a whole separate entity.

When Clinton balanced the budget (for one year, the recession that started at the end of 2000 guaranteed it wouldn't stay balanced no matter what),

The only guarantee that it wouldn't stay balanced was the election of a Republican. It may have been harder, but it certainly wouldn't have been impossible for someone else to have balanced the budget in 2001. However, the debt has increased greatly under the Republicans, and the Republicans fight every attempt to balance it, like forcing the shutdown of the government under Clinton because he told them he wouldn't sign an unbalanced budget, so they submitted an unbalanced one to call his bluff, but it wasn't a bluff. It takes closing the government to get congress to submit a balanced (or nearly balanced) budget. And it takes a Democratic president with a Republican Congress. A Republican president and Republican Congress will give us what we had under Regan, lots of debt and no fiscal responsibility. I can't imagine a Democratic president and Congress would be any better.

Re:Political Vapourware

[Nefarious Wheel]

I would like to add one other thing. I believe companies also announce products so that the consumer doesn't buy their competitor product (and get inundated) even before it's released. For example, Levono 'leaked' their X300. Yeah, you're telling me that wasn't calculated.

This goes way, way back. IBM, ever the hardball player in the mainframe arena, announced the System 360 and OS/360 before it was even on the drawing boards, as a same-week response to CDC's announcement of one of the Cray-designed CDC 6000 series computers. IBM didn't deliver until well over a year after announcement. Practices such as these helped precipitate the decade of litigation known as "IBM vs the BUNCH (Burroughs, Univac, NCR, CDC and Honeywell)" although it was the BUNCH who went after IBM for monopolistic practices.

The endless chain of litigation (which made the SCO/Unix litigation look like a lawn mower dispute) was finally finished when two tapes that contained the index to whole warehouses of source documents (punch cards, mostly) were "accidentally" scrubbed.

Hmm... Lenovo. Wasn't that an IBM spinoff?

Next Photo

[tsa]

Do they really think I'm going to press the 'Next Photo' button 11 times?

Re:Next Photo

[LMacG]

I think we can fill in step 3 . . .

1. Set up vaguely geek-related article on multiple pages,

2. Make sure each page is full of pay-per-impression ads,

3. Post to Slashdot,

4. PROFIT!!!

Re:Sim Mars

[Sqweegee]

There was Mars scenario available Sim Earth released for the SNES, PC, Amiga, and a few others. There was also a Venus, Ice planet, and Desert planet... The scenarios involved terraforming the planet to support evolving life.

http://strategywiki.org/wiki/SimEarth:_The_Living_Planet

Vaporware as a strategy

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Obligatory tag missing...

[jgrind]

Surely a "dukenukemforever" tag is required for this post.

Without even looking...

[Junior J. Junior III]

Here's my list of most significant vapor promises that never got delivered:

1) Nuclear Fusion power plants
2) Room-temperature Superconductor
3) Human exploration/Colonization of interplanetary space
4) Faster-than-light space travel
5) Humanlike AI
6) World Peace

If we could get any of these delivered, it'd be really nice. But I'm not holding my breath.

Re:Without even looking...

[dorix]

Since when has FTL space travel ever been "promised"?

Re:Without even looking...

[jollyreaper]

1) Nuclear Fusion power plants
2) Room-temperature Superconductor
3) Human exploration/Colonization of interplanetary space
4) Faster-than-light space travel
5) Humanlike AI
6) World Peace 7) Hot, smart, horny bisexual women totally turned on by the brainpower of nerd-studs. *sigh* Heinlein, how could you have steered us so wrong?

Re:Without even looking...

[Animats]

The Second Coming of Jesus Christ is clearly the most significant vapor promise that never got delivered. The marketing organization has been promoting it for almost two thousand years and they still haven't delivered.

Re:Without even looking...

[Spleen]

I always laugh when I hear this. As a child I was taught that Jesus was born (1st coming) and then was crucified. He was then resurrected (2nd coming) before ascending into heaven.

Does only a resurrection count as a "coming"? Seems to me they are either promoting something that has already happened, or should be promoting the 3rd coming.

Re:Without even looking...

[Moraelin]

Pfft, if you think that's bad vapourware: The Jews had been waiting for their messiah long before Jesus was even born. As far as I know, they still haven't gotten it. But presumably it's gonna happen real soon now, as soon as God irons out the last couple of bugs ;)

(And no, Jesus wasn't it, since he didn't actually do what the Jews' messiah was supposed to do. Then again, I guess it wouldn't be the first time when the actual released product doesn't even resemble what the marketing hype told you to expect;)

Re:Holographic Storage

[brunascle]

it's actually available, apparently, but i'm pretty sure it's ridiculously priced. it's certainly not targeted at the average consumer.

i've been anxiously waiting for news of a consumer-level product for 2 years now. alas, still not in sight.

Q-Trax = Monty Python Cheese Shop

[szyzyg]

I feel some small grain of sympathy for Q-Trax having to deal with the record labels, but there are quite a few free, legal services that let you listen to any music you want, on demand, they all managed to get licenses figured out. It's one things to launch with limited content, it's another to arrange a million dollar launch party before the deals have been signed.
At the time I equated the Q-Trax experience to Mr Wensleydale's cheese emporium in the famous monty python sketch.
http://snm.imeem.com/blogs/2008/01/30/oF1HiZ3f/monty_python_vs_qtrax
(slashdot won't let me post it since it ends up with too few characters per line....)

paranoia

[dj245]

Call me paranoid, but calling most of their products "beta" seems to me like an sneaky way of avoiding any sort of liability whatsoever for any problems that might arise. I'm not saying Google *should* be liable, but I think these beta tags have more to do with legal reasons than technical ones.

E-Film...

[tlhIngan]

Funny, but that wasn't a vaporware product... the actual device shown may have been, but before dSLRs, people could acquire "digital backs" for their SLR cameras to turn them into digital cameras. So the technology isn't new, innovative, or even vaporware. While everyone was raving over "point and shoot" digital cameras, the serious guys wanted something for their SLRs.

It was just that it easily cost around $10,000, so not many could afford them.

Then dSLRs came onto the market and that ended that reign. And these days, they're well within the reach of amateur photographers, costing not much more than a high-end point and shoot...

Vaporware?

[atlastiamborn]

Pah! Just you wait until they release Vaporware 2.0, that shit will blow your socks off.

Re:Scratch-proof coating

[ShadowOfMe]

I heard they scratched the project.