Vaporware 2000:
December 27, 2000 5:58 PM   Subscribe

Vaporware 2000: Wired's results of its poll for products promised for this year but not delivered.
posted by Steven Den Beste (12 comments total)
 
Warcraft III is right on schedule, at least in the blizzard sliding scale, it should be out late late 2001.
posted by corpse at 6:36 PM on December 27, 2000


Sigh, I've been waiting for Duke Nukem Forever for, well, it seems like forever. They've apparently ripped it up and started over at least once when they switched from the Unreal engine to the Quake 3 engine.

I mean, like, man it's gonna be in Vegas this time, and Vegas is one of my favorite places. I'd love to trash it.

posted by Steven Den Beste at 7:10 PM on December 27, 2000


I suggested "profitability" for Wired's Vaporware 2000 list, but I guess it didn't make the cut.
posted by waxpancake at 7:28 PM on December 27, 2000


I thought vaporware was reserved for products that have never seen the light of day. There are a couple on that list that are in public beta, quite well on their way.

Am I incorrect?
posted by pnevares at 7:32 PM on December 27, 2000


I'm both bemused and amused by the number of games on the list. Is a person's life really substantively altered if they are forced to waste time in a different way than they hoped to? Shouldn't a list of top 10 vaporware products take into account the impact the promised products would have if they had in fact been delivered? (In the case of games, of course, the impact is likely to be reduced productivity, which hardly seems worth waiting for to begin with.)
posted by kindall at 7:58 PM on December 27, 2000


I read vaporware as products that have continuously missed their release schedule or do not live up to the specifications.

Linuxone.com released a product on time (I think), that was still called vaporware as it didn't include many of the promised features.

Maybe this is just a list of liars?
posted by holloway at 8:01 PM on December 27, 2000


Vaporware originally referred to products that didn't exist in *any* form--a company would put out a press release announcing a product and basically use the pre-orders to fund development. I guess snakeoilware lacked a certain elegance. But it definitely meant "not real" as opposed to "not on the shelves yet." No-there-thereware. The Last Dangerous Visions is probably gaseous enough to be considered vaporware. But Wired's list is, for the most part, at least, um, marshmallowfluffware. Some (OS X, the new Linux kernel) are pretty far into the solid phase. If you can use it to pay the bills, it ain't vapor.
posted by rodii at 9:47 PM on December 27, 2000


Like I said before. BitBoys!!! I'm still waiting for their mind-blowing video cards that are never gonna see the light of day.. Nobody's even seen silicon on these things.. but the specs are to die for.
posted by PWA_BadBoy at 3:52 AM on December 28, 2000


For us Mac people, how 'bout Xtrem, the company that is promising to overclock the G4 processor to 1.2GHz? I doubt that's possible with current silicon. In fact, even with the supposed V'Ger G4s coming early next year (which, according to rumor, will top out at 650MHz) I doubt it will be possible. If Motorola could make a chip that could be reliably overclocked to 1.2GHz, even with an extreme cooling system (which is how Xtrem claims to be doing it), I think someone besides a Swedish startup would know about it.
posted by kindall at 7:17 AM on December 28, 2000


I'd be tempted to label Xtrem "spoofware" rather than vaporware. That's a Shure 55SH all the way.
posted by jplummer at 9:33 AM on December 28, 2000


Well, they're actually selling their other product, a simple clock-booster, and they obviously spent a lot of money on a professional site design. I see no real indication that they intend their claims not to be taken seriously.

The "case" design, yeah, it looks just like a Shure mic. It could be intended as a mockup, though. My take on it is that they really think they can pull it off, or at least that they want people to think they think that. If they're doing it for the publicity, maybe it'd be called stuntware. If they intend to take orders for the product I'd call it scamware.

But there's no evidence it actually exists in any case.
posted by kindall at 11:18 AM on December 28, 2000


I'd always considered Vaporware a tool for FUD. If company X has a product out there that threatens a large company's place in "the market", the large company would talk about the fact that they'll have an equally-as-good, if not better, product out shortly, and remind people that no one ever got fired for buying IBM.
posted by cCranium at 11:50 AM on December 28, 2000


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