Wired wants your nomination
December 4, 2000 7:13 PM   Subscribe

Wired wants your nomination for worst Vaporware of the year 2000. (Hardware included.) Read the 1999 article here.
posted by Steven Den Beste (29 comments total)
 
Before even reading the article, i don't see how anything besides the CueCat sould win...
posted by ookamaka at 7:14 PM on December 4, 2000


*could
posted by ookamaka at 7:14 PM on December 4, 2000


My nomination: fast G4's from Motorola. 14 months ago they promised 700 MHz -- and still haven't even delivered samples, let alone quantity. 1 month ago they promised 1 GHz, but conveniently neglected to provide any kind of schedule whatever.

By the way: vaporware defined. The CueCat was actually delivered; that disqualifies it.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 7:19 PM on December 4, 2000


My second nomination is the 3DFX Voodoo V5 6000. Anyone familiar with that won't need any explanation!
posted by Steven Den Beste at 7:32 PM on December 4, 2000


Max Payne: The video game that was/is so advanced that it stunned everyone with it's promo's in '98, '99 and '00

It's set in NYC, and is a 3rd person shooter, the lead character carries two guns and the game is highly "inspired" by the Matrix.

These days they smartly say that the release date is "When It's Done"
posted by riffola at 7:48 PM on December 4, 2000


BitBoys are surely up there... although they may be last year's vaporware.
They promised graphics cards that would be able to outperform today's GeForce2 back when the top of the line card was still the TNT2 Ultra. No one has even seen silicon from BitBoys. Really makes me wonder if the whole thing is just a huge farce.
posted by PWA_BadBoy at 7:49 PM on December 4, 2000


Steven.. technically I don't think the 3DFX V5 6000 can be considered vaporware considering is *IS* being produced. You just have to buy a system along with it. =P
posted by PWA_BadBoy at 7:51 PM on December 4, 2000


Duke Nukem Forever. Last I heard they'd scrapped everything, erased the levels, shot the designers and zeroed out the hard drives in preparation for adapting the game to the Quake 4 engine.
posted by lileks at 7:52 PM on December 4, 2000


Easy - Netscape 6.
posted by Lynsey at 8:17 PM on December 4, 2000


Cute that SDMI was on last year's vaporware list. I guess they didn't even promise to "ship" this time around. Whether this counts as forwards or backwards progress is another matter . . .
posted by grimmelm at 8:39 PM on December 4, 2000


digiscents - they didn't ship anything, did they?
posted by mathowie at 9:17 PM on December 4, 2000


How about profitability?
posted by waxpancake at 10:02 PM on December 4, 2000


And why does everybody in Max Payne look so very constipated?
posted by waxpancake at 10:07 PM on December 4, 2000


[Product that I don't like but actually did ship]
posted by alana at 10:14 PM on December 4, 2000


Digiscents did have a booth at Comdex with a working demo
posted by PWA_BadBoy at 10:23 PM on December 4, 2000


I’m with Lynsey. While Netscape 6 shipped, Mozilla hasn’t. How long has it been?

(Fun time web search game! Go to netscape.com and time how long it takes you to find the “Download Netscape 6” link! Web fun for all!)

posted by capt.crackpipe at 10:41 PM on December 4, 2000


linux 2.4.x

Does pink/taligent/copland/rhapsody/OS X-for-just-plain-folks count? I suspect it's called "OS X" because it's been taking ten years to release...

But that's just the "OS/2: Half an operating system, says so on the label" joke updated, I suppose...


posted by aurelian at 2:52 AM on December 5, 2000


We have linux 2.4.x, for x='0-test11', and a couple of others...
posted by fvw at 3:11 AM on December 5, 2000


Damn, you aren't kidding, waxpancake! I had never even heard of "Max Payne" before clicking those links in your comment -- hell of a first impression, heh! (I don't think I'll be buying that one if/when it comes out.)
posted by Potsy at 3:32 AM on December 5, 2000


What about that mac-game from bungie? Halo is it? It was atleast a year now, since it was announced.
posted by tiaka at 5:40 AM on December 5, 2000


Lots of good ideas there, folks. Mail 'em in!
posted by Steven Den Beste at 7:54 AM on December 5, 2000


Halo is for the PC too - from what I've seen, it needs some PC-level firepower to run it, too. Old iMacs might be out of luck.
posted by lileks at 8:12 AM on December 5, 2000


Good one waxpancake, I guess they look constipated because they are in "payne."

In '98 the catch phrase/sound byte of the promos was "You want Payne? I'll give you pain."
posted by riffola at 8:52 AM on December 5, 2000


lileks, you're a BIG FAT LIAR! The iMac provides robust support for OpenGL, the industry standard for professional-quality rendering, texture-mapping and special effects. Plus, the iMac holds scads of RAM. Pre-loaded with 64MB of PC100 SDRAM. It all adds up to spectacular graphics performance. ATI RAGE 128 Pro graphics accelerator card, it’s ready to take on any other computer. I'm pitting your word against Apple's. They wouldn't like, now would they?
posted by tiaka at 9:09 AM on December 5, 2000


tiaka, I'm sorry, but the rage 128 isn't much of a graphics card at all, especially in comparison to some of the crazy-ass multi-megabitted cards from nVidia.

I have no idea what Halo's specs are (I try to wait 'til something's gone gold before drooling over it, with a couple of notable exceptions :-) but if it requires intense 3d acceleration, then the iMac (and the average non-gamer's PC, incidentally) just won't cut it.
posted by cCranium at 9:29 AM on December 5, 2000


Microsoft's .NET initiative.

Joel on Software said it best:

With vaporware, you promise all kinds of features and products that you simply can't sell because you don't really have them. But .NET is worse than vaporware. In their blasé loftiness, Microsoft isn't even bothering to provide the vapor itself.

posted by beth at 10:27 AM on December 5, 2000


an easy winner here, the 'highest' form of vaporware!
posted by donkeysuck at 12:26 PM on December 5, 2000


Rage 128 has blased all those GeForce 2 ultra cards. Especially those with DDR RAM. Rage 128 is DA BEST! I mean, you can get 30 fps, that's 6 frames more than the movies and those guys spend millions on them. Haha! Imacs RULE!
posted by tiaka at 9:21 PM on December 5, 2000


Nice troll, tiaka.

Thanks. :-)
posted by baylink at 8:56 PM on December 6, 2000


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