Wired's 2004 Vaporware Awards

l3pYr writes "Based on user submissions, Wired Magazine has posted its 2004 Vaporware Awards. Duke Nukem Forever has garnered the 'Lifetime Achievement Award,' so it doesn't - officially - make the list. Some of the lucky winners this year are: Alienware, Valve, Microsoft, Apple and TiVo."

Re:Where?

[crow]

Oh, boy, did I ever want one of those.

If you look very closely at some of the photos in Creative Computing or Compute! you'll see that the alleged 1450XLD had a nameplate on it calling it a 1250XLD. My guess is that there was another earlier project that was canceled, and since they didn't have any of the new ones ready, they used photos of the old one.

Apparently there were a few 1400XLs that got out, but there's as rare as an 815.

You troll you.

[AtariAmarok]

Seriously, the Slashdot visual design ranks among the best, except for that category that immitates the "Aqua" look of white letters on a very pale background (cannot be read). If you want very bad, go to aintitcoolnews.com To read that site, you need to copy and paste text into a text editor.

What is the min delay for vaporware?

[shawn(at)fsu]

#10 lists the product from Alienware that was supposed to be delivered in Q4 2004 (If I read it right). My question is this: How long must something be delayed to be considered vaporware? Obviously products like Duke Nukem and the Phantom qualify but what is the minimum amount of time needed?

Even if I was mistaken on #10 I still would like to hear what you all think.

Company Lifetime Achievement Award

[gmuslera]

This year they should give that award to Microsoft. 3DRealms are there just because Duke Nukem Forever, a single vaporware product, but Microsoft still making big merits since more than a decade ago (the WinFS in particular have a history that goes back to '94 and maybe earlier) and with most of the "big" announced features.

Also could be fit in the "vaporware" realm some of their claims, i.e. the "safe" feature is strongly attached to any of their products, be windows 95, internet explorer from the firsts versions, office, servers, etc).

Longhorn

[mislinux]

I went to the movie theater to watch the 2nd Matrix movie the day it came out (so that tells you about the time it was) and there was a guy running Longhorn on his laptop. Me and an ECE friend of mine went over to ask him about it. He was raving how great it was and blah blah blah. My friend asked him, "So what's different about it, beside the GUI?" And this guy was like, "Um...it is just neat, and you don't have it." Cause it was without the new file system (which won't be on longhorn anyway) and without a ton of stuff. But it did look pretty...pretty confusing. Stuff was everyone. The desktop looked like a dumping ground. Taskbar at the bottom. Some kind of toolbar on the side, similar to Mac's toolbar at the bottom, and then some other media toolbar. Just cluttered. And so we asked him to show us some stuff. There was nothing. So I was thinking about it. All it really didn't have was the newest Media Player and the new file system. Well now you can download the newest media player and they aren't adding the new file system, so I guess in 2006, they will release basically the same version that guy had back two years ago. LOL!!

Alienware and 4MHz Pentium

[91degrees]

Okay, these are both a little late, but isn't it a little unfair to call them vaporware? I mean, we can expect to see them eventually (at least the 4MHz CPU), and a delay of about 3 months is nothing like the delay we've suffered waiting for the Phantom. They wouldn't have qualified for these awards if their release date was Q2, and they just came out. Surely an annual award should wait for at least most of a year for a delay.

Steve fessed up to it

[acomj]

In the july Macworld, steve jobs showed everyone the slide from a year ago promissing 3 ghz. He said IBM was having trouble creating faster chips, but they were getting faster, just they were behind schedule.

Then he some convoluted explaination that they were getting faster at a faster rate %wise than intel which was a confusing statement since both chip makers increased speed by the same # of mhz..

Oh well..

Re:Is anyone really working on a new duke3d?!

[Anonymous Coward]

just go to the 3drealms forum. there is one guy (George something) that talks about development from time to time.

so yes, they still are working on it. this is no excuse for the length of delay (nearly 10 years now), but you have to keep in mind what duke3d was. it was not just another typical FPS. in fact, it had more going on than the first half-life did really. there was the shrink ray, freeze ray, jet pack, pipe bombs, etc. etc.

the engine is actually a very very minor part of it. when duke3d first came out, it was competing more-or-less with the first quake. despite duke3d being a 2.5D game vs. quake's true 3D... duke3d was much more fun (until quakeworld and mods, at least).

i'm hopeful that we will see another duke nukem within the next 2-3 years. the only bad thing is that no matter how kickass it will be (and trust me... it will be kickass), it will never be able to live up to the hype. i can already see people saying "i've waited this long for this?!"

Re:My favorite piece of vaporware is GNU/HURD

[uebermts]

Well, HURD is about to reach V1.0 ... in the meantime, Linus wrote some other OS:

===
From: [e-mail] (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
Date: 5 Oct 91 05:41:06 GMT
Subject: Free minix-like kernel sources for 386-AT

[...]
I can (well, almost) hear you asking yourselves "why?". Hurd will be
out in a year (or two, or next month, who knows), and I've already got
minix.
[...]
===

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.os.mini x/ msg/2194d253268b0a1b

Re:Is anyone really working on a new duke3d?!

[Anita Coney]

Oh I agree that Duke3d was great. Probably the most fun FPS ever. If I owned Realms I'd re-release the original game using a more modern engine, e.g., the Q3 engine.

Practically everyone who owned/played the original would buy it. And it would whet our appetite for the new game.

Re:My favorite piece of vaporware

[jc42]

Some years ago, I read a sci fi story whose plot was basically that Jesus did return within a century, and many more times in the following centuries. Every time, the same thing happened: He was killed. Finally, he gave up, and went on to other planets that were in need of his help.

The story was told from the viewpoint of a ship full of human space explorers, who kept coming across planets that were paradises, and the inhabitants attributed this to a holy man in the recent past who had taught them how to live right. But they couldn't find a planet with such a holy man; they kept arriving just after he had left.

Now if I could remember the story's title or author ...

Re:My favorite piece of vaporware

[SkipRosebaugh]

I don't remember the first paragraph, but I do remember the second. If I'm right, it should be 'The Man', by Bradbury.