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.'"

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 [wikipedia.org] (or, more specifically, its sources), Google Mail has 10s of millions of users. I'd hardly call that Vaporware.

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.

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: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 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.

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:Old vaporware

[gnick]

4) Household robots

Depending on how picky you are about you definition of 'household robots", there are a number of them [wikipedia.org] 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: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 [gizmodo.com]. Yeah, you're telling me that wasn't calculated.

Re:Without even looking...

[dorix]

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

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!!!

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.

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: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: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: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: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: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: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.