Vapourware

In the computer industry, vaporware or vapourware is a product, typically computer hardware or software, that is announced to the general public but is never actually manufactured nor officially cancelled. Use of the word has broadened to include products such as automobiles.

Vaporware is often announced months or years before its purported release, with development details lacking. Developers have been accused of intentionally promoting vaporware to keep customers from switching to competing products that offer more features.Network World magazine called vaporware an "epidemic" in 1989, and blamed the press for not investigating whether developers' claims were true. Seven major companies issued a report in 1990 saying they felt vaporware had hurt the industry's credibility. The United States accused several companies of announcing vaporware early in violation of antitrust laws, but few have been found guilty. InfoWorld magazine wrote that the word is overused, and places an unfair stigma on developers.

"Vaporware" was coined by a Microsoft engineer in 1982 to describe the company's Xenix operating system, and first appeared in print in a newsletter by entrepreneur Esther Dyson in 1983. It became popular among writers in the industry as a way to describe products they felt took too long to be released. InfoWorld magazine editor Stewart Alsop helped popularize it by lampooning Bill Gates with a Golden Vaporware award for the late release of his company's first version of Windows in 1985.

Vaporware first implied intentional fraud when it was applied to the Ovation office suite in 1983; the suite's demonstration was well received by the press, but the product was later revealed to have never existed.

"Vaporware", sometimes synonymous with "vaportalk" in the 1980s, has no single definition. It is generally used to describe a hardware or software product that has been announced, but that the developer has no intention of releasing any time soon, if ever.

The first reported use of the word was in 1982 by an engineer at the computer software company Microsoft.Ann Winblad, president of Open Systems Accounting Software, wanted to know if Microsoft planned to stop developing its Xenix operating system as some of Open System's products depended on it. She asked two Microsoft software engineers, John Ulett and Mark Ursino, who confirmed that development of Xenix had stopped. "One of them told me, 'Basically, it's vaporware'," she later said. Winblad compared the word to the idea of "selling smoke", implying Microsoft was selling a product it would soon not support.

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