Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer at
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works in love all things tech. And in
Speaker 1: the last episode, I've focused on examples of hardware that,
Speaker 1: while promoted by a company, never actually made it to market,
Speaker 1: at least not in the form that was promised. So
Speaker 1: in this episode, I want to take a look at
Speaker 1: software that did a similar thing, and so we're talking
Speaker 1: about vaporware specifically in the form of software. Mostly in software,
Speaker 1: there's some overlap here. So this episode is actually going
Speaker 1: to go out to all the programmers out there who
Speaker 1: have dedicated countless hours towards working on something that never emerged.
Speaker 1: I cannot imagine how frustrating that must be, to dedicate
Speaker 1: hours of your life toward a project only to see
Speaker 1: that project fizzle. UM. Hopefully, those of you out there
Speaker 1: who have been involved in such a thing, at least
Speaker 1: I hope you got paid for it. If not, that's
Speaker 1: even worse obviously, But one piece of software that is
Speaker 1: not on this list anymore is, of course, the infamous
Speaker 1: Duke Nukem Forever game for a decade that title topped
Speaker 1: numerous vaporware lists, most famously WIREDS Hall of Fame for
Speaker 1: Vaporware got inducted in two thousand three, I believe by Wired,
Speaker 1: and that was because the editors got tired of including
Speaker 1: the title in their annual Vaporware Awards feature. They said, listen,
Speaker 1: we can't just keep putting Duke Nukem on this list,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna put them in the Hall of Fame.
Speaker 1: And then in two thousand five the raaders demanded that
Speaker 1: they put it back on the list, so they did so.
Speaker 1: George Bussard, who was a developer for three D Realms
Speaker 1: UH and kind of a project leader, he first announced
Speaker 1: work on Duke Nukem Forever back nineteen by n. Wired
Speaker 1: was listing the game as vaporware because back then, two
Speaker 1: years to make a computer game was an unusually lengthy
Speaker 1: development cycle. Today it's not that unusual at all. Games
Speaker 1: take millions of dollars and years to develop for your
Speaker 1: your big Triple A titles, but back then it was
Speaker 1: considered to be unusually, like ridiculously long. The game would
Speaker 1: end up missing ship dates multiple times, largely because three
Speaker 1: D Realms wanted the title to be a cutting edge
Speaker 1: game that took full advantage of the latest hardware, and
Speaker 1: hardware kept getting better and better while the game was
Speaker 1: still in development, so they would change game engines a
Speaker 1: couple of times, and that meant that a lot of
Speaker 1: assets they had developed for the game had to be
Speaker 1: completely scrapped and rebuilt. In other words, every time there
Speaker 1: was a reason to change things, it's set everyone back
Speaker 1: months or longer. The game did finally come out in
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven, fifteen years after the initial announcement, and
Speaker 1: by then the game was published under two K Games
Speaker 1: and developed by Gearbox Software. So one thing I guess
Speaker 1: I can say is that there's a possibility, maybe only
Speaker 1: a slim one, that one or more pieces of software
Speaker 1: I talked about in this episode could one day come
Speaker 1: out after all. Just don't hold your breath now. Another
Speaker 1: game that is frequently mentioned when the term vaporware comes
Speaker 1: up is Star Citizen, But to be fair, Star Citizen
Speaker 1: has been releasing updates to an alpha build of the
Speaker 1: game regularly. Now, it's true there's no beta version of
Speaker 1: this game in place yet, let alone a commercial version,
Speaker 1: but it's also true that there are at least gameplay
Speaker 1: elements that backers can you can play right now. If
Speaker 1: you backed the project and you have access to it,
Speaker 1: then you can actually play those gameplay elements. It's just
Speaker 1: not a fully cohesive game yet. The story of Star
Speaker 1: Citizen is such that it leaves many people purple next
Speaker 1: once they start hearing details. So here's a quick overview.
Speaker 1: The game's development began in two thousand eleven with Chris Roberts,
Speaker 1: who founded a company called Cloud Imperium Games. Roberts had
Speaker 1: previously worked on some really notable games like Freelancer and
Speaker 1: Wing Commander, and his goal was to create a massively
Speaker 1: multiplayer online space simulator. Players can own and operate space vehicles,
Speaker 1: they can go on missions, they can engage in combat,
Speaker 1: and they would have this enormous space environment to explore
Speaker 1: and live in in that game. At least that's what
Speaker 1: they'll be able to do once the game is finally finished.
Speaker 1: In two thousand twelve, Star Citizen began to raise funds
Speaker 1: both on Kickstarter and on its own site. Kickstarter's goal
Speaker 1: was five thousand dollars, but their campaign raised more than
Speaker 1: two million dollars. It was one of the most successful
Speaker 1: campaigns at that time, and the game has raised funds
Speaker 1: largely by selling in game assets to players, such as
Speaker 1: special ships, including ships that cost hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Speaker 1: I've listened to podcasts with hosts who have spent hundreds
Speaker 1: of dollars on ships for the game. But spending that
Speaker 1: much money for a virtual game that blows my mind.
Speaker 1: But in two thousand eighteen, the company announced a package
Speaker 1: called the Legatas Pack, and that includes one seventeen ships
Speaker 1: with various add ons and skins for the game, all
Speaker 1: for the low low price of twenty seven thousand real
Speaker 1: world dollars. So you'd spent twenty seven thousand dollars for
Speaker 1: virtual ships in a computer game. What an earlier completionist
Speaker 1: pack sold for fifteen thousand dollars. In order to even
Speaker 1: see the stuff that's included in the pack, you have
Speaker 1: to be part of an elite group of enthusiasts who
Speaker 1: have spent at least one thousand dollars one thousand real
Speaker 1: world dollars on this game so far, a game that
Speaker 1: only exists in alpha mode, and by that I mean
Speaker 1: only parts of the game exists in alpha mode, or
Speaker 1: or you could just call it the company and ask
Speaker 1: about it. They'll tell you more over the phone, so
Speaker 1: you don't have to spend the thousand dollars to get
Speaker 1: access to that website. The game has raised more than
Speaker 1: one hundred eighty six million dollars since it first started fundraising,
Speaker 1: and while early goals were to have a full version
Speaker 1: of the game available in two thousand fourteen, the company
Speaker 1: has since backed off on announcing a date when the
Speaker 1: game will be done. They got burned too many times
Speaker 1: saying well, it's gonna be out at this time, and
Speaker 1: then they missed that date. Some people have become pretty
Speaker 1: cheesed off about this, going so far as to suggest
Speaker 1: that the company has a game in perpetual development just
Speaker 1: as a way to coax more money from hopeful supporters.
Speaker 1: In other words, they don't ever have to deliver a
Speaker 1: full game. They just have to keep people strung alow
Speaker 1: to keep getting fundraising money from them. But there's no
Speaker 1: denying that gameplay elements have emerged over time. There are
Speaker 1: total sections of this game you can play, and other
Speaker 1: games like Minecraft existed as a playable beta for years,
Speaker 1: to the point where people didn't even care if the
Speaker 1: game ever emerged as something more than a beta. Still,
Speaker 1: this is a game that's currently an alpha, not even
Speaker 1: beta testing, so there's no knowing when or if the
Speaker 1: full game will be available. Now, I could do a
Speaker 1: full episode about games that never came out, and maybe
Speaker 1: someday I will, but for now, let's just go over
Speaker 1: a few anticipated titles that have to this date not
Speaker 1: made it out of development, and some of them have
Speaker 1: been canceled. One of those would be Star Wars thirteen.
Speaker 1: That was a game that was supposed to allow the
Speaker 1: player to control the famous Boba Fette in an action
Speaker 1: adventure style game. The title referred to a level inside
Speaker 1: the enormous city planet of Correissant. Corressant just looks like
Speaker 1: a huge planet filled with skyscrapers, and you would divide
Speaker 1: the planet up not just by quadrants, but by level.
Speaker 1: Was supposed to be a level filled with seedy underworld characters.
Speaker 1: Early video footage was shown off at industry events and
Speaker 1: looked really impressive. But then the Mouse House purchased Lucasfilm
Speaker 1: and along with it Lucas Arts, the the game studio
Speaker 1: that was developing this game. Disney made the determination to
Speaker 1: stop all internal development for games at Lucas Arts, and
Speaker 1: all the developers got laid off. Lucas Arts exists now
Speaker 1: only as an entity to issue licenses to other game developers,
Speaker 1: and so thirt thirteen was shelved. Disney chose not to
Speaker 1: renew the trademark license in I plan on doing a
Speaker 1: whole episode or two about Blizzard soon, but one thing
Speaker 1: I will not be talking about is how their game,
Speaker 1: StarCraft Ghost did once it went on sale, because it
Speaker 1: never did that. It never got out of development. The
Speaker 1: idea was to it a stealth based game set in
Speaker 1: the popular StarCraft universe, and StarCraft is a real time
Speaker 1: strategy game, but Ghost would be a different type of gameplay,
Speaker 1: completely meant for consoles rather than PCs, and it was
Speaker 1: supposed to come out in two thousand six, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't until two thousand fourteen the Blizzard officially said, yeah,
Speaker 1: this one's not coming out. Also, in a mysterious and
Speaker 1: creepy demo for PlayStation four came out, and the demo
Speaker 1: was for what was called pt PT stood for Playable Teaser,
Speaker 1: And in this teaser, you would walk down the hallway
Speaker 1: and you would encounter creepy and disturbing imagery and then
Speaker 1: you would discover yourself at the beginning of the hallway
Speaker 1: over and over again, and the creepy stuff would grow
Speaker 1: even more disturbing, and it would change each time you
Speaker 1: went down the hallway. At the conclusion of the trailer,
Speaker 1: and was a video teaser for Silent Hills, obviously a
Speaker 1: game in the Silent Hill horror series. Hideo Kajima, famed
Speaker 1: video game designer, and Guillermo del Toro, the famous filmmaker.
Speaker 1: We're working on the project with actor Norman Das, who
Speaker 1: is providing voice and performance acting for the game. But
Speaker 1: the game eventually got canceled. Cojima would leave the company,
Speaker 1: or he was fired or something that's never been totally clear,
Speaker 1: and then Cojima went on to develop the as yet
Speaker 1: unreleased game Death Stranding, also starring Ritas. So what is
Speaker 1: Death Stranding about? Beats me. I watched about ten minutes
Speaker 1: of footage from and I still have no idea what
Speaker 1: that game is all about. Other games that fall into
Speaker 1: this category include Titan, which was another Blizzard title that
Speaker 1: never made it all development. There were a trilogy of
Speaker 1: games that were called Insane that was also supposed to
Speaker 1: have Guillermo del Toro's involvement. Those never came out. Also
Speaker 1: a game called Agent, which is an espionage game that
Speaker 1: was supposed to come out from rock Star Games. It
Speaker 1: was announced way back in two thousand nine, but as
Speaker 1: of yet has not come out, But there have been
Speaker 1: reports from as recently as ten that's some variation of
Speaker 1: that game Miss still in development. So maybe we will
Speaker 1: one day see Agent see the light of day. Next,
Speaker 1: we're gonna turn our focus from video games to other
Speaker 1: types of software. But first let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. Now, in the world of software,
Speaker 1: there's an old example of vaporware that still gets reference today.
Speaker 1: The example dates all the way back to nine three,
Speaker 1: and that's when a company called Ovation Technologies announced a
Speaker 1: suite of productivity software that it said would leave all
Speaker 1: competitors in the dust. The company claimed it's Ovation Suite
Speaker 1: included features like spreadsheets, word processing, data management, communication tools,
Speaker 1: all of them integrated together. So it's going to be
Speaker 1: a powerful tool for businesses, far exceeding the capabilities of
Speaker 1: competing software that was just starting to get a foothold
Speaker 1: in the market at that time. Ovation produced a demo
Speaker 1: of its product Sucked, in order to show off what
Speaker 1: it could do at various trade shows. The demo was
Speaker 1: a video, and here's the thing. The video was filled
Speaker 1: with false claims because there was no actual product to
Speaker 1: show off. The video was just completely manufactured. It wasn't
Speaker 1: supposedly showing off a concept, it was supposed to be
Speaker 1: showing off a working build of the software. The truth
Speaker 1: was the company had nothing to show yet. The demo
Speaker 1: was created in an effort to convince potential investors to
Speaker 1: pour money into the company. Presumably that money would then
Speaker 1: be used to actually make the software that the company
Speaker 1: was claimed to have built. But Ovation wasn't able to
Speaker 1: stay above the waves of bankruptcy, and eventually they ran
Speaker 1: out of money before they could ever produce anything real,
Speaker 1: so it instead became an infamous example of vaporware and
Speaker 1: smoke and mirrors. Some people going so far as to
Speaker 1: say it was essentially a hoax or scam. Others are
Speaker 1: a little more charitable, and they said, well, they didn't
Speaker 1: intend for it to be a scam. They were just
Speaker 1: trying to raise the money to build the thing they
Speaker 1: wanted to build. And instead of saying it like that,
Speaker 1: they said, hey, we have this thing, we've built it already,
Speaker 1: invest in us and you'll make your money back. And
Speaker 1: that was dishonest. When I did episodes about the Macintosh,
Speaker 1: I talked about how Apple as a company was struggling
Speaker 1: in the nineteen nineties before Steve Jobs returned to Apple.
Speaker 1: You know, he co founded the company, but he was
Speaker 1: then pushed aside and uh, John Scully essentially took over
Speaker 1: and Jobs found himself leaving the company or being fired
Speaker 1: from the company. It all depends upon whose account you believe.
Speaker 1: And then he went to start a new company called Next. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: back at Apple, developers were hard at work trying to
Speaker 1: create the next generation of the Mac operating system. The
Speaker 1: preceding generation was called System seven and that launched back
Speaker 1: in n It worked well, but it's still depended upon
Speaker 1: old architecture that by design limited what users could do.
Speaker 1: And the reason for these limitations was in order to
Speaker 1: streamline processes. So, in other words, the stuff the operating
Speaker 1: system could do, it could do really really well. But
Speaker 1: largely it could do that stuff really well because the
Speaker 1: developers were ignoring all the stuff the operating system could
Speaker 1: not do. And one of those things was true multitasking.
Speaker 1: You could kind of sort of multitask with System seven
Speaker 1: mac os, but it was doing it in a way
Speaker 1: that wasn't terribly efficient and wasn't true multitasking. Also, an
Speaker 1: error could cause the system to crash, and if you
Speaker 1: were running multiple programs at once, a bug in any
Speaker 1: of those programs could cause the entire computer to crash
Speaker 1: as a result. So instead of compartmentalizing each of these
Speaker 1: instances so that if there's a problem, only that one
Speaker 1: program crashes, it would affect the entire system. And so
Speaker 1: the more programs you were running, the more likely you
Speaker 1: would run into that and have to do a full
Speaker 1: system reboot and lose all your work. So it was
Speaker 1: not a great scene. Now. A proposed successor to System
Speaker 1: seven was a project code named Copeland. It took a
Speaker 1: very different approach to architecture to allow for better control
Speaker 1: over multiple programs, among other things. So why was it
Speaker 1: called Copeland, Well, it was named after the composer. The
Speaker 1: code name for System seven point five had been Mozart.
Speaker 1: There was a third planned iteration that was code named
Speaker 1: Gershwin and Copeland stuck right in the between them. There
Speaker 1: was supposed to be transitional to move the operating system
Speaker 1: away from the old architecture of System seven and set
Speaker 1: the ground for a new architecture that would support future
Speaker 1: generations of OS builds. Apple announced that Copeland was in
Speaker 1: development back in by Gil Emilio, who had recently become
Speaker 1: the CEO of Apple, talked a lot about the various
Speaker 1: features that Copeland would have. At that point, they had
Speaker 1: renamed it. They were calling it System eight, representing an
Speaker 1: entirely new generation of operating systems. Demonstrations of the operating
Speaker 1: system did not go well, uh, they they people could
Speaker 1: see promises of what the operating system might be able
Speaker 1: to do, but you couldn't even do things like inter
Speaker 1: in text in the early demos of System mate, and
Speaker 1: that represented a big problem. Obviously, demonstrations uh did not
Speaker 1: help the case. The development team was fractured, different groups
Speaker 1: working on specific features, but seemingly no guiding hand to
Speaker 1: bring all of those features together into a cohesive operating system.
Speaker 1: So you had people working very uh intensely on just
Speaker 1: a very narrow group of features with no thought of
Speaker 1: how it was going to integrate with the overall system.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of feature creep coming into more
Speaker 1: and more features that were being added to this operating system,
Speaker 1: growing the project, making it harder to complete and in August,
Speaker 1: Apple finally pulled the plug. By the end of nine,
Speaker 1: Apple would announce that Steve Jobs would be joining the
Speaker 1: company in an advisory capacity because Apple was requiring Next
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs as new company in an effort to get
Speaker 1: their operating system development moving again. Essentially, they were saying, well,
Speaker 1: we couldn't develop the operating system in house, Let's go
Speaker 1: buy Steve's company Next and bring those assets over and
Speaker 1: make that into the new Mac operating system. Jobs would
Speaker 1: eventually convince the board of directors to give the boot
Speaker 1: to Gil Emilio and Jobs would take over, first as
Speaker 1: interim CEO and later as the official CEO of Apple.
Speaker 1: Back in music companies were in a tizzy because digital
Speaker 1: music formats that made it incredibly easy to share music
Speaker 1: on a global scale, peer to peer sharing networks and
Speaker 1: pirate sites were undermining the business model the music industry
Speaker 1: have been reliant upon for decades, and if you want
Speaker 1: to talk about disruptive technologies, the development of digital music
Speaker 1: file formats would be way up there. And so a
Speaker 1: group of companies, not just in the music industry, got
Speaker 1: together to try and create a solution to this perceived problem,
Speaker 1: and the idea was to create technology that would allow
Speaker 1: music companies to sell digital forms of music and rest
Speaker 1: assured that only the people who coughed up the dough
Speaker 1: could listen to the stuff at tech that would foil
Speaker 1: the attempts of dirty, nasty pirates out there who would
Speaker 1: steal money right from their pockets. Sort of, all right,
Speaker 1: let's put aside for the moment the fact that you
Speaker 1: cannot prove someone who pirates the piece of media would
Speaker 1: otherwise have paid for that media, because that would negate
Speaker 1: your argument that they're stealing money from you. Right now,
Speaker 1: you might think this sounds a lot like the group
Speaker 1: which was called the Secure Digital Music Initiative or s
Speaker 1: d m I, that they were trying to come up
Speaker 1: with a DRM strategy, and you would be right. Digital
Speaker 1: rights management was exactly what they were looking at. That
Speaker 1: was what they were trying to do. They wanted to
Speaker 1: create a means to imprint a digital water mark on
Speaker 1: a file, so piece of code that could be attached
Speaker 1: to a music file to prove that it came from
Speaker 1: a legitimate source. The watermark would be designed in such
Speaker 1: a way so that it would be really hard to
Speaker 1: remove without it also causing some sort of damage to
Speaker 1: the music file like decreasing the quality of the audio itself.
Speaker 1: So if you tried to remove it, then the sound
Speaker 1: wouldn't be as good on your music file, and you
Speaker 1: would ruin the thing you were trying to You're trying
Speaker 1: to uh crack. And there was a second arm to
Speaker 1: the strategy. They were going to partner with manufacturers to
Speaker 1: produce devices that could play back s d m I files,
Speaker 1: but only if there was proof that the user was
Speaker 1: authorized to play those files. So let's say it's a computer.
Speaker 1: The computer would have to have a proof that the
Speaker 1: owner had a license to play that music, and then
Speaker 1: it would say, all right, well the license matches up
Speaker 1: with the sdm I water mark. Everything's good. The watermark
Speaker 1: is a is a real water mark. It's clearly from
Speaker 1: the company, so we will allow this file to play.
Speaker 1: On Nimber six, two thousand, the group issued an open
Speaker 1: challenge to anyone to try and remove the digital watermark
Speaker 1: from some examples of music files without ruining those music files,
Speaker 1: and to do so within three weeks. A group led
Speaker 1: by Princeton computer science professor Ed Felton claimed to do
Speaker 1: just that, though s d m I initially protested, saying
Speaker 1: that the judging software, which by the way they themselves
Speaker 1: had provided, could not take into account the sound quality
Speaker 1: of the music file. Felton planned to give a talk
Speaker 1: about his group's methodology, and s d m I, along
Speaker 1: with some other parties, threatened to sue Felton and his group.
Speaker 1: They said, this is going to be a violation of
Speaker 1: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act the d m c A.
Speaker 1: But the Department of Justice was disinclined to acquiesce to
Speaker 1: the demands of s d m I in pirate speak,
Speaker 1: so in other words, they said, go ahead, dog, publish
Speaker 1: your work. Felton, you got it, We got your back.
Speaker 1: S d m I effectively ended in two thousand one,
Speaker 1: although according to the then director, it was not because
Speaker 1: the water marks could be removed. Rather, he said the
Speaker 1: technology was not capable of being unnoticeable by golden ears,
Speaker 1: meaning that he was saying that the process of putting
Speaker 1: the digital water mark on the music files was by
Speaker 1: itself affecting the sound quality slightly, and if you were
Speaker 1: really really good at listening, you'd be able to detect it.
Speaker 1: And that's why it never worked. It wasn't that someone
Speaker 1: had cracked the system and they were able to remove
Speaker 1: the water mark. It was just that it never worked
Speaker 1: in the first place. UM. I don't know if those
Speaker 1: are sour grapes or not, but anyway you could say
Speaker 1: the whole stm I file uh form was was vaporware.
Speaker 1: I have more to say about vaporware in the next section,
Speaker 1: but first let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: All right, this next example is part software, part hardware.
Speaker 1: Back in two thousand twelve, Justin Timberlake took a break
Speaker 1: from bringing Sexy Back to take the stage at CES
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas. He was there to announce a partnership
Speaker 1: with Panasonic to bring a service called my Space TV
Speaker 1: to the new Vierra HDTV television sets. The idea being
Speaker 1: that would be an over the top service, So you
Speaker 1: would plug your Vierra TV in, you would have it
Speaker 1: connected to your network, and then you could tap into
Speaker 1: this my Space TV service and the service would start
Speaker 1: off with the library of music videos that my Space
Speaker 1: already had at its disposal, which was around a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand or so, and also my spaces library of songs,
Speaker 1: which was around forty two million songs, and then it
Speaker 1: was supposed to grow to quote encompass movies, news, sports,
Speaker 1: and reality channels with a growing lineup of today's most
Speaker 1: popular broadcast and on demand content. End quote a wording
Speaker 1: to a press release issued by the two companies. Timberlake
Speaker 1: himself talked about the social aspect of the service, which
Speaker 1: would let people share what they were watching in real time,
Speaker 1: so you could create a sort of online viewing party experience,
Speaker 1: but the service as talked about never materialized. Just a
Speaker 1: note here, my Space did create a service called my
Speaker 1: Space TV, but that was way back in two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: five years before this c e S presentation, and back
Speaker 1: then that was a video site meant to compete with YouTube,
Speaker 1: so it was meant to allow my Space users to
Speaker 1: upload user generated content to the video site, So that
Speaker 1: was different from what Panasonic and MySpace we're talking about
Speaker 1: in two thousand twelve. Also, my Space had been declining
Speaker 1: in popularity steadily since two thousand eight, so this was
Speaker 1: kind of a big surprise to see my Space teaming
Speaker 1: up with Panasonic in the first place, because my Space
Speaker 1: had lost a lot of street cred by then. News Corps,
Speaker 1: which had bought my Space in two thousand five for
Speaker 1: five eighty million dollars had sold the company in two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven for much less, perhaps as low as thirty
Speaker 1: five million dollars. That's an enormous loss, and Rupert Murdoch,
Speaker 1: the owner of news Corps, would call the purchase of
Speaker 1: MySpace one of the biggest mistakes news Corps ever made.
Speaker 1: A company called specific Media became the new owner of MySpace,
Speaker 1: and then eventually they were also a company that would
Speaker 1: belonged to a larger company called Volant Technologies. Time Incorporated
Speaker 1: bought Volant in two thousand and sixteen, so Volant was
Speaker 1: the parent company not only of MySpace and specific Media,
Speaker 1: but also of other companies like Vindico and Schumo. Now
Speaker 1: I've talked a lot about different examples of vaporware in
Speaker 1: these two episodes, so I thought it would be useful
Speaker 1: to kind of talk about why vaporware exists in the
Speaker 1: first place, or or why it it doesn't exist, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. Why do companies announced products that
Speaker 1: are not yet ready for market and may never full development. Well,
Speaker 1: there are several potential reasons. First, there's the possibility that
Speaker 1: the company has every intent to actually release the product
Speaker 1: as they are promoting it, but internal or external problems
Speaker 1: right at the end are derailing the project and pushing
Speaker 1: back the release date. That happens a lot, both in
Speaker 1: software and in hardware. So you scope about your project right.
Speaker 1: You define what you want to deliver, You define the
Speaker 1: process you're going to take in order to make the
Speaker 1: product that you've designed. You identify what you think are
Speaker 1: going to be the challenging sticking points. You create strategies
Speaker 1: to overcome those challenges, and you move forward. And then
Speaker 1: something you did not anticipate happens, because it always does.
Speaker 1: That's that's how the real world works, and that throws
Speaker 1: you off. So then you adjust and you try to
Speaker 1: move forward as best you can, trying to keep your
Speaker 1: vision intact. But then you find out that whatever the
Speaker 1: solution was to that unexpected problem that popped up, that
Speaker 1: solution has now broken something else, like one of your
Speaker 1: features now no longer works. Or maybe your lead developer
Speaker 1: gets hired away by a competitor, or maybe your company
Speaker 1: is acquired by another company, or maybe your money is
Speaker 1: just running out. There are plenty of cases where vaporware
Speaker 1: is an unfortunate byproduct of unpredictable challenges during a project cycle.
Speaker 1: Has nothing to do with any nefarious plans. But then
Speaker 1: there are more underhanded, shady practices. There's the possibility of
Speaker 1: an outright cash grab. This is your old snake oil
Speaker 1: salesman methodology, where you promise someone the moon and stars
Speaker 1: and you have no intention to deliver upon this promise.
Speaker 1: But those scams are pretty difficult to pull off well
Speaker 1: without serious consequences Further down the road, like how do
Speaker 1: you raise a huge amount of money trying to sell
Speaker 1: a complete scam and then still expect to get away
Speaker 1: Because eventually people get mad if they find out they've
Speaker 1: been hoodwinked, and governments exist in part to protect people
Speaker 1: from such things. So it's not the kind of grift
Speaker 1: that you want to run for very long because you're
Speaker 1: gonna get come uppants. So you're likely gonna get dinged
Speaker 1: by a lawsuit or three, and that's really gonna put
Speaker 1: a crimp on your day. But another tactic is to
Speaker 1: announce a product that's well ahead of schedule. Maybe the
Speaker 1: general public doesn't know it's well ahead of schedule, but
Speaker 1: you might suspect that's going to be a few years
Speaker 1: before this product is rated to market, But you announce
Speaker 1: it in order to take the wind of the sales
Speaker 1: of a competitor. There's an example of this, or at
Speaker 1: least an example of a company that's been accused of
Speaker 1: doing this. Way back in nineteen sixty four, IBM announced
Speaker 1: it would introduce a series of mainframe computers under the
Speaker 1: name System three sixty, but those computers wouldn't actually become
Speaker 1: available for purchase for a few years, so IBM announced
Speaker 1: it prematurely. However, the announcement prompted a lot of would
Speaker 1: be customers to wait on this promised System of three
Speaker 1: sixty machine to come out rather than purchase a system
Speaker 1: from one of IBM's competitors, like the Controlled Data Corporation
Speaker 1: or c d C. C d C brought an antitrust
Speaker 1: lawsuit against IBM in nineteen sixty eight. The United States
Speaker 1: eventually took up this antitrust lawsuit against the company, and
Speaker 1: this particular part of the lawsuits said that IBM knew
Speaker 1: its systems were years from market, but that they decided
Speaker 1: to advertise these upcoming machines as being comparable to c
Speaker 1: d c s existing products on the market at that
Speaker 1: moment in an effort to undercut their competitor. So they
Speaker 1: said this is anti competitive. It is against the principles
Speaker 1: of a free market. The anti trust lawsuit, which grew
Speaker 1: substantially with a lot of other parties becoming involved, would
Speaker 1: stretch on until nine two until the Justice Department finally
Speaker 1: dismissed the case. So that was a pretty expensive strategy
Speaker 1: marketing strategy. Employing lawyers in an active lawsuit that lasts
Speaker 1: longer than a decade gets pretty pricey. And sometimes a
Speaker 1: company will announce a product that hasn't even gone into
Speaker 1: production just as a way to gauge demand. Now, you
Speaker 1: could argue that a lot of the projects on platforms
Speaker 1: like Kickstarter and indie go go fall into this category.
Speaker 1: The people running those campaigns are usually selling the idea
Speaker 1: of a thing. Very often they don't have a working prototype.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they do, which is fantastic, but often they just
Speaker 1: say I have this great idea, but in order for
Speaker 1: me to make this thing, I'm gonna need money. So
Speaker 1: they're looking to get investment into an idea to presumably
Speaker 1: bring that idea to fruition. Or you could point at
Speaker 1: about half the stuff that think Geek has thrown up
Speaker 1: on its April Fools page every year. If you've ever
Speaker 1: visited the Think Geek site on April fools Day, and
Speaker 1: you're likely to see at least one or two products that,
Speaker 1: while they are fake, seem like they'd be pretty awesome
Speaker 1: to have in real life. And Think Geek has actually
Speaker 1: made some of those fake product real products as a result,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people have said Think Geek is
Speaker 1: actually using the jokes page to kind of measure the
Speaker 1: response of Think Geek customers, and if the response is
Speaker 1: really positive, they'll go ahead and bring it to market.
Speaker 1: Otherwise they'll just say, well, we're not gonna We're not
Speaker 1: gonna make back the expense of making this thing, so
Speaker 1: we won't bother with that. Uh So you could argue
Speaker 1: that those items were in reality vaporware in an effort
Speaker 1: to judge how much people might actually want one of
Speaker 1: those things, but still clear that many of the items
Speaker 1: and thinkings April Fool's pages are just jokes. They were
Speaker 1: never intended to become actual products, so it's not like
Speaker 1: every single one of them falls in that category. I
Speaker 1: plan on doing follow up episodes in this vein to
Speaker 1: talk more about some of the games that never emerged,
Speaker 1: So I might might do another episode about the greatest
Speaker 1: video games that never existed, I've done one of those before,
Speaker 1: but it was years and years ago, so maybe I
Speaker 1: can do an update sometime in the future. Not net
Speaker 1: the next one. I think I may dedicate an episode
Speaker 1: specifically to crowdfunded projects that either were incredible successes, terrible failures,
Speaker 1: or they successfully funded but the item never emerged. Whatever
Speaker 1: the goal of the project was, never came to fruition.
Speaker 1: I think that it's valuable to look into that as well.
Speaker 1: So that's probably gonna be my next episode. But if
Speaker 1: you guys have suggestions for future episodes, whether it's a technology,
Speaker 1: a company, a person in tech, whatever it may be,
Speaker 1: send me an email. The address for the show is
Speaker 1: tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop
Speaker 1: me a line on Facebook or Twitter to handle it.
Speaker 1: Both of those is tech Stuff H s W. Don't
Speaker 1: forget to follow us on Instagram and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon for more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com?
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