Vaporware
Noun · Slang & Abbreviations · Origin: 1983
Definitions
Software or hardware that has been announced or marketed but has not been released and may never be. The gap between the press release and reality. Some famous vaporware eventually shipped (Duke Nukem Forever); most didn't.
In plain English: Products that are announced and hyped but never actually released — promises of technology that exists only in presentations and press releases.
Origin Story
The product that's always six months away, forever
**Vaporware** — a product announced with fanfare but never actually delivered — was popularized by a 1983 **InfoWorld** column by Esther Dyson's colleague Ann Winblad (attribution varies). The term was frequently aimed at Microsoft in the 1980s and 1990s, who were accused of pre-announcing products to discourage customers from buying competitors' existing, shipping products.
The practice, sometimes called **FUD** (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt), was a genuine competitive strategy. By announcing a future product with impressive specs, a company could freeze the market: why buy what's available today if something better is coming "soon"? Of course, "soon" sometimes meant never.
Wired magazine ran an annual "Vaporware Awards" from 1997 to 2009, crowdsourced from reader nominations. Perennial winners included Duke Nukem Forever (announced 1997, shipped 2011 — a 14-year development cycle), Phantom console, and various operating system features. The award was discontinued, but the concept lives on every time a startup demo shows features that exist only in a pitch deck.
Coined by: InfoWorld / early 1980s tech press
Context: InfoWorld, 1983
Fun fact: Duke Nukem Forever holds an unofficial record for longest development time for a shipped game: 14 years and 44 days from announcement to release. When it finally launched in 2011, it received mediocre reviews, proving that vaporware that eventually materializes isn't always worth the wait.