What is a Vaporware?

Question

I’ve been hearing the term Vaporware with some frequency. People talking that it is something does not sustain, straw fire, etc.

But what qualifies a Vaporware, there are clear factors to classify an application, system or pwa as vaporware?

I don’t know if I understood the concept of the word correctly, let alone whether there are solid criteria for saying that something is or is not a vaporware...

In the world of development when and how something becomes a Vaporware?

Answer 1

There is no specific rule to qualify a product as Vaporware, and I will explain why.

Let’s start with your definition: vaporware is that never released release. Normally you never associate an application with a Vaporware because the same nor exists, or if it exists, it was locked in an eternal beta and never left the approval phase (this was approved).

It is usually qualified as Vaporware when it is announced but it has not even entered into development. It is that promise of something that has never come to light. Often they make a hype huge to promote the company or generate campaign, and advertise the product for a very long time. But when that time comes, they haven’t even created a repository for the project.

I don’t know if I understood the concept of the word correctly, much less if there are solid criteria to say that something is or is not a vaporware...

This term is more theoretical than proof. There are no rules for something to be vaporware or not. We define something as "vaporwareirized" when applying to the rules described above. You must have seen some situation of a cheap Vaporware and you didn’t even realize. The Xbox 720 is an example.

Vaporware does not apply only to software. It can be a computer, software, or anything that wants to show that the company is innovative and is always researching new things.

We should not confuse "Codename", or "Development Project" with Vaporware. As was the case with Windows Longhorn, which was the codename for the Windows Vista beta. At first, Windows Longhorn would be its own operating system and already announced by Microsoft, but in the end it was released as Windows Vista.

Discontinued projects may even be considered Vaporware. Regardless of whether the company has announced that the project will never be launched, it has announced, but has never launched.

Vaporware does not always come from the company itself. Third parties may advertise for it something that will never exist.

I believe that the term "Vaporware" has originated from the same term that emerged the "Vaporwave", a musical genre that uses psychedelic and retro elements to conduct a nostalgic and dead art.

In the world of development when and how something becomes a Vaporware?

Some factors that may classify a product as Vaporware is:

• It was announced but never released;
• Was announced but discontinued;
• It was announced but its release was quite different (and inferior) to what was announced, creating a separate product from what was announced (and not the actual proposed release).

As described in the second paragraph, and in short, it is what is done campaigns, announcements and the entire launch party of something that will never be released. As far as I know, um Vaporware is not released, and when the announced product is actually released, it ceases to be a Vaporware, and becomes only a delayed, or well delayed, release.