With the Consumer Electronics Show in full swing, you’re likely to see a lot of talk about amazing new gadgets companies are developing to improve your life. However, many of these products and concepts don’t even make it into homes or stores. We call it “vaporware”.
What is vaporware?
Vaporware is an informal term used by technology industry professionals, journalists, and consumers to describe products that have been announced but never materialized, or that take a very long time to reach the market. . This can occur for various reasons. Sometimes companies misjudge their ability to actually develop a concept into a finished product. And on occasion, the company lies about its intentions to advertise.
In honor of CES 2023, we’ve put together a list of our favorite vaporwares, regardless of why they failed to launch.
apple walt
A computer with a phone might seem like a banal concept today. But back in 1993, it was a shocking concept. Apple partnered with the phone company BellSouth to make it happen. The resulting prototype included a touchscreen, caller ID, fax machine, address book, customizable ringtones, and access to online banking.
All of these features were state of the art in the early 90’s. If Apple had made it happen, it would probably have been a big hit. And today’s technology world would look very different.
Unfortunately, it never made it out of the prototype stage. But luckily, it also meant it was a terrible name that wouldn’t appear in the technical lexicon for long: WALT stands for “Wizzy Active Lifestyle Telephone.” We never know what a “wizy and active lifestyle” entails. But it’s a safe assumption that Steve Jobs never endorsed the name. We like iPhones much better.
google glass
Google Glass qualifies as vaporware because it hasn’t yet reached the masses as we thought it would when it was first announced in 2012. It has a built-in camera and a lot of cool stuff displayed in the eyepiece glass.
I actually really wanted one once. The glass looked like a gadget that Tony Stark would wear, and in 2013 he even tried to get a prototype by joining Google’s #IfIHadGlass promotion on his Twitter ( Thankfully, that poor tweet has long since been deleted.) It’s made for everyday use, not a massive augmented reality headset that you wear like a helmet.
Google ended up sending 8,000 Glass prototypes to “Glass Explorers” for testing. By 2014, however, it became clear that heads-up displays were having problems. In February 2015, new york times Former Apple executive Tony Fadell has reportedly been redesigning the product and not releasing it until it was fully completed.
However, Google eventually released Google Glass Enterprise Edition, but as the name suggests, it is only available to certain companies for specific purposes. The general public may never see these glasses with built-in cameras and eye-level displays.
Palm Foreo
If you’re having trouble remembering what a “subnotebook” is, you’re not alone. This class of devices was intended to mean “very small laptops” in the early 2000s, but has since fallen out of widespread use as something of a “netbook”.
A long-forgotten productivity device, the Palm Foleo can be seen as the death knell of the sub-notebook product category. Palm announced his Foleo in 2007, which was to be a companion device to the company’s Treo smartphone line. It ran the Linux operating system and had Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity. The subnotebook also had an integrated email client and used the Opera web browser and Documents to Go office suite. Had it been on the market, the Foleo could have been a very useful device for on-the-go users in its time.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t. At the time, Palm was under fire in all areas of the consumer electronics market, and Foleo was canceled just three months after its announcement. The official reason was to allow Palm to refocus on smartphone devices. The company did not recover and three years later he was acquired by HP.
Atari 2700
Many people remember the Atari 2600 as their first home console. In his 1977-1992 lifespan, he sold over 30 million units. Given its popularity, it’s no surprise that Atari would create a successor, the Atari 2700.
Intended for a 1981 release, the 2700 was meant to be fully backwards compatible with the games and accessories of the 2600 (almost all game companies promise, but never keep). The console design is very different from the 2600, featuring a more sleek, wedge-shaped form factor rather than the 2600’s classic boxy wood-panel look.
And the 2700 had the key innovation of having a wireless controller. The controller works via radio signals and resembles a walkie-talkie with an adjustable antenna sticking out and a dial in the middle instead of a speaker. However, Atari failed to develop the technology and canceled the system. Atari implemented a wireless controller as an accessory for his 2600 plug-in in 1983.
Duke Nukem Forever
Duke Nukem Forever It distinguishes itself in video games by spending an inordinate amount of time in “development hell”. 3D Realms first announced the game in 1997 as a sequel to the smash hit. Duke Nukem 3Dand the game was expected to be released before the year 2000. However, the late 90s was a period of transition for first-person shooter engines.And 3D Realms had yet to receive a development license. eternally It was developed on the Quake II engine, so I started development on the older Quake engine.
That turned out to be a mistake, as Epic Games soon announced Unreal Engine. The Unreal Engine was considered by some programmers to be superior to his Quake II engine. So, in June 1998, 3D Realms announced they had to start over. eternally Using Unreal Engine, the company claimed at the time that there was no significant delay, just a month to six weeks.
months become years, Duke Nukem Forever Deadlines began to be missed, with multiple release dates announced and later rescheduled. eternally It will be released “once it’s done”. It would take another decade and lawsuits to finally get the game onto the consoles of waiting players. And by all accounts, the game wasn’t worth the wait. The consensus among video game enthusiasts is that this is one of the worst games of all time.
Duke Nukem Forever It holds the Guinness World Record for the longest development period for a video game.
New N1
One of the latest examples of vaporware is the Noveto N1. This revolutionary speaker was dubbed “invisible headphones” by his 2022 CES attendees. In fact, this speaker was one of the show’s Editors’ Choice Award winners that year. The N1 used beamforming technology to create pockets of sound around the listener’s ears and send sound into those pockets without the need for a physical headset. It would have been a game changer in the audio world.
Our Editor-in-Chief got hands-on experience with the N1 and reported that it “does everything the company promises.” Unfortunately, CES 2022 was the last time anyone saw his N1. A few months after the show, the company stopped updating its website and stopped responding to emails from Kickstarter backers.
In March 2022, the company posted an apology to its Kickstarter backers on its website, stating, “We are not satisfied with the current performance of the Noveto N1 product and will work tirelessly to resolve these issues in order to deliver on our promises.” But in August, the company admitted that “Noveto is in financial trouble and has entered bankruptcy proceedings.” A sad example of what should have been a great product lost due to financial difficulties. As of this writing, Noveto’s ultimate fate is unknown. That’s because his website is still up and touting the high ratings he got at CES 2022.
