You watch a flawless keynote demo, decide to wait for the product instead of buying a competitor, and then years pass before you learn the software never existed. This deep dive traces the history of vaporware, from a 1982 conversation in which Microsoft engineers admitted to Ann Winblad that Xenix development had halted, to Esther Dyson formalizing the term in her November 1983 newsletter as good ideas incompletely implemented, to Bill Gates receiving a golden vaporware award for Windows 1.0 shipping 18 months late.

We dissect the spectrum of intent, from Ovation Technologies faking an entire office suite demo with a hard-coded slideshow in 1983, to genuine development chaos explained by Brooks' Law, Ashton-Tate's forced SQL rewrite of dBase IV, and Duke Nukem Forever's endless engine changes. Then we look at strategic preannouncing as a w ...