Mark Pickavance looks at a collection of products that seemingly can't make the transition from glitzy promo launch to purchasable product
Work for any time in the tech industry and you might easily come to the conclusion that it's an odd blend of reality and fantasy.
Companies often commit to product launches without an actual product to sell or even a completed design. This can often lead to a curious discord where the practicalities of delivering on a marketing presentation are entirely out of sync.
Depending how wrong things go, this can be just a timing issue, where a product takes longer to deliver than was anticipated. Or it can be that the concept is horribly flawed, impractical or the market just isn't ready for it.
What's generally fascinating about these rogue projects is that while businesses are happy to put millions into announcing a new product launch, they won't pay pennies to tell you the same product is delayed or even cancelled.
Luckily, Micro Mart is on hand to remind those companies of the promises they made and how they've so far failed to deliver on them.
Steam Machine And Controller
Valve first talked about making specific hardware for playing Steam a good number of years ago, and it's even created a prototype Linux distro, SteamOS, which you can download to create your own based on stock PC hardware.
But what many people are waiting for is the official Steam Machine that will effectively bring this platform into direct competition with the Xbox One and PS4.
The official Valve announcement was given in September 2013, and it sent out 300 prototype Steam Boxes to beta testers in December, with another 2,000 units being dispatched in January 2014.
With this momentum, the actual retail version was due in mid-2014, but that date came and went. In May, wishing to tone down expectations, a posting on the official blog revealed that 2014 wasn't going to be the year this product launched.
The culprit was apparently the official controller: "We're now using wireless prototype controllers to conduct live playtests, with everyone from industry professionals to die-hard gamers to casual gamers. It's generating a ton of useful feedback, and it means we'll be able to make the controller a lot better. Of course, it's also keeping us pretty busy making all those improvements. Realistically, we're now looking at a release window of 2015, not 2014."
Since then, there has been no further blog announcements on that subject, although Steam did a major update to SteamOS in January.
At this time, there is no more specific a date for release than 2015, and Steam didn't appear at the recent Consumer Electronics Show. According to a few sources, Valve will have a big presence at the GDC Expo (Game Developers Conference), held each March in San Francisco.
A failure there to provide concrete delivery dates for the official Steam system will probably convince many that this project has been vapourware from the outset, although SteamOS is undoubtedly real.
Here's hoping this one actually condenses soon, because Valve had a very solid reputation before the flexible timescales of this flagship project.
Geonaute 360 Camera
The 360 camera by Geonaute is a new twist on the selfie, where the cylindrical pod can take a 360° view of any scene using three wide-angle lenses and their associated 8MP cameras.
The prototype was first shown in 2012, and then a supposedly finished product was presented at CES 2014. It won an Innovations Design and Engineering award at that show. At that time, you could reserve one for $499 (£350) on its website, and you can still commit to get one at that price today, over a year later.
What's somewhat disconcerting is the Geonaute company blog, where we're told that the Geonaute 360 team is full speed ahead! Or rather, they were on 9th January 2014, and 'in the final stages just before full production.'
The longer this final stage goes on, the less likely it appears that the Geonaute 360 camera will actually make it out of the development shadow into the light.
Razer Project Christine
For those who like gaming devices, Razer has a good reputation for making some of the best. Its mice are especially desirable, but it makes other PC-related products, many of which it first announces at CES. One of these was something called Project Christine, the latest in a long list of attempts to modularise the PC that this writer has seen.
Originally promoted at CES 2014, many enthusiasts have waited for Razer to sell its revolutionary modular PC. With a working prototype to show journalists and an elegant design, it was surely only a matter of months before the world of desktop computing was turned on its head? At least that's what many thought at the time. Alas, a full year later, Project Christine seems no further along than when it was one of the talking points of CES.
Much of the problem, it appears, is convincing OEMs, those that make motherboards and video cards, to buy into the idea. Without their support, there is little point in being modular, if there aren't any alternative modules.
In March 2014, Razer CEO Min Liang Tan did a series of interviews to explain why the product hadn't launched and to reassure those interested that Project Christine wasn't imaginary.
Talking to Maximum PC, he said, "Like the many other projects within Razer, we take a long-term view of innovation, and Project Christine is definitely still in the works."
Since then, the subject hasn't been brought up, leading to the inevitable conclusion that the concept was just too revolutionary for those that sell computing parts. They're more interested in proven profitability of products rather than technical elegance, unfortunately.
Although not officially dead, the possibility that Project Christine will deliver on its promotional material now seems a long shot at best.
Doom 4
Who doesn't like Doom, really? It was the game that unlocked the FPS Pandora's box that spawned Call of Duty and a billion other titles.
However, as game franchises go, this one has hardly been oversubscribed with releases. The last Doom came out in 2005. It is in fact so old that the engine it uses was released under GNU General Public License four years ago.
With such a popular franchise, Doom 4 wasn't a surprising choice when Id Software first vaunted the idea in 2007. Apparently to be set on Earth invaded by demonic creatures, the new game wouldn't be a sequel or a reboot, but would connect to the other games somehow.
The vagueness of some of the statements associated with Doom 4 goes some way to explain why eight years later this title still doesn't have a playable demo, official screenshots or a release date.
To complicate matters, Id Software was bought by ZeniMax Media (aka Bethesda Softworks) in 2009, and reputedly at some point after that the entire project was shut down and then restarted in 2011. Two years after that, John Carmack, lead developer at Id Software left to work on Oculus Rift, leaving the Doom 4 team in what many have described as development hell.
The last official news about Doom 4 came in July 2014, when it was revealed that Tiago Sousa, lead R&D graphics engineer at Crytek (jFar Cry) was convinced to join Id Software and work on the rendering side of the game.
If this and other appointments don't turn this project around soon, Doom 4 might ultimately out-vapour Duke Nukem Forever, which went on a horrific 15 years before a mostly negative conclusion.
Google Glass
Some people will wonder why I've included Google Glass in this list, when we've all seen people on TV wearing them. And for those who had £1,000 spare, the development version has been available for some time.
But while the prototype hardware has been sold since 2013, this was never intended to be the commercial version of the product or anything near.
Termed the 'Explorer edition' by Google, these development versions went out to those who like to be at the bleeding edge of technology or wanted to develop software for it - and those who could afford to pay to play.
The trouble is that according to Google, the whole point of Glass was to be used by normal people, not the terminally technical or outrageously affluent.
But at this price and with a 45-minute battery life, those were exactly the people were using it.
The value of this exercise was therefore limited, and when what little value it had eventually sunk in when Google withdrew Glass entirely a few weeks ago.
The noises that Google is now making are entirely contradictory, and could easily be interpreted as suggesting that the experimental phase of Glass is over and it was a failure.
Along with the end of the Explorer edition production and sales, Google announced that the Glass team would be taken out of the research directed Google X division to become its own entity within Google.
That suggests the research phase is over and they're shifting to production. However, that's patently not true, and at this time Google doesn't have a date when Glass will return or in what context.
In the meantime, it's worth noting that three of the critical people behind Glass are no longer at Google. Babak Parviz, the technical architect left to become a VP at Amazon last summer, while Adrian Wong, chief of electrical engineering, and Ossama Alami, director of developer relations, also went elsewhere.
Not all the problems that Glass had have been technical or staff related. Along with those public locations that chose to ban Glass wearers, there hasn't been much software to install on the devices and very little new stuff being developed.
If Glass does come back, it's likely to be radically different, and until then, it certainly should be labelled 'vapourware', as it appears no nearer to commercial release. Google insists the project isn't dead, but that doesn't make it a commercial certainty either. The recent announcement of Microsoft's Holo Lens tech has also sparked significant interest in a different direction for augmented reality.
Microsoft Surface Mini
Before anyone writes to me and complains that a product can't be vapourware if it has never been announced, I accept that. But I also know that this product exists and that Microsoft actually did a production run. Exactly how many it made is pure conjecture, but I suspect it was in excess of 10,000 units.
Why so many? Well, the product was only pulled 48 hours before it was due to be launched, at the same New York launch where Microsoft did announce the Surface Pro 3. In fact, it invited journalists (no, not me, curiously) to the presentation, calling it a 'small Surface event', and then pulled the plug.
It appears now that both CEO Satya Nadella and executive vice president Stephen Elop went cold on the idea of ARM-based Surface devices and stopped the release before they spent any more money on it.
Since then, Microsoft also hasn't made any mention of a successor to the Surface 2, and has even gone as far as to say that the ARM tablets will be getting an upgrade when Windows 10 launches, though not specifically that OS.
The existence of this device had been known for some time, and there are people at who work at Microsoft's HQ in Redmond that have them. They've also fallen into the hands of a few chosen journalists, with the proviso that they never show or talk about them.
There is a possibility that the Mini still might return, perhaps based on Intel Atom technology, allowing it to run Windows 10 in the future. But for now it will mainly be occupying large amounts of warehouse space and making another big write-down in the succession of ones allocated to the Surface product line.
Microsoft Lumia Flagship Phone
If you have a Nokia Lumia and like it, then you might be wondering when the next new flagship design will be coming. As Microsoft owns that phone company now, it decides what new Lumia devices are coming, and it's released a slew of low-price devices in the past few months. So where are the high-end designs that will compete with the iPhone 6 and Samsung Galaxy 5? Well, it seems they're largely imaginary.
At this time, the two high-end Lumias are the 1020 and 1520 models, but they launched in July and October of 2013 respectively. Since then, the only full-price phone Microsoft has announced was the Nokia Lumia 930 (codenamed Martini), and that was in April 2014.
According to Microsoft insiders, there was to be a new flagship design codenamed 'McLaren' that featured a Kinect-based technology allowing for hand gestures. It was meant to be a successor to the 1020 (1030 anyone?), but for a long list of reasons, it is now cancelled when it was originally planned to be on the Christmas 2014 shelves.
Yet Microsoft seems still very committed to its mobile platform, even spending the time to tell everyone at its recent Windows 10 presentation that it's going to be synchronising the experience between PC and mobile.
That said, due to the control the provider networks have over phone updates, a significant portion of the older Lumia devices aren't using the latest 8.1 release, and the majority of phones on this platform are low-end Lumia devices, like the 520. Those wishing to see an aspirational Windows phone are left dangling, with no indication as to when that's likely.
Apple Watch
The iWatch, as people wrongly assumed it would be a called, had been the source of much rumouring around Cupertino long before Apple officially announced the product in September 2014.
By this time, Samsung was already on its second generation wearable technology and had yet to make anything that could be remotely classified as indispensable. The appearance of the Watch changed all that, with wearables in general given a credible slap on the back by association with Apple's interest.
There was some disquiet about the shape and size of the device, but fans of Apple seemed suitably impressed by the Watch's presentation. Since then, though, it has become apparent that much of what Apple presented in respect of the Apple Watch was somewhat concocted to make the appearance of a finished device that it didn't have at that point.
That's not uncommon, as many companies have done that in the past, but it might be coming back to bite Apple, according to a slew of reports that suggest the device has such a poor battery life that it could be seriously compromised.
A pro-Apple website called 9to5Mac published a story that suggested that the Watch wasn't living up to Apple's intended goal of 19 hours mixed use battery life and 2.5 hours active use. Exactly how far short it falls isn't revealed, though selling a watch that effectively needs to be mains powered might not impress many prospective punters.
What's interesting about these rumours is that it shouldn't really be a surprise if it's true, because all the wearable tech of this variety launched so far has battery life issues. That Apple can't send a legal team to beat up the laws of physics isn't news, although that hasn't stopped many potential customers entering their panic rooms at the news of problems.
So far, Apple hasn't adjusted its timescales for its 'early 2015' launch, although its website wording has been changed to 'Available 2015' in the past few weeks. That indicates either a production volume snag or the battery life problem is a greater issue.
When it does appear, then people will be able to assess if it's the problem that's vapour or the product. Whatever the truth is, those interested in the Apple Watch might have to adjust their expectations.
Google's Project Ara
When I started writing this feature, Google's Project Ara modular smartphone was definitely vapourware, and then remarkably at the 11th hour it just might not be.
This concept was born out of the acquisition of Motorola by Google and the buying of some related phone patents from a company called Modu in 2011.
The design and development of the devices started in earnest a year later, and images of the first concepts arrived a couple after that.
At the time, much scorn was poured on the modular aspect by other phone makers, which pointed out that to make the phone modular would make it bigger and heavier than a non-modular design.
Undeterred, the Ara team carried on, and a prototype was presented at Google I/O in 2014, though it didn't actually function as a phone at that time.
At that point, many people put it firmly in the vapourware basket, probably some way behind Google Glass in the likelihood that it would ever be released.
Yet just a few weeks ago, the development team presented 'Spiral 2' prototype hardware at a developer's conference and revealed that a 'Market Pilot' (allegedly in Puerto Rico) wasn't far away, and a retail release is planned for this year.
The next stage is for Spiral 3 hardware to arrive, which Google promised would introduce an inductive data connection between modules, a better battery, 4G/LTE and endo wireless communications interfacing some modules.
This all sounds positive, though the final product still seems some way off, with plenty of hurdles to get over before it is proven to be more than marketing magic.
Final Thoughts
At one time, I wrote a feature where all the products I mentioned never existed in anything other than mock-ups or CGI renders.
Therefore my collection here probably represents an improvement of sorts, because most of them actually exist in one form or another, even if they're having a major problem making it into the retail sector.
They also highlight the difficulties in getting a product to market in a timeframe where it is still relevant, due to the unrelenting speed of technical development.
Once a product misses a critical launch target, the sell-by date soon expires, as the parts used to make it are superseded and even the concept can be overtaken by events.
The success of any product is a combination of the creative design and manufacturing work done to produce it, marketing the concept and delivering the whole exercise at the right time. Failure to execute at the right time can condemn a good product at launch or, as with the Surface Mini, scupper it entirely.
Because of that, if a product fails to appear within six or nine months of its original projected release, then the chance that it will never materialise is much greater. Ones that are more than a year late either never appear or fail spectacularly.
For companies building these products, it is probably better not to announce them with a big fanfare before they've ironed out the wrinkles, so they don't later have to explain repeatedly why their exciting new products have failed to arrive on time.