The tech industry has had more than its fair share of products that infamously failed to take off. Some fit the classic definition of vaporware, and were all hype and no substance. A few were simply too far ahead of their time. And others were merely victims of bad judgment about what users wanted. Here are the 15 best examples of products that never saw the light of day (at least in their originally intended form), plus some honorable mentions that we just couldn't ignore.
15的Ovation
The early 1980s was an interesting time in office-software development for IBM's still-newIBM PC和MS-DOS操作系统。WordStar的，WordPerfect以及Microsoft Word和Lotus 1-2-3的只是一些必须具备在三年后发布平台首次亮相的文字处理和电子表格的标题。
1983年的Ovation技术，启动成立的前一年，宣布了一个集成包，承诺包括文字处理，电子表格，数据库管理和通信软件。到1984年，不过，该公司宣告破产，对美国已经烧穿投资者的钱$ 700万不释放的单品。
The problem was one that might be familiar to survivors of the dot-com bust: Ovation spent far more time, money, and energy promoting and selling its product than actually creating it. The software's only lasting effect on the market is that it's supposedly the reason "雾件" was coined.
14。Duke Nukem Forever
很难拿出新的东西要说永远的毁灭公爵，这主要是因为人们有这么多的时间来取笑它。上周标永远的毁灭公爵的释放，这应该是在1998年年中的3D国度的第一个正式宣布第十周年。一些公司将继续反复做在随后的几年中，虽然偶尔会改写现有的大部分游戏设计从无到有 - 乐观公布开发商的决定开关的游戏引擎面前。
在过去的十年中，开发者已经发布了几个拖车（including one last December），屏幕截图和演示，展示游戏中的进度。虽然3D国度明智停止提供硬的发布日期（它会被释放“当它完成"), president Scott Miller did确认2008年发布日期在发送到二月达拉斯商业期刊回一封电子邮件。然而，随着岁月已经过去了，每一个新的珍闻，促使越来越卑鄙的评论，而不是预期的数额。最好的一群必须是在永远的毁灭公爵名单，该文件的游戏和技术行业如何 - 以及整个世界的 - 已自1997年首先宣布改变。
如果永远的毁灭公爵没有真正看到了曙光 - 这可能会让其创不亚于其他任何人 - 它在高科技snarkiness世界替罪羊的角色可能会被填补深秋天，一个大型多人在线角色扮演游戏（MMORPG）的开发为近七年来......至今。
13. Amiga的沃克PC
技术没有名单，几乎使它将是不完整的从东西Commodore Amiga的折磨历史 - 在其中显着的硬件是由可疑的营销决策，不好的情况下，或两者的某种混合经常绊倒。
After Commodore went bankrupt in 1994, the Amiga brand and technology were purchased by the German company Escom Technologies and marketed as Amiga Technologies. In early 1996, the company announced a plan to sell an upgraded version of the Amiga 1200 computer with a strikingly designed dark purple case that stood on four tiny feet--hence the Walker name.
Was it genius or madness? Even the company didn't seem sure, as it also intended to offer the motherboard separately, so that people could buy it and put it in a standard PC case. The reaction of the Amiga faithful was mixed, with some saying the case looked like a beetle, or Doctor Who'sK-9。
我们永远不会知道w if the Walker would have swayed the Amiga community or not;only a few prototypes were built之前的Escom在1997年破产。
12。Sega VR
之前互联网泡沫时期的疯狂正在进行真的得到了，严重的嗡嗡声是所有关于虚拟现实。除了电影割草机人与VR咖啡馆的高科技型城市如雨后春笋，一个潜在的战斗中塑造了视频游戏行业的两大巨头，都旨在使虚拟现实游戏的奇迹家庭之间。
世嘉决定设立世嘉VR作为虚拟现实附加到其广受欢迎的创世纪系统。虽然双LCD耳机作中玩家的样子之间太空堡垒卡拉狄加的交叉Cylons骑士骑士的KITT, it was one of the sleeker-looking VR headsets of the day. And, by all accounts, that was the best thing about it. Despite ambitious specs, including 320-by-200-pixel resolution, head tracking, and a color display, the few people who tried the system outside of Sega--mostly at trade shows--were far from impressed. While the Sega VR did meet its specs on paper, in practice the images were a blurry mess. The company scrapped the project in 1994. (But not before making an arrangement to offer the Sega VR as a prize in anAlpha-Bits cereal contest。What the winner actually got is a mystery.)
Sega probably breathed a sigh of relief when a year later Nintendo's Virtual Boy also flopped spectacularly (检查出原来的虚拟男孩电视广告).
11的Glaze3D显卡
显卡厂商一直发挥着规范越级的游戏，每个公司的挤压更高的分辨率和更高的帧速率出来的图形芯片新技术的出现和部件变得更小，更便宜。
1999年，这家芬兰公司Bitboys Oy宣布使用其的Glaze3D架构，甚至在功能较弱的一对有前途的渲染是由当时的标准壮观的速度前两张牌。他们不是在玩越级这么多，因为长期做跳跃。背后的Glaze3D家庭的惊人表现号码不那么秘密的秘密是，该芯片主要依赖于嵌入式DRAM，绕过从使用外部存储器来了瓶颈。
虽然这些数字就足以激怒任何玩家的热情 - 包括苹果玩家，作为家庭的Glaze3D承诺是Mac兼容 - 以新闻的总体反应可以被描述为谨慎乐观;很多人采取了“我相信，当我看到它”的态度。尽管如此，大多数人给了Bitboys的疑点利益。毕竟，该公司和它背后的人已经有了他们的图形架构工作的声誉，而且他们已经与英飞凌科技公司合作生产芯片。将Bitboys'非常规的方法真的有效么？
我们永远不会知道w. For two years, the company missed release dates. Of course, during those two years the rest of the industry didn't sit still. As new technologies came along (for one thing, DirectX went from version 7 to version 9), Bitboys promised that Glaze3D would support them; the company also increased its performance claims, adding a third, even more powerful chip to the family. Ultimately (mercifully?) everything came to a halt when Infineon stopped producing embedded DRAM in 2001; lacking a manufacturer, Bitboys threw in the towel. Bitboys went on to produce processor designs for the mobile graphics market, and ATI acquired the company in 2006.
10.孝2700
Someone at Atari had a great idea: Take the insanely popularAtari 2600 gaming system，把它放在一个新内阁，添加新的漂亮的控制器，并把它作为雅达利2700。
最终的结果是几乎印钞许可证。橱柜设计师跳过了20世纪70年代陈旧的看人造木板的去与哑光和光泽的黑色饰面一则未来主义时尚，楔形设计，以突破一个内置在顶部的控制器储存容器。
The controllers themselves were innovative for the time, featuring built-in select and reset buttons (providing even less motivation to get off the couch), a touch-sensitive fire button, and a joystick that doubled as a rotating, 270-degree paddle. The killer feature: The controllers were wireless.
广告和包装创建，但雅达利2700从未达到商店的货架上。在质量保证测试的人注意到了控制器1000英尺的广播范围。由于控制器并没有超越“左控制器”和“右控制器，”唯一标识符玩游戏将在该范围内影响任何雅达利2700单位。最糟糕的是，电子设备是基于车库开门器，所以与其他的遥控设备的干扰是一个可能性。最终Atari公司决定重新设计系统和控制器过于昂贵，而且报废2700项目。
The 2700 didn't exactly vanish without a trace, however. The cabinet design was slightly retooled for theAtari 5200，和5200个控制器还使用了2700控制器的设计的元件。无线功能在雅达利2600插件，它依赖于经典的2600操纵杆基本上无法使用脂肪见底版本清盘。
9.安全的数字音乐计划
在90年代末，MP3格式和Napster - 原来，坏男孩的Napster - 有音乐行业运行害怕。虽然美国唱片产业协会中间(RIAA)的诉讼against Diamond Multimedia在该公司的里约热内卢MP3播放器，计算机组成的财团，消费电子和娱乐公司联合起来，形成安全数字音乐计划（SDMI）。
我们的目标是创建一个将纳入水印文件，数字版权管理（DRM），以及用于音频播放器标准的手段，新的数字音乐格式，这样他们就不会玩符合SDMI-文件，业主没”吨有听的权利。这种安排，在理论上，提供启动数字地发行音乐所需的音乐公司的安全网。
In late 2000,该集团提供的$ 10,000奖金任何个人或团体可能，除其他事项外，成功删除水印上，他们提供了四个音乐文件，三个星期的时间限制内。
一个研究小组在普林斯顿为首的计算机科学教授埃德费尔顿就是这样做的。该SDMI威胁要起诉费尔顿，引用数字千年版权法案（DMCA），当组得知，他计划在第4届国际信息隐藏研讨会次年讨论他的研究。电子前沿基金会的支持费尔顿通过起诉美国唱片行业协会，SDMI，Verance（其水印技术被破解的公司之一），和美国司法部对第一修正案的理由。
费尔顿几个月后提出的第10届USENIX安全专题讨论会上的文件 - 但那时的SDMI的前景黯淡了, and it soon dissolved altogether.
8.行动游戏管理员
活动企业是一个游戏公司，值量超过质量，释放的墨盒Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)和世嘉挤满了52场比赛，每质量可疑的。该行动游戏管理员，该活动于1994年宣布，是从哲学没有偏差。便携式游戏系统不仅发挥了自己的墨盒也将处理NES，超级NES和世嘉游戏（使用适配器的帮助下），以及CD-ROM游戏，通过另一个适配器。有助于厨房水槽的方法进行了电视调谐器加载项以及汽车和AC适配器。（即使所有这些功能，主动声称，游戏管理员将具有“轻量便携性。”）
尽管非常热衷新闻资料袋在分布式1994's Consumer Electronics Show, the Action GameMaster failed to materialize. Small wonder, considering it would never have been able to license the required hardware from Nintendo or Sega. And even its own concept design revealed that Active's concept of "portable" was clearly different from the rest of the gaming world's: If the company's claim of a 3.2-inch LCD could be taken at its word, the design suggested that the Action GameMaster would be at least 10 inches wide and 8 inches long. The company, which was likely banking on a flood of orders that never came, disappeared soon after.
7.的Infinium幻影
有时，产品名称是完美的。几乎从的Infinium Labs的2003年1月的那一刻press release公布了幻影，这将控制台“跑赢大的Xbox，索尼的PlayStation 2和GameCube的，”它遇到的怀疑。
The release was chock-full of tech marketing jargon yet remained entirely free of details about the Phantom itself--while promising a March unveiling and a November launch.
详细信息并不久后出现：幽灵的被提名是，在本质上，运行Windows XP的嵌入式版本，这样可以让玩家玩PC游戏PC - 但主钩是幻影的点播系统，在这里用户可以下载他们想要的任何游戏通过因特网连接。在一个阶段，the company even planned to give the console away freeto anyone who subscribed to a two-year service.
Bloggers and forum posters had a field day with the Phantom, deriding the lack of a physical product or any reliable information on Infinium.
想象一下，出乎所有人的意料，当幻影单位竟是shown at 2004's E3 trade show, complete with the wireless LapBoard (a keyboard and mouse that fit on a tilting tray), and a new launch date--which, of course, came and went with no Phantom.
甲改组幻影是在显示在2005年消费电子展, but a string of missed and reset release dates eroded any goodwill that its public appearances may have generated. Later in the year, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) gave notice that it would bring charges against former Infinium CEO Timothy Roberts. The SEC filing several months later revealed that Infinium had lost over $62.7 million in three years, with only $3.5 million going to actual development. A few months after that, Infinium officially ended the Phantom project, changed its name to Phantom Entertainment, and focused its efforts on the LapBoard--which, despite an order from Alienware, has yet to materialize.
6. Apple Interactive Television Box
这些天来，我们看游戏机上的电影，浏览网站上的我们的手机，听音乐，好了，任何事情。但时间最长的所谓趋同始终只是遥不可及的，收敛的热潮圣杯是互动电视，其中沙发土豆可以，比方说，访问公司的网站时，它在一个商业广告展示，或投票上电视的结果显示在观看它。（不，美国偶像还没有被启动。）
1993年，苹果公司与英国电信（BT现在）和比利时电信合作to produce a set-top box与他们的互动电视服务一起去。在苹果机顶盒是一个修改25兆赫的Macintosh LC-475，并且，相当谦虚，允许用户下载和观看的内容（和快进或快退，类似今天的TiVo的风格录像机）。未来的计划包括互动游戏节目和儿童教育的内容，以及附加的硬件，如鼠标，键盘，和CD-ROM驱动器。
In 1994, selected households in Britain and Belgium placed the black set-top box sporting an Apple logo on top of their TVs, and trials began a year later in the United States. Apple quickly learned that consumers simply weren't interested in interactive television.
试验结束后，和互动电视盒被搁置。快进到2008年（1996年跳过的互联网启用，但未能苹果皮蓬@World游戏机），而该公司的流线型苹果电视媒体流光您可以直接从电视租高清和标清的iTunes Store的视频。
5. Foleo的棕榈
Palm计算的创始人，杰夫霍金斯，是个幸运的人。很少人做了一次 - 定义一个产品类别 - 他已经与原来做过两次，第一次PalmPilot PDA后来与Handspring's Treo smart phone。（这两类之前霍金斯的发明存在，但Palm的产品，使其成为nontechnophiles以锁定到访问就够了。）
2007年5月30日，霍金斯去了帽子戏法时，他announced the Palm Foleo，基于Linux的$ 499小笔记本设计要同步的智能手机使商务旅客能，除其他事项外，对文档和电子邮件的工作不会夹紧大拇指。
即使是这样显着的特点是它的2.5磅的重量和即时启动功能未能鼓起超过集体“为什么？”从数字文人。一个PDA和功率和尺寸笔记本之间卡住的地方，这似乎是唯一的额外设备随身携带，过多的功能重叠。
我们自己的首席哈里·麦克拉肯编辑器是声乐少数的一部分谁thought that the Foleo was being hastily prejudged, and hands-on reviews alternated between positive and negative. Barely three months after Hawkins presented the Foleo,棕榈勒令其，理由是需要“get our core platform and smartphones done first“。McCracken agreed, writing that the "Foleo was likely to be a distraction at a time when Palm couldn't afford to be distracted--and probably aLifeDrive样翻牌，太“。
有些人可能会争辩说，霍金斯目前还不能平反，因为成本低，重量轻的笔记本电脑，如Asus Eee PCseem to be catching on despite being underpowered--good enough for some tasks, but not as feature-packed as a full-featured notebook.
4. Taligent公司和微软开罗
Steve Jobs, ousted from Apple's board of directors, left the company in 1986 and foundedNeXT电脑。In 1989, NeXT released its first computer to great acclaim. Though the NeXT computer was only a modest commercial success, its launch and the technology it demonstrated (including the advanced NeXTSTEP operating system) galvanized three companies in particular: Apple, IBM, and Microsoft.
What NeXT had done, seemingly out of nowhere, was create an object-oriented operating system. (Among other things, such a design makes reusing programming code easier.) Apple had already started work in 1987 on an object-oriented operating system code-named Pink, but was struggling against internal politics to deliver anything even close to a finished product.
In 1992, the Pink project moved to Taligent, a joint venture between Apple and IBM. IBM, having recently parted ways with Microsoft over OS/2, had already started work on amicrokernel所谓WorkplaceOS。Taligent公司合并的粉红色和WorkplaceOS工作，意图释放一个多操作系统命名塔洛斯。
虽然小组并最终将释放命名为CommonPoint OS / 2和Unix的各种口味的面向对象的编程环境，实际的Taligent公司操作系统从未浮出水面。该公司被吸收到IBM于1998年。
1991年，微软推出了开罗项目 - 由几个账户，到明年的直接回应。开罗承诺，自动索引的计算机或网络的文件结构和内容的分发，面向对象的文件系统（目标文件存储，或OFS）。
Several versions of Windows NT came and went as Cairo continued development, shifting targets all the while. Eventually the company referred to Cairo as the successor to Windows NT Server, and then as a collection of technologies. Cairo development ended in 1996.
顺便说一句，两个这样的面向对象的企业的最终生成技术，很多人今天使用。位和开罗的作品（除了从Mac OS和NeXTSTEP的惯例）有助于激励在Windows 95界面，并形成了积木的Exchange，服务器，Active Directory和Windows桌面搜索。（该OFS视野演变为Windows文件系统，又名WinFS文件系统，这是承诺Longhorn的，但是从功能列表中删除by the time it became Vista.) Apple bought NeXT in 1997 and got Steve Jobs with the deal;NeXTSTEP became the foundation of Mac OS X。
Thanks again toRoughlyDrafted.com为图像。
3.硅薄膜EFS-1
At the end of the Digital Imaging Marketing Association (DIMA) show in February 1998, a company called Imagek announced its Electronic Film System unit, the EFS-1, to a small group of journalists. The EFS-1 aimed to fulfill the dreams of many professional photographers: In principle, the EFS-1 would act as a replacement for a 35mm film cartridge in any camera, allowing anyone to use their existing, familiar photo equipment to take digital pictures.
尽管相当大的工程挑战that the company faced, Imagek expected to have a working demo unit a few months later, and a sub-$1000 unit on store shelves a few months after that.
Observers greeted the announcement with some skepticism, and to no one's surprise Imagek missed its target dates. However, it did release specs, some of which were admittedly modest: The (e)Film cartridge had a 1.3-megapixel CMOS sensor, able to fit 24 1280-by-1024-resolution uncompressed images in its on-board memory before the user needed to offload them to a computer or a CompactFlash card via the included (e)Port carrier. (The entire hardware and software package was now collectively referred to as the EFS-1.)
由于传感器的尺寸，所捕获的图像将只有约35相机的全帧的百分比。而忘记普遍性暂且：本EFS-1仅七佳能和尼康相机的工作。
Aside from a name change (to Silicon Film), some Web site updates, and a few sample images, nothing new came out of the company until the 2001 PMA show, when Silicon Film publicly demonstrated the EFS-1, exactly three years after the initial announcement.
Skeptics were less inclined to mutter "vaporware," but the projected June release date passed with no product to be seen. That September, Silicon Film suspended operations when Irvine Sensors, a 51 percent shareholder of Silicon Film, withheld further funding over problems with European environmental standards. Irvine Sensors' press release also obliquely noted "present market circumstances," which may have been a polite way of referring to the falling prices and increasing quality of digital cameras, including SLRs.
硅薄膜奄奄一息直接寻址最后一点：The EPS10-SF宣布次年，生产了10万像素的图像，同时支持多个照相机，并提供一个2.5 fps的突发速率和液晶预览屏幕。然后，该公司就不见了。
2.项目世外桃源
In 1960,Ted Nelson第一次来到了术语“超文本”，他想象成不同的东西从它已经到了的意思。
超文本实现现在是单向的;哟u can link to a document without the document owner ever knowing. If the other party moves or renames the document, the link breaks. Nelson's hypertext--which he now calls "deep electronic literature," to avoid confusion--was meant to be bidirectional, so that two linked documents would stay linked, regardless of how they were moved or copied. More to the point, such a setup would allow for side-by-side comparison, version management, and an automatic copyright management system in which an author could set a royalty rate for all or parts of a document; linking would initiate the necessary transactions. In 1967, Nelson came up with a name for his project: Xanadu.
对世外桃源的第一个工作的代码是在1972年生产的，从那以后，该项目已在很大程度上被打上了险情和调情破产。它仍然是显着的许多原因，但是。
First, of course, is Nelson's tenacity: He and his shifting teams haven't stopped working on Xanadu for nearly fifty years, making it one of the few existing computing projects to span longer than the entire history of personal computers and computer networking.
二是，即使与超文本的出现和普及，因为我们知道，特别是在网络上，尼尔森的雄心勃勃的目标并没有动摇。（他说，网络作为它的“trivializes我们原来的超文本模式”。）三是，即使到了现在，他对我们的工作方式和今天发挥不可否认的影响，他仍然是，正如他所说，“不是tekkie“。
It's also worth noting that Project Xanadu isn't completely vaporware. Nelson released the Xanadu源代码in 1999, andXanaduSpace 1.0去年发布的。
1。Apple W.A.L.T. and VideoPad
之前有一个iPhone - 事实上，之前有一个“i”什么 - 苹果试图进行两个合资企业为“便携式”的通讯。在与南方贝尔结合1991年和1993年之间开发的，苹果的W.A.L.T.（Wizzy积极生活方式电话，轻松最坏的名字命名的公司曾经来最多）是加倍作为一个PDA平板电脑;它的杀手级应用是从屏幕上发送和接收传真的能力。该W.A.L.T.从未发布给公众。
顽强如初，苹果提供了一个新的便携式可视电话/ PDA概念的可能性在1995年的MacWorld展览会。牛顿样VideoPad三合一一个原型相结合的手机，PDA，以及可视电话，和（解决）留着集成CD-ROM驱动器。虽然拿着手机与CD-ROM单元的两侧伸出的部分想法是有点问题的，它比W.A.L.T.更加雄心勃勃它太失败了但是通过原型阶段，而苹果将从电话敬而远之，直到2007年。当然，我们都知道what happened then。
荣誉奖
Apple Copland
而"Pink" continued to slowly run aground as Apple/IBM's Taligent, Apple still found itself needing an operating system that took a great leap forward from System 7.5.代号为科普兰, this new operating system was to include preemptive multitasking (the type of multitasking we enjoy today, versus the less-efficient cooperative multitasking that earlier versions of the Mac system software offered); a full-color, shaded interface (up to that point, Macintosh GUIs still echoed their black and white origins); and multiuser capabilities. As time progressed Copland picked up more planned features, such as QuickDraw GX, themes, and user interface improvements, while the development team's productivity dwindled, bogged down by the increasing requirements and the need to get a growing number of developers up to speed.
In 1996, Apple--most notably, CEO Gil Amelio--was referring to Copland in public as the forthcoming System 8, and the usual prerelease hype--including trade-show demos, T-shirts, and other swag--got into gear. Apple eventually had to give up on the unworkable Copland, with its technologies only starting to appear in Mac OS 8.苹果Mac OS X中得到了它的巨大飞跃，几年后。
空中通勤车
什么是未来的持续性，定义愿景？掠夺的突变体，可以肯定的，而且飞行背包和飞行汽车。虽然飞行背包是（大多) on hold, researchers continue to tease us by working on various kinds of flying cars, envisioning a utopia of uncluttered roadways and conveniently forgetting the first 20 minutes of The Fifth Element.
One such attempt was the N2001C--the Sky Commuter car, a personal vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) plane designed by Flight Innovations. The details are sketchy, but the upshot is that after more than $6,000,000 in funding, the project was shelved. AneBay auctionclaiming to be of the last Sky Commuter prototype in existence caused some excitement (and raised some skeptical eyebrows) in January, but you can see one yourself by taking a trip to theHalsons直升机博物馆在田纳西州。
Oh, well. No Sky Commuter, but at least there's still the镰潜行者or theTransition（轻型飞机，折叠的翅膀驱动的道路上），以期待。
XtremMac MacThrust G4
1999年，瑞典公司Xtrem承诺XtremMac MacThrust G4--an overclocked Macintosh (a rarity in the Mac world) that could hit 1.2 GHz. There was just one problem: The fastest PowerPC G4 processor at the time was a mere 500 MHz. Xtrem claimed that it could achieve the incredible speed increase by exploiting existing features in Apple's hardware, and, of course, by cooling the daylights out of the CPU.
Xtrem错过了8月份的出货日期，然后将其一月的出货日期。由2月公司重新推出了其网站和被裁的规格：新XtremMac将命中率只有1.066 GHz的。与此同时，苹果机台G4已攀升至733 MHz，而谁没有怀疑的几个Mac用户集体耸耸肩。如果它没有得到释放，没有人注意到。