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The Why of Vaporware

So John Gruber (Daring Fireball) takes on the TechCrunch spin of Zune by describing it as High on Vapor Fumes. The point being mostly that until the device is actually out, ranting about how successful it will be is premature at best.

John ends his post with a few questions:

If they’re “not done with it yet”, on September 14, when will they be? How late can they wait to go into production and still hit shelves for the holiday season?

And if this really is a killer feature in a product they honestly expect to ship within the next month or two, why are they talking about it now? Why tip their hand to Apple in advance? Why blow all this media attention before people can actually fork over their money for the thing? Why not go for maximum impact with a “Here it is and you can buy one today!” debut a few weeks from now?

And the most important question of all: Brown?

When will they be done? Who knows. How late can they get it in to production to make into the holidays? I don’t know that one either, but it may not be that important. The telling question to me is asking that if this is so great, why talk about it now, possibly giving your competition ideas and time. Very simple, getting it into the minds of the consumer. If people believe that Zune will be many times better than the iPod, they’ll put off buying a brand new iPod of the holidays and wait for the new Zune device. Think of it as a battle for hearts and minds.

Microsoft may even realize that they aren’t going to make this holiday season at all and are doing this in a attempt to do nothing more than dampen iPod sales. That scores a little too high on the over the top conspiracy meter for me, but then again Microsoft if known for releasing products late.

As for the brown thing, no idea.

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