"Influential writer Esther Dyson (pictured here in 2008) popularized the term "vaporware" in her November 1983 issue of RELease 1.0." -- Wikipedia on vaporware (image originally posted to Flickr by eirikso)

Summary: Microsoft's Windows-powered services are failing and Windows gets bricked by Microsoft patches, whereupon we are seeing yet more of Microsoft's vapourware tactics (focusing in imaginary, non-existent versions of Windows)

A few days ago Windows showed why it is widely recognised as a piece of trash. Even Microsoft cannot manage it as Microsoft Azure failure got reported. All it's good for is mass surveillance by the NSA. At the same time we learned about the latest Vista 8 failure. When not promoting Microsoft at the expense of Linux Microsoft's booster Gavin Clarke wrote about Microsoft bricking Windows: [via]

Patch early and patch often is the advice of security professionals when it comes to software updates.

After all, who needs to be left wide open to hackers and malware writers when the solution is delivered by the software's maker?

Yet sysadmins will be increasingly leery of applying such an approach to Windows systems following Microsoft's latest botch job.

On 12 August Microsoft released 40 updates for Internet Explorer, Windows 7 and Windows 8 Pro.

Vista 8 is such an utter mess (worse than Vista) that the editor of InfoWorld at IDG, Eric Knorr, decided to start advertising Microsoft vapourware. Shame on IDG and Knorr. As we showed before, Microsoft had started Vista 8 vapourware half a year before Vista 7 was even released. This was done through known Microsoft boosters. Gavin Clarke was the first. ⬆

"In the face of strong competition, Evangelism's focus may shift immediately to the next version of the same technology, however. Indeed, Phase 1 (Evangelism Starts) for version x+1 may start as soon as this Final Release of version X."

--Microsoft, internal document [PDF]