I’m worried that Apple is turning into a vaporware company

Maybe I’m hanging out in the wrong circles, but it feels like the vaporware label isn’t as prevalent today as it was in the 1990s and 2000s. You’re probably familiar with the term — which means a product missing in action for one or more release dates — but I don’t hear people sling it around as much as they used to. I suspect it’s mostly a matter of companies getting out ahead of complaints — announcing delays well in advance, and including some sort of explanation. No CEO wants the next Duke Nukem Forever on their hands, especially not with products worth millions or billions of dollars.

Apple was forced to do just that earlier in 2025, admitting that it wasn’t going to be able to deliver on some of the marquee features of Apple Intelligence before the year was up. That alone wouldn’t make it a vaporware company, but rumors about other products suggest that its release schedule could be overly ambitious. At least, if it’s going to try and deliver new iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks at the same time. I think there’s evidence both for and against that idea, the weight of which is hard to tell.

The ghosts of products yet to come

Waiting for good news

Rumors should always be taken with a grain of salt, of course, and not just because some sources are more credible than others. When we’re talking about products in development, things can always change direction. Consider the Apple Car, which flip-flopped between being a platform and a full-fledged vehicle before being canceled outright. Yet some sort of major auto project was undeniable — Apple was testing self-driving technology in public, and embroiled in a poaching war with Tesla.

That said, it would actually be to Apple’s benefit if some of the more recent rumors proved false. The company was once reported to be planning a smart home hub for the end of 2025, sometimes dubbed the HomePad. That would help re-invigorate the HomeKit platform — but since the product supposedly depends on an overhauled Siri, as promised for Apple Intelligence, it’s now rumored to be shipping sometime in 2026 instead.

There’s more. While the first folding iPhone is on track for 2026, an iPad-sized foldable appears to have been pushed out until 2027 or 2028, assuming it hasn’t been scrapped, as one rumor indicated. And other products are coming slower than you’d expect from a trillion-dollar megacorporation. Rumors say that Meta-style smart glasses won’t arrive until 2027, and that Apple is splitting up the iPhone 18 release schedule, postponing both the base model and the iPhone 18e until early 2027. That’s months after the launch of the iPhone Fold, iPhone 18 Air, and iPhone 18 Pro.

It could be that we were never going get smart glasses or a foldable iPad before 2027, to be fair. Put in the context of everything else that’s been happening to Apple, however, it’s hard to shake the impression that a lot of products are being put on the back burner, or just aren’t getting the resources needed to ship quickly. The company didn’t even bother shipping an Apple Watch Ultra 3 in 2024, despite pressure in the high-end smartwatch market from Garmin and Samsung. At least that one should finally arrive this fall. I could talk about other products that have taken too long, like CarPlay Ultra, but I don’t want to belabor the point too much.

Is Apple becoming a vaporware company?

Trying to stay positive

Certainly, Apple Intelligence’s Siri upgrades meet the definition of vaporware. They were never going to debut in 2024, but missing the entire 2025 calendar year is a little shocking, given Apple’s resources and the urgent need to catch up with Google Gemini on Android. The C-suite has made some serious mistakes — and now, the company as a whole is paying for it. Similar things can be said about CarPlay Ultra, which missed its 2024 window, and the HomePad, which is tied to Apple Intelligence as I mentioned.

Beyond these examples, I think Apple has some reasonable explanations. Regarding smart glasses and the iPad-sized foldable, the company is rarely first into a product category, preferring to make a splash with its own twist. I’d much rather get a product that feels indispensable, like an iPhone, than something that exists solely to compete with rivals. It’s likely Apple is sticking to this philosophy.

When it comes to the categories Apple is already in, I’d rather it spend more time on meaningful upgrades than continue churning out incremental tweaks. My Apple Watch Ultra 2 is better than my old Series 6, but if it weren’t for the enhancements inherent to the Ultra line, I might’ve felt duped. Keeping the Ultra 2 at full price in 2024 was a bit greedy — yet it would’ve also been disappointing to bump the processor up to an S10 and call it a day.

As for the iPhone 18 lineup, that situation is more complex. One interpretation is that Apple won’t have enough manufacturing capacity to ship the regular iPhone 18 in 2026 alongside the Fold, Air, and Pro, which is indeed a bad look. Another possibility, however, is that Apple simply wants to funnel buyers towards its most expensive products. Or it could be that both statements are true, as I’m betting.

That’s assuming that the split schedule rumor proves to be authentic, and for the moment, that’s where we’re really left off. I think it’s too early to call Apple a vaporware company — not when other products have been shipping like clockwork, including both hardware and software. It’s just stumbling in a way we haven’t seen for decades, putting it in a position where it needs to course-correct to stay indomitable. If Apple Intelligence gets back on track, I doubt anyone will have serious vaporware concerns.