Vapour(firm)ware

Canon has announced a firmware update for the EOS-5D Mark III, that will enable autofocus at f/8 and clean HDMI video output. It’s to be available in… April 2013. And no, this is not a premature April Fools joke. The computer industry has a name for product announcements even before the first line of code has been written: they call it ‘vapourware’. Microsoft had a special reputation for these kinds of announcements in the past. The reason to announce vapourware is usually defensive. By making such an announcement, the company hopes to take away the momentum from a competitor that does have a finished product (or is expected to have it soon). It seems that Canon feels the pressure of the latest Nikon products and was sometimes caught by surprise. Autofocus with f/8 was a Canon EOS-1 series exclusive, and just when Canon thought it was not so important to keep this functionality in the EOS-1DX, Nikon introduced the D4 with autofocus at f/8 capability. Canon used to be the king of video DSLR with the EOS-5D series, but then Nikon introduced clean HDMI-output on a DSLR. It seems to me that Canon desperately needed to respond, but didn’t have time to fix all the shortcomings all at once. Another problem could be that the upcoming EOS-6D was too close to justify the hefty price difference, so the EOS-5D mark III needed to get some extra advantage. The EOS-1DX regained autofocus at f/8 with the latest firmware update, but the EOS-5D Mark III firmware update was not that easy to do so quickly, so that’s why Canon used the old Microsoft trick: just announce it anyway.