Original | Windows Xp Wallpaper

And it wasn’t rendered in a computer. It was real. By the late 1990s, computer interfaces were ugly. They were beige, boxy, and filled with dreary teal backgrounds (looking at you, Active Desktop). When Microsoft set out to build Windows XP, codenamed "Whistler," they wanted a radical shift. They wanted "human." They wanted "joy."

The rolling green hills. The luminous blue sky dotted with cotton-ball clouds. The slight, almost impossible curve of the earth. It is the most viewed photograph in human history. It is Bliss . original windows xp wallpaper

Close your eyes for a second. Picture the year 2002. You’re walking into a Circuit City or a CompUSA. The air smells like fresh inkjet paper and hot plastic. In front of you, stacked in rainbow-colored boxes, are the CDs for Windows XP. And it wasn’t rendered in a computer

Then, Microsoft came calling. Microsoft’s art director was searching for "Pastoral landscapes without people." They found O’Rear’s hill. They wanted exclusivity—meaning no other company, ad agency, or calendar printer could ever use that hill again. They were beige, boxy, and filled with dreary