Windows Xp Wallpaper - Original

Over the years, vintners planted grapevines up the side of the hill. The rolling green lawn is gone, replaced by rigid rows of chardonnay grapes. To make matters worse, a large "Beware of Cougar" sign now sits near the spot.

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.

In January 1998 (four years before XP launched), O’Rear was driving from his home in St. Helena, California, to visit his girlfriend in Novato. He was on Highway 12, passing through the Sonoma Valley. It had rained the night before—a rare, heavy winter rain that washed the pollution out of the sky and turned the grass an almost radioactive shade of green.

It became the single most viewed photograph in history, estimated to have been seen by over a billion people . original windows xp wallpaper

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 .

So the next time you boot up a sterile, flat UI? Go ahead. Download the JPEG. Put it on your 4K monitor. It won’t fit perfectly. It will look a little soft. A little dated.

Driving his rented Ford Taurus, O’Rear glanced to his right. There it was: a low, gentle hill. The morning light was hitting the dew just right. The clouds were breaking up. Over the years, vintners planted grapevines up the

"I literally pulled over to the side of the road," O’Rear later recalled. "I had my camera in the trunk. I got out, walked about 50 feet up the hill, and took four shots."

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."

And it will still be the most beautiful desktop you’ve ever had. Then, Microsoft came calling

The design team, led by Microsoft’s Creative Director, decided to ditch digital abstraction for analog reality. They hired a legendary nature photographer named .

O’Rear thought they were going to use it for a poster. Or a brochure. He had no idea they were going to staple it to the most popular operating system in the history of computing. When Windows XP launched on October 25, 2001, Bliss was everywhere. It was in schools, libraries, airport kiosks, grandma’s Dell, and the teenager’s gaming rig in the basement.