Surely you are familiar with the picture below. Its the infamous standard widows XP Desktop wallpaper. Normally accompanied with a little bit of music, or a blue screen of death, whichever.
What you may not know, or needed to know, or want to know, but will know, if you read on… is that the picture was taken at Sonoma County, California, southeast of Sonoma Valley near the site of the old Clover Stornetta Inc in 1996. An interview with the photogragher reveals the following;
“The most distributed image ever is being phased out. What remains is a hill in Sonoma Valley, California.
Charles O’Rear used to pass that hill almost daily between his home in Napa and his wife, Daphne, who lived in Marin County. He always carried his medium format camera.It was hard even to slow down on highway 12/121. But one day, it must have been in January, he pulled over. After about a month of rain the sun comes up, and there is beautiful green grass. The weather during the winter can change dramatically. A break in the storm. Intense blue sky with cumulus clouds. Maybe later that day it rained.
Blue was an important brand color already in ’95. Clouds and sky being a common theme in many aspects of the product’s identity and collateral. Illustrating potential and opportunity.
Continuing the cloud theme, but with added grounding. The horizon gives a sense of scale to the image. Makes it possible to imagine being there.
Because of the danger of that road and where he was standing, he didn’t take a tripod. His camera, when handheld, needed to be shot at least at a five-hundredth of a second. Whatever that translates into on a sunny day. Probably 500 at 5.6.
With property prices in Sonoma reaching $75,000 per acre for bare land, most hills were being developed into vineyards or homes. On this hill grapevines had been planted. But in the early 90’s a Phylloxera bug infested the grapes and made them unusable. The entire vineyard had to be pulled out. For a few years the hill was covered with grass. Green at the time of the photograph.
Green was the second main color in the branding scheme and in the User Interface. Running late in the product development cycle. Looking for a nature shot. “The reality of real life”. The image matched the brand colors. It fell completely into place, in terms of sky, clouds, blue plus the green field.
By the time the image was purchased, grapes had been planted again on the hill in Sonoma Valley.” Charles O’Rear, Photographer
So, 14 years on, Windows XP has almost moved on, with great reluctance, Microsoft Vista tried to take its place, but failed, and now we have the mighty Windows 7 trying its hardest to be your OS of choice.
By the way, this was written on Windows XP.
But what of that famous hill, that landmark of hundreds of millions of XP desktops worldwide? Has it like XP been replaced, was it green, was it covered in houses, did it have a giant Windows logo carved into it?
I was curious, so, with the help of the omnipresent Google, which wasnt actually around when XP went live(Ed: yes it was), i discovered this…..
If your like me, your probably thinking…. ugh!! I mean, grape vines are lovely, and tend to make nice wine, but i do feel sad in a nostalgic sort of way. Kind of like seeing an old friend after many years and noticing he now looks old, then thinking, hey.. maybe im old now too!
Since the original was taken, the valley was planted with grape vines, and probably doesnt have the same aesthetic appeal, but im sure that a whole new generation will be enjoying the output from that hill in the form of a nice bottle of Nappa Valley finest. Maybe there’s a lesson for me there, time to move on, and appreciate the new crop of Windows.
Fancy an Apple anyone?
