Someone has found the actual hill in Windows XP's iconic wallpaper...
I trudge along the side of a piercingly loud two-lane highway, stepping over a Modelo can, an empty bottle of wine and a Sonic burger wrapper. I pull out my phone, open Google Maps, and punch in the
exact coordinates again to make sure I’m in the right place before scanning the emerald green horizon.
And then I finally see it. Now blanketed by endless rows of wine grapes is “Bliss” hill, the subject of one of the most-viewed images in history: the default desktop wallpaper for the Windows XP operating system.
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The NASDAQ sign in New York's Times Square announces the launch of the Microsoft Windows XP operating system scheduled for October 25, 2001.
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More than 400 million copies of Windows XP were sold in its first five years, and the operating system wasn't retired until 2014, meaning more than a billion people have very likely seen O’Rear’s photo without ever realizing it was from the Bay Area.
Before the location of the photo was revealed, there was speculation that it was taken in Ireland (or France, or England, or Switzerland, or New Zealand, or Washington or Germany), and that it wasn’t even actually a real photograph. “A majority of people who saw that photograph, billions of people, thought it was not a real photograph,” O’Rear says.
https://www.sfgate.com/travel/articl...photo-20652025