RIP Windows XP: The story behind ‘Bliss,’ the most iconic wallpaper of all time

The photo you see above — the default wallpaper for Windows XP — is probably the most recognizable image in the world. What you probably didn’t know is that it’s a real photo, called Bliss, taken by Charles “Chuck” O’Rear in 1996, and then sold to Microsoft for an undisclosed sum (but it was apparently one of the highest prices ever paid for a single photo). It seems fitting that, on April 1, a week before the April 8 retirement of Windows XP, we should honor technology’s most iconic image.

The massive proliferation of Windows XP, due to its massive levels of piracy (mostly in Asia) and the fact that it just won’t die, means that it’s the most popular operating system of all time. Chuck, speaking to CNet, estimates that his Bliss photo has been seen by “billions” of people worldwide. ”Recently … An American photographer was allowed to go into North Korea. One of [the photographer's images] was in some power plant, there’s a big board where two men were sitting. What’s on the screen? Bliss.” Chuck also says he once saw a photo of the White House situation room — and again, there were 10 or 15 monitors all showing his photo.

Bliss was taken way back in 1996, as Chuck was driving through northern California’s wine growing territory. He was on his way to see his then-girlfriend Daphne (now his wife), when the clouds suddenly parted over the emerald green grass, and he decided to get out of his car and shoot a couple of frames on his Mamiya RZ67 medium format film camera. Later, he would upload the photo to the Corbis stock photo library (founded and owned by Bill Gates, incidentally), whereupon Microsoft would find the image in the lead-up to Windows XP’s release in 2001.

The Windows XP default wallpaper. Note the slightly more vibrant greens and blues.

Bliss was purchased for for an undisclosed sum, and a non-disclosure agreement prevents Chuck from giving away any of the juicy details. Chuck does stress, however, that, despite the photo’s fantastical, almost dream-like appearance, that it came straight out of the camera. Microsoft did crop the image slightly, and increased the vibrancy of the grass, but otherwise it’s straight out of the camera. Chuck even tells a funny story about how Microsoft’s own engineering team emailed him back in the mid-2000s, saying that most of them thought them thought the image was Photoshopped. ”Sorry guys, you’re all wrong,” he says. “It’s the real deal, it’s near where I live, and what you see is what you get. It has not been touched.”

The Bliss photo, side-by-side with the same location — but after the season has ended

As you may already know, Windows XP will finally be retired on April 8 2014 — almost 13 years after it was first released. That doesn’t mean that Bliss will die out, though — XP has been installed on billions of PCs, and to this day it’s still installed on around 25-30% of all internet connected PCs (and probably a lot more non-connected PCs in developing parts of the world). Judging by how slow its market share is dropping, it’s fairly safe to assume that Windows XP is still being actively installed in some parts of the world, too. Microsoft, for its part, is offering Windows XP users a $100 discount if they buy a new PC — but of course, the trade off is that you’ll then have to use Windows 8… and Windows 8 is one of the reasons people are still using Windows XP.