Sometimes these things land and sometimes they don’t. XP’s grassy hill seems to have been universally loved but could easily have been seen as lazy.
Granted, MS used to actually take theming seriously. XP had an excellent marketing campaign that tied in with the visual scheme of the product. Even the OS sounds tied in with the choice of music for their commercials, “Ray of Light” by Madonna.
Now we just get the wallpaper and there’s no concerted effort to make a theme of joy or accessibility or creativity or anything.
It was lazy in the sense that photo had not been taken specifically for XP. It was a pro photographer seeing a nice thing to take a picture of with not specific project in mind, snapping it, then having it sold through a stock photo agency.
Granted, MS used to actually take theming seriously. XP had an excellent marketing campaign that tied in with the visual scheme of the product. Even the OS sounds tied in with the choice of music for their commercials, “Ray of Light” by Madonna.
Now we just get the wallpaper and there’s no concerted effort to make a theme of joy or accessibility or creativity or anything.