It's pretty rare these days for any tech product to have a 13 year life cycle,
but Windows XP and its iconic Green Hill
hung on for almost that long before Microsoft decided to finally stop supporting it.
And if you travel to Armenia, you'll actually find that over half the country
still uses XP. So how the heck did an operating system
that looked like it was designed by little tykes end up ruling the world?
And more importantly, stubbornly refused to give up its crown for so dang long.
Well, when XP burst onto the scene in late 2001,
it was already sorely overdue. Home users had been on the buggy Windows 9X series
since 1995, and these operating systems were fundamentally based on MS-DOS,
which had been around since 1981. So it wasn't surprising that the underlying code
of Windows 95, 98, and me wasn't going to be adequate
for newer software and hardware. Windows XP was instead based on Windows NT,
a more business operated family of operating systems
that hadn't previously been marketed to home users. This meant in 2001, people got their first taste
of the benefits of NT, faster performance,
better compatibility with bleeding edge products, and an OS that wouldn't immediately blue screen
if you heard its feelings. But perhaps the bigger C change that XP brought to the table
was that it really started to popularize the idea that computers and accessories should just work
without needing to go through complicated configuration procedures.
Windows XP made it easy to automatically connect to known Wi-Fi networks, which is a good thing
considering how much internet usage exploded between 1995 and 2001.
USB and plug and play support was also significantly improved.
So instead of having to install a driver every single time you plugged in a new gadget,
you instead got a cheery notification in the bottom right of your screen,
happily telling you it was ready to use. And even though some folks disliked
how XP had a kids play area look to it,
many others welcomed the marriage of a much more reliable operating system
with a user interface that at least tried to be accessible
and visually pleasing. Remember that XP came out roughly six years
before the original iPhone, but had lots of similar design cues
with rounded edges, bright colors, and icons that tried to clearly convey meaning to the user.
So in many ways, XP was one of the first products
that got society at large, thinking of electronics as intuitive and pretty,
and not modeled after the last hardest level
of a video game. Now part of the reason XP had such incredible longevity
was that its successor, Windows Vista, was absolutely infuriating.
Although like Windows XP, it had relatively high system requirements at launch time,
Vista's launch was a mess because Microsoft did a poor job of communicating
to both PC consumers and manufacturers exactly what hardware they'd need to run Vista smoothly.
To the extent that manufacturers would put misleading
Vista compatible stickers on poorly equipped machines
that disappointed average consumers. The poor performance, technical issues,
and the high cost of Vista led many users to just stay on XP until Windows 7 came along in 2009.
And even though Windows 7 was very well received, XP was still incredibly easy
for even lower end machines to run by 2009
due to advancements in hardware, meaning it didn't exactly run out of steam
just because Windows 7 came along. In fact, official support for desktop versions
of Windows XP lasted nearly three years beyond Microsoft's typical support timeline.
Because it was so paradigm shifting and reasonably stable,
it remained good enough for users and businesses
who just didn't feel a need to put in the effort and money to upgrade.
Just look at how much Windows 11 is struggling against Windows 10, which is now seven years old.
Even now, XP is still the operating system of choice
for a surprising number of ATMs, medical systems, and irredentist wannabe dictators worldwide
because people just don't wanna spend the time and the money
to upgrade a working system, unsecure as it may be,
or they need XP to run certain kinds of older software.
And believe it or not, XP has lasted longer than that famous Green Hill.
Don't get us wrong, it's still there, but these days, it's covered in delicious wine grapes.
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