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Who ate all the Easter eggs?

Have you ever noticed that some things can just disappear without you ever realising, like Spangles, Artic Roll or Rumbelows. The first time I realised the Cadbury Wispa bar had gone was when it was reintroduced. Has the hidden software Easter egg gone the same way as the BL Allegro? (1.7L Vanden Plas of course).

There was a time, before the Internet, where we would waste hours searching for “Easter eggs” in our newly acquired software. Having chain loaded dozens of 5.25 inch disks, our quest would begin, would we find a hidden list of developers or something we might describe today as a “richer Easter egg experience”. 
In Excel 95 for example, a quick Control+Shift+Tech Support would launch you in to a 3D world for you to explorer.  Just two short years later, Excel 97 gave us a 3D terrain we could fly over from cells X97:L97.  Fantastic – who needs access to iPlayer at work? Not to worry if you did not use Excel, open up the 3D Text screen saver in Windows 95 or NT and type Volcano and it would bounce the names of different volcanoes all over the screen, there was a similar trick with rock bands that escapes my mind.  We were easily pleased in the late 1990’s.

My personal favourite was the 3D pipes screen saver in several versions of Windows, set the joint style to mixed and wait and watch… every now and again, a joint would be replaced with a teapot (yes really). People of my generation can remember where they were the first time they spotted a teapot. Me? I was teaching a Windows NT 3.51 course, in Altrincham, in a classroom called Lymm, a chap from Manchester Airport spotted it first.  Not only is the teapot smashed in Vista, I don’t even seem to have the pipes screen saver. Everyone wanted to play, Easter eggs could be found in Photoshop 7 and Mac OS X, developer credits in WordPerfect and space invaders in OpenOffice. Then abruptly the sound ceased. Tumble weeds blow through the spaces previously occupied by elaborate games, dust covers the “in jokes” and the hidden list of developers, rests in peace. The software Easter egg seems to have gone rotten. (I’ll skip the long list of egg related puns).

Where are the Vista Easter eggs? Apparently the DVD hologram contains a picture of someone in the anti piracy team – not really the same. Even the blue screen that would appear if you typed “about:Mozilla” into IE has been nobbled.  There was a story that there was a copy of Microsoft BOB (An early MS usability operating system that gave birth to Clippy the paperclip) hidden inside Vista, sadly this was an April Fools joke, shame, I liked BOB.  O’h well, with no Easter eggs (unless you know differently), I’ll make do with You Tube. Have you seen that Bill Gates’ Last Day at Microsoft – CES 2008 video...?