Even the most po-faced software products may contain an in-joke, game or moment of madness, Stuart Turton seeks out software’s sillier side
In 1979, Warren Robinett snuck a secret message to fans in his Atari video game, Adventure. Players were soon scurrying through every corner of the game world to locate Robinett’s hidden message, the staff at Atari likening the madness to an Easter egg hunt. The term held, as did the practice, with jokes, snide references and strange commands ending up tucked away into thousands of products. Join us as we explore the strange corners of the software you use every day.
Zombie Android
The different versions of Android have always been named after tasty treats, including Gingerbread, Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean, KitKat and, most recently, Lollipop. Each of these has come with its own Easter egg, accessed by entering Settings | About Phone (or Tablet) and then repeatedly clicking on the Version tab until the magic happens. The subsequent animations have run the gamut from surreal to downright disturbing, although a PC Pro favourite has to be Gingerbread, which brought up a painting of the Android logo holding hands with a gingerbread man, while surrounded by zombies on smartphones.
404
404 is the error code you receive when a web page is down, or you’ve typed an address wrong. In most cases, such errors are irritating, but a few companies have made their 404s so good that we’d happily set the North Koreans on them, allegedly, just to see the messages more often. Our favourite can be found at nouveller.com/404 - which recreates the famous sequence from Jurassic Park, where tubby hacker Dennis Nedry lets the dinos loose. Don’t forget to enter the magic word. A close second is the 404 for the NPR website (pcpro.link/247notfound), which simply lists other missing things, from Atlantis to Wally, to your luggage.
Linux frees the fish
Linux is the work of a million mad geniuses, which means Easter eggs are stuffed into every coded crevice. Start messing about in the terminal and jokes tumble out like clowns spilling free of an exploding car. Start with Alt+F2, and then type “free the fish” to release Wanda the goldfish onto the desktop. Aside from being a rather jolly presence, Wanda also dispenses snippets of fortune-cookie wisdom such as “You are confused; but this is your normal state”. Equally wonderful are the various calendars, accessible through the terminal by typing “ls/usr/share/calendar/”. Among our favourites is the Lord of the Rings calendar, which marks the progress of the ring-bearer and his pals as they travel halfway around the world to stop Sauron getting married. Disclaimer: we may have taken the wrong message from that book.
Silly old Skype
Not all of Skype’s emoticons can be found behind that sinister, ever-smiling face to the right of the instant-messaging box. Typing commands such as (mooning), (drunk), (swear), (smoking) and (poolparty) can bring a great deal more... colour to your conversations.
Geeks R Google
One day, Google employees will be just brains in jars, wired directly to the internet, so we should all enjoy their capacity to feel human emotion while we can. As the delivery service for popular culture, it’s no surprise to see Google’s gaze encompass perhaps the geeklest of all sci-fl shows, Doctor Who. Head to Earls Court in Google Maps (pcpro.link/247tardis) and you’ll notice a police box sitting outside the Tube station. Hit the white “X” that appears in front of it and you’ll be ushered into the Tardls.
Speaking of things that are rarely right side up, searching for “askew” will knock the page sideways, while typing “do a barrel roll” spins the page 360 degrees - a feature worth trying out on a colleague who’s looking the worse for wear. Should that fail, type “zerg rush” - a term borrowed from Blizzard’s StarCraft video game - which Invites a swarm of zeroes onto the screen to start devouring your search results. Click the zeroes to score points.
But this is just the start, with hundreds of Easter eggs tucked away in Google products. Indeed, Wikipedia has a curated list of the best (pcpro.link/247google), many of which have a hint of melancholy. Search for “loneliest number”, for instance. Perhaps Googlers sense their time in the jar is coming.
Apple bites
Whereas Google’s Easter eggs revel in popular culture, Apple’s Easter eggs revel in Apple culture - a fact that will surprise nobody. For example, the icon for the TextEdit application is a pen and notepad with something written on it. If you pull up the icon in Finder, you’ll discover it’s the “Here’s to the crazy ones” speech narrated by Richard Dreyfuss in Apple’s 1997 ad campaign, which subtly suggested that if Albert Einstein and Gandhi had been alive they’d have used Macs, and possibly worn black polo necks, and probably worked in Apple's marketing department.
Among the user-avatar icons is a picture of a record with the words “magic, revolution, boom" and “unbelievable” printed on it. These were the words Steve Jobs used most frequently during keynote addresses, and probably while making omelettes at home: “I’m just adding a little cheese to the top, BOOM, unbelievable. Look at how crisp that is, isn’t it beautiful? I’ve revolutionised the omelette.”
He’d usually go on to sledge Microsoft, so thankfully there’s a little tribute to that in OSX as well. If your Mac discovers a PC on the shared network, it will display a 1990s-looking computer with Microsoft’s “Blue Screen of Death” error message on the display. Thankfully, Apple found the ideal expression of this curt, clipped superiority in Siri, its personal assistant. Say “OK Glass" to Siri - the command for launching Google Glass - and you’ll receive one of six irate responses, including “Very funny. I mean, not funny ‘ha-ha’, but funny”, “I think that Glass is half-empty”, “Stop trying to strap me to your forehead. It won’t work", and “Just so you know, I don’t do anything when you blinkat me."
If you're not in the mood to hear what Siri’s thinking, head to the Terminal in OSX, type “emacs" and hit Enter, then press Esc+X. Then enter “psychoanalyze-pinhead” and watch as your Mac turns its Freudian gaze upon itself.
Who upset Mozilla?
Firefox is the little browser that could, then did, and then couldn’t work out what to do next. Built as the anti-Internet Explorer, it championed openness, speed and not being rubbish, and set the standard for all of those things until Chrome came along and stuck a massive multicoloured flag in the internet.
The history of this struggle is told through a sinister Easter egg buried within the browser. Type “about:about” into the address bar and select “aboufmozilla”. You’ll be presented with the phrase “Mammon slept. And the beast reborn spread over the earth and its numbers grew legion. And they proclaimed the times and sacrificed crops unto the fire, with the cunning of foxes. And they built a new world in their own image as promised by the sacred words, and spoke of the beast with their children. Mammon awoke, and lo! It was naught but a follower. From The Book of Mozilla, 11:9.”
Although it sounds like something you’d find scrawled on the wall of a serial killer’s shed, the page reference refers to an important milestone in the company’s history, with the quotes updated whenever there’s a new release. After you’ve fled the “aboufmozilla” page, stop by the “aboufrobots” page for a crash course in geeky robot references.
Adobe attacks
Think Adobe and you’re quite likely to think industry-behemoth-that-has-come-to-take-over-the-world, so it’s perhaps surprising to learn that behind that serious fagade lies a jolly heart, expressed in half a dozen genuinely amusing Easter eggs. Among them is InDesign’s friendly alien, who will turn up if you wade into the File menu, select Print Presets and click “Define...”. Create a new Print Preset and call it “Friendly Alien”, then save it. Now open a blank document and go to File | Print, and change the print preset at the top of the dialog box to Friendly Alien. Click the large P in the Print Preview window in the dialog box. You’ll receive a visit from the alien, whose smiling face should be enough to dispel the despair instilled by InDesign’s print options. If that’s not helping to lift your mood, pop over to Muse, and place an Anchor on the design canvas. Copy and paste this a snowman character (available from the Muse Facebook page at pcpro.link/247snow) into the anchor name and it will start snowing.
Terminal Strikes Back
Ever thought the problem with Star Wars was the special effects, actors, colours, movement, sound effects and, you know, visual elements? Well head over to the terminal in Linux or OS X, type in “telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl” and hit Enter. Witness the glory that is Star Wars in ASCII art. Windows owners can enjoy this foolishness, too, but if you’re running Windows 7 or later, it will require a little fiddling to get going. The internet is your friend on this one.
Escape from Microsoft
If a psychiatrist had examined the Easter eggs in Microsoft’s products throughout the 1990s, they’d have stormed Redmond and demanded Bill Gates release the programmers he surely had chained up in the basement. Each one is a little cry for help, none more so than the “Hall of Tortured Souls” in Excel 95. This Doom-like mini-game dropped players into a maze decorated with the names and faces of the Excel team. Thankfully, the graphics of the day couldn’t convey the screaming, visceral horror of their imprisonment, so instead we got a maze designed by demented Teletubbies. Excel 97 swapped out the inescapable maze for a flight simulator (a cry for freedom if ever we heard it), and then a racing game in Excel 2000 (help us, we’re going nowhere fast). These quiet pleas by the programmers were snuffed out in 2002, when Microsoft launched its Trustworthy Computing initiative, which promised nothing unexpected would And its way into your software - except for bugs, disappointment, bad ideas and sudden U-turns. Good to know where we all stand.