6 Software Easter Eggs that are All Hunt and No Chocolate
6 Software Easter Eggs that are All Hunt and No Chocolate
Will you be eating your body weight in chocolate eggs this Easter or joining the secret hunt? No, we’re not talking children with baskets and pink fluffy rabbits. This is a game for geeks.
It’s a little known fact, but ‘easter egg’ has a very different definition in the tech world. It’s the name given to a hidden software surprise – commonly a joke, a message or a feature that hasn’t been documented. Developers and engineers love sneaking eggs past quality control and into the wild, and super-curious geeks get a kick when they find one.
Below are our top 6 software Easter eggs. You can go and find some of them for yourself!
1. Microsoft Office 97’s Hidden Pinball and a Flight Simulator
Oh yes, you could find a FULL pinball game and flight simulator in these office apps if you looked hard enough. Microsoft has since stopped being this fun ☹
2. Android eggs
Every version of Android since 2.3 (we’re now on 10) features a new version of their old Easter egg. Give it a try!
- Go to Settings
- About Phone
- Tap the version number several times in succession
- When the log appears, keep tapping!
3. Samsung Galaxy Tablet and Galaxy S processor egg
This is a physical message egg, written on the chip’s surface at two microns high. The average human hair is 99 microns wide, so there’s a bit of showing off going on here. What does it say? “If you can read this, you are much too close.”
4. Wikipedia’s Meta Easter egg
Wikipedia’s entry for Easter eggs actually includes an Easter egg! Yep. Hover over the hedgehog in the main image and click on it.
5. IMDb’s Spinal Tap egg
IMDb rate every film out of 10, except for Spinal Tap, where they ‘turn it up to 11’. If you know, you know. If you don’t, here’s an article that explains it.
6. Google Chrome’s offline dinosaur game
Ever wondered why the IT department are super-calm in an internet outage? This might have something to do with it. ????
Happy Easter!
