Debatable. They're visually too busy and noisy to see all the time.

I think laptop users rarely see much of their wallpaper, and that’s a significant fraction of users.

You could even argue that, if you see your wallpaper close to “all the time”, your monitors are larger than you need most of the time.

Jokes on you, I give my terminals a slight opacity so I can see the wallpaper all the time.

Sometimes I'll keep an empty workspace up just to declutter and focus on something on the other monitor.

Same - I always keep some opacity on my windows and I use gaps on i3

It's not necessary, I could as well set black wallpaper and no gaps, but I like it so it's good enough excuse ;)

It just feels good, like soft, indirect, amber lighting.

I agree completely. The best wallpaper is pure black. I haven't used anything other than black in ~20 years.

50% gray is the way to go. I've been doing it since we had to simulate gray by dithering black and white pixels.

I agree. Black and white often pop up against certain types of content (e.g. white spreadsheets on black background, dark mode terminals on white), but gray's a good compromise.

black wallpaper will be awesome for battery life once OLED laptop screens come out

It's not really true that black wallpaper saves battery. Black wallpapers have been shown to make almost no difference on smartphones.

I mean I guess if your primary use of your laptop is sitting on the desktop with no windows open, just staring at it?

The fish one on my 2006 white plastic macbook takes me back.

For me it's the grass one, and creating Adium themes to complement it!

It was also used in many marketing materials for the original iPhone. (Although the default wallpaper was the Earth one, I believe.)

9:42

Which was I believe the local time when the iPhone was first shown on stage. Although some materials used also 9:41.

Still have mine and that is definitely my wallpaper

I worked at Best Buy circa 2005 and we had a single Mac Mini on the floor that had the fish wallpaper and it always drew me in. I had no interest in Macs at the time, but there was something alluring behind that wallpaper.

I noticed they recently brought back the clownfish as a built in option on iPhone!

The second one. Yes!

The lore behind the second one was that it was taken by Steve Jobs.

I remember seeing it on the Leopard keynote. It was glorious with the translucent menubar that ditched the rounded corners.

I love the grass backdrop, but that folded over tip near the center-top always jumps out at me.

These were the exact two I had in mind. I never used default wallpapers aside from these two.