Fun fact: Poland is also missing in Windows 2000 and Windows 2003.
Poland actually is rendered in the internal resource file, but its color index was falsely mapped to water, not land. I actually made patches for Windows 2000, XP and 2003 by just changing Poland’s internal resource color to the nearest neighboring countries under the same time zone.
Edit: Also, the screenshot looks like it’s actually from Windows 2000, unless someone went with the classic theme on XP.
IIRC Windows XP uses the classic theme during setup, where it asks you to pick your timezone
Hmm, that actually does sound about right.
I wish windows would still look like this. It’s a total mess and their dark patterns slowly bleed into their normal usage UI…
Like there are no more engineers… only MBA Idiots (what do they even learn during their “studies”)
You can tell this is an old map (pre-2025) because it still mentions Canada
Fun fact of the day: Canada has only 9% more inhabitants than Poland.
At least New Zealand exists on this map.
Yet nobody ever speaks of Old Zealand…
Zealand is there, it just got connected to the mainland
The Poland thing is pretty minor in comparison to cutting the entirely of Asia in half instead of splitting one of the massive oceans. Did they just want to put the Americas in the middle?
US centric maps are a thing, because you know, murrica number one
I know that everywhere tends to put themselves in the middle, but it’s still pretty jarring to look at!
I think that map centered on the area you selected.
That was only true for Windows 95 and 98 (likely ME as well, but I don’t know). As of Windows 2000 and later, the map is fixed in place and for whatever reason (probably inconvenient to update), they dropped the click on the map to select time zone feature, which was also the feature that centered the selected time zone.
Well that makes much more sense!
You do make a good point. It would make more sense to put the GMT time zone in the center. I may eventually patch it again someday to shift GMT to center.
What are those huge islands in the Pacific ocean? I feel like someone should check that out.
Once upon a time, back in Windows 95 and 98 days, you could click on your area on the map and it would automatically highlight that time zone and select your appropriate time zone.
I figure those islands were deliberately exaggerated in size to make them easier to click on with a mouse. I mean for real, you ever tried aiming and clicking your mouse on one very exact pixel?
Technically Al Gore discovered Poland in the late 90s but cartographers were still catching up.
they already knew that AI was making shit up back then
Maybe they were just hiding: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/28377349
“You forgot Poland”
-Greatest US President
