[grishka]

Oh, I remember this thing. It felt like an essential part of the system before native notifications were introduced, and then was promptly forgotten. Literally every single app that had notifications used it — with the notable exception of Apple's own ones. Coming from Windows, where every app implemented its own notifications that looked inconsistent and overlapped each other, this was a night and day difference.

[bamboleo]

Windows has had a minimal form of standard notifications since Windows XP, which appeared as speech bubbles coming from the bottom right corner.

[grishka]

I know, but these didn't really work for stuff like instant messaging, and only one could be displayed at a time system-wide, so everyone made their own thing.

[nonesuchluck]

Oh wow, I totally forgot about the XP speech bubbles! Did any useful application ever use them? I only remember obnoxious AV warnings and Windows messages ("you can click here to re-open me!") IM notifications may not have been bad.

[dylan604]

Don't forget about Clippy that predated XP by millennia (at least it feels that way).