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> RISC OS had a recognizable task bar around 1987

Absolutely not the same thing -- and I bought my first Archimedes in 1989.

It's a bar and it contains icons, but it does not have:

* a hierarchical app launcher at one end

* buttons for open _windows_

* a separate area of smaller icons for notifications & controls

* it can't be repositioned or placed in portrait orientation

I am more familiar with this subject than you might realise. I arranged for the project lead of RISC OS to do this talk:

https://www.rougol.jellybaby.net/meetings/2012/PaulFellows/

Then a decade later I interviewed him:

https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/23/how_risc_os_happened/

Yes, the Icon Bar is prior art, but there are 2 problems with that.

1. It directly inspired the NeXTstep Dock.

This is unprovable after so long, but the strong suspicion is that the Dock inspired Windows 4 "Chicago" (later Windows 95) -- MS definitely knew of NeXT, but probably never heard of Acorn.

So it's 2nd hand inspiration.

2. The Dock isn't a taskbar either.

3. What the prior art may be doesn't matter unless Acorn asserted it, which AFAIK it didn't, as it no longer existed by the time of the legal threats. Nobody else did either.

4. The product development of Win95 is well documented and you can see WIP versions, get them from the Internet Archive and run them, or just peruse screenshot galleries.

http://toastytech.com/guis/c73.html

The odd thing is that the early development versions look less like the Dock or Icon Bar than later ones. It's not a direct copy: it's convergent evolution. If they'd copied, they would have got there a lot sooner, and it would be more similar than it is.

> so 2006-2007 is just long enough for any patent on that concept to definitely expire.

RISC OS as Arthur: 1987

NeXTstep 0.8 demo: 1988

Windows "Chicago" test builds: 1993, 5Y later, well inside a 20Y patent lifespan

Win95 release: 8Y later

KDE first release: 1998

GNOME first release: 1999

The chronology doesn't add up, IMHO.

> This story doesn't make any sense. As for dialog boxes with buttons at the bottom and plenty of buttons inside apps, the Amiga had them in 1984.

You're missing a different point here.

Buttons at the bottom date back to at least the Lisa.

The point is that GNOME 3 visibly and demonstrably was trying to avoid potential litigation by moving them to the CSD bar at the top. Just as in 1983 or so GEM made its menu bar drop-down instead of pull-down (menus open on mouseover, not on click) and in 1985 or so AmigaOS made them appear and open only on a right-click -- in attempts to avoid getting sued by Apple.