Which came first, Windows 95's taskbar or NeXT's Dock? Neither

rbanffy 14 points 4 comments September 06, 2026
www.theregister.com · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (3 comments)

doublerabbit

I want this taskbar: https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/qnx621/ So retro, so cool.

Lammy

> we were sat in a room thinking 'How do we design this to be different, so we don't get sued by Apple?' The Mac had a menu bar of text across the top, so we thought 'we can't go across the top, we'll have to go across the bottom Funnily enough, a few of the Windows Chicago/94/95 builds do come with the taskbar set to top of screen by default: https://betawiki.net/wiki/Windows_95_build_90c

twoodfin

Under-explored in this article is the degree to which pre-NT/95 Microsoft (particularly BillG) was obsessed with NeXT, at least if you believe Steven Sinofsky: https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/009-passwo...

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