> if it is a pretty obvious solution that could be found by anyone in the instan
That is not even slightly true. Just look at a series of the Win95 beta screenshots and you will see Microsoft slowly and with considerable difficulty iterating their way to this difficult and non-obvious solution.
That's b81...there were 400+ more to follow that (800+, if you include the follow up service packs). Pretty much every person who worked on Chicago that talks about the start button/taskbar says it's one of the first things that was finalized, which the builds obviously confirm.
The "iteration" that you refer to is simply taking the combined Presentation Manager and Program Manager code and reconfiguring it into the taskbar.
For someone so "aware" of software development, you seem to expect unreasonably long timelines (5+ years for GNOME3) and unreasonably short timelines (what? 4-8 builds? to completely reconfigure a major UI component and paradigm) when they're convenient to making your wholecloth narratives work.
> This is the only user interface element that I had not seen before using Windows 95
Then I suggest that you need to look deeper.
I did, and I analysed it in some detail nearly a decade before that article:
https://www.theregister.com/Print/2013/06/03/thank_microsoft...
> if it is a pretty obvious solution that could be found by anyone in the instan
That is not even slightly true. Just look at a series of the Win95 beta screenshots and you will see Microsoft slowly and with considerable difficulty iterating their way to this difficult and non-obvious solution.
https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3329
> for all features the differences from prior art were trivial
They really are not. I have spent days looking. I do not think you have.