After some nine years or so, Apple has finally been granted a patent for its "Dock" - a central feature of the OSX operating system - patent number 7,434,177 titled "User interface for providing consolidation and access."
It's an excellent feature, and constantly evolving (now incorporating "Stacks" of course) - and even though I hate the 3D version in Leopard, and have used a hack app to make it 2D, it's still excellent - a great piece of usability and superbly implimented with features like the magnification of icons on rollover and the 'genie' effect of swooping open documents in and out of it.
There is a superb article here which traces its history right back from its first genuine incarnation in the Nextstep operating system (which along with all other intellectual property) went to Apple in 1996 when they purchased NeXT, with Steve Jobs returning to the company he founded.
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