Back in the Longhorn (that is, Vista) days, I was friends with an engineering manager on the core desktop services team. He told me about how the "combine icons" in taskbar feature came to be. I think it came out after XP? mmm. I think yeah it came in Vista right after XP. Or was it one of the XP service packs? Anyhow, it was endlessly introduced by PMs, and endlessly cut after obnoxious reviews. Per this guy he just coded it one day and pushed it into daily build. Got in a lot of trouble but it made it.

Glad they're putting taskbar back into whatever sides. I despise my work Mac's single location at the bottom, wasteful waste of space. I've had icons on the left since Windows 95 and I like them there.