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I would argue that the initial development of windows 95 incorporated one of the most extensively researched and evidence-based UI designs ever, before or after. Far from perfect, but nearly everything about the UI was examined in context of the user experience. Arguably better than Macs ever were... less revolutionary, but more solid.

It's a far cry from the current chaotic chimera of elements and themes that make up windows 11.

I would argue that they where tge first to try and do all that at once while on non-specified hardware systems. Yes Apple, Amiga etc will similar stuff but they at least had set target hardware.

Microsoft tried to do everything for better and worse on wildly varied commodity hardware.

The first one that pretty much anyone could use and was useful for them. We credit Apple for popularizing the GUI, too, even though they stole it from Xerox.