Interestingly that logo accurately represents the way "Windows" worked in Windows 1.0. It didn't have overlapping windows. So the lines within the windows represent the dividers of the UI between the window areas. You could make one window bigger by moving a divider over, making all the windows on the other side of that divider smaller. There was no concept of windows being in front of or behind each other (like there was on the mac from the beginning. Microsoft obviously started on windows late compared to the mac, and was quite behind at the 1.0 release.)
You speak about tiling window managers as if they were already an anachronism in 1985. Yet today, some of us continue to prefer them, and they remain in active development. What good is a window that's partially covered? I either want to completely see it or I want it to be completely hidden from view. The parlor trick of overlapping windows is useless to me.
If I'm tailing a continuous log, I don't need to see the full text of each line, I just need to see when the pattern changes, which I can get by having the first 10 characters peeking out from behind the left of my active window.
My to-do list is big but really the first three words or so are enough to remind me of what each item is; it's behind and to the left of the tailing log.
Finally, I have a few corners of various other apps I'm using poking out all over the place. It's much easier to switch to the window I want by grabbing a corner than alt-tabbing or any other method.
Fair enough. It's important to have different paradigms for different work styles. You use whatever works best for you. My point was just that tiling WMs were not anachronistic back in '85.
Interestingly, it seems that MS will revive the "divider" concept in the Metro UI for Windows 8. Slide the divider to the left, and the left-side app gets narrower. You can even do this with a Metro app on one side of the divider and the entire traditional desktop on the other side.
