Ya I spoke of this a bit in the Mac OS forum. I talked about how Apple even published a book calld the User Interface Guidelines. It had all of their research outlined and explained, so that developers could use it in order to keep application functionality consistent (a document that M$ would probably use when making Windoze, and if they did, it was a taterd copy they found in a gutter cuz they managed to basterdize everything).
I think M$ reversed windows from the Mac OS as an attempt at origionality. I mean it goes further than just aligning the icons to the left. Here is a small list:
1. Icons on left (duh)
2. Mac mouse is black with white outline, M$ mouse is white with black outline.
3. Mac apple menue items and clock is on the menu bar at the top. Windoze's start bar and clock are at the bottom.
4. Mac has a single menu bar that affects every window, windoze has multiple menu bars that affect their respective windows.
5. The Mac is responsive and does what you ask it to in an intuitive logical maner. Windoze laughes at you takes all your personal information, acuses you of being a pirat, forces you to update to a new version, and then if your good, lets you play solitair and use MS Paint.
etc...
But hey, at least we can see what their alignement is, M$ is to the evil left of God, while Apple is to the right
Personaly, I think the fact that Mac OSX is trying to revolutionize the way people think of a GUI says alot. Windowoze's response was that hacked up POS XP, which is nothing more than an unorigional rehash of their previous crap.
M$ constantly spouts the words inovation, but to quote the Princess Bride:
"...You keep on using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means..."
M$ are just a bunch of copy cat's with great marketing. Were would they be without the REAL inovators?