Was Windows 1.0's lack of overlapping windows a legal or a technical matter?

An investigation into why Windows 1.0 used tiling windows instead of overlapping windows. Primary sources from 1983–1987 reveal it was a deliberate design decision by Microsoft, not a technical limitation or legal constraint. Steve Ballmer described it as the 'neat desktop metaphor' after internal debate. Technical capability for overlapping windows existed in Windows 1.0 (as confirmed by emulator testing and a 1984 PC Magazine article). The switch to overlapping windows in Windows 2.0 was driven by the Microsoft-IBM OS/2 collaboration, not by the 1989 Apple v. Microsoft lawsuit, which came after the fact.