The Control Strip in System 7 predates the Start button and taskbar found in Windows 95. If we go back further, NeXTSTEP introduced the dock and let’s not forget that AmigaOS and RISC OS both had very similar functionality too, along with others that I’m forgetting that all predate Windows 95.
The Control Strip was pretty anaemic though. It was more like the tray (i.e. a dumping ground for stuff people don't regularly interact with). But still, when you do want to play a CD, there you have it in one click, rather than one click blessed by Fitt's Law to drop a menu down, followed by moving back down carefully to find the thing you actually want. In the meantime I just typed the command with autocompletion in Emacs and moved on with my life.
