Obviously then it was then extended for things like a long process completing, etc.
But back in 1990 or 1995, there's wasn't a need for something like Growl. Your e-mail inbox and the occasional beep and modal dialog did the job just fine.
To counter your "most things are obvious in retrospect" philosophy, you might be interested in the "multiple discovery" viewpoint [1] which says precisely the opposite -- that, extended to design, essentially says that the need for a solution becomes obvious to people at about the same time, and that people will solve it in similar ways because they're facing the same constraints.
