Is it known why PCs customarily have their desktop items aligned to the left of the screen, while macs have customarily been aligned to the right?

by ewest

Not sure if this is the place for questions about computer history, but I always like knowing more about the early choices that were made in Silicon Valley which distinguished operating systems from one another on purely aesthetic levels. There always seems like there's a fun or quirky story about those, and so I wanted to know if even desktop alignment (as in, where your items default to residing on your desktop; top-right on pretty much every Mac OS I've ever run, and top-left on your typical Windows OS and Linux) has a story behind its divergence among the platforms.

Searocksandtrees

Just a quick moderator reminder to OP and potential respondents: /r/AskHistorians has a "20-year rule" which prohibits discussion of current affairs, i.e. events/conditions within the last 20 years. As such, answers will have to confine discussion to pre-1995 only. In addition, be mindful of other sub rules and avoid anecdotes, opinion, speculation.

OP, since the 20-year rule takes a pretty serious bite out of the history of these operating systems (here are the timelines for Windows and Mac releases), you might consider x-posting this to a sub with a focus on computing, specifically GUI design/usability.