From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager#Microsof...:
> The first version (Windows 1.0) featured a tiling window manager, partly because of litigation by Apple claiming ownership of the overlapping window desktop metaphor. But due to complaints, the next version (Windows 2.0) followed the desktop metaphor. All later versions of the operating system stuck to this approach as the default behaviour.
The litigation from Apple came after Microsoft copied the Mac with overlapping windows (as shown elsewhere in Wikipedia), so this article does not appear correct. Windows 1.0 had tiling windows because IIRC, its lead developer, a former Xerox Parc employee, insisted on a tiling window metaphor. Many other multitasking systems of the period were also based on tiling windows. Overlapping windows certainly became the fashion, thanks to Apple, but you haven't proved they failed because users didn't like them.
Tabs are a completely different metaphor to tiles.
They are an example of managing content without overlapping windows. i3, Sway and Xmonad all have good support for them.
Do you have proof of this? I suspect they failed because everyone decided to copy the Mac which was trying to emulate a real desktop with bits of paper on it.
> Super limited "tiling" window managers do make sense with such limited UIs.
They also often make sense for complicated UIs, e.g. IDEs such as Visual Studio and browsers such as Firefox, which have docked sidebars and tabs in preference to overlapping windows.