I'm sorry, but having used a Zaurus (my SL-C1000 recently died) there is little difference in the UI from Apple's, and the first ones appeared about 2003 (Actually probably a bit sooner, considering the SL-5500 I grabbed has a Rom 3.13 build date of Jul 2 2003, and I got one as a birthday present, which wouldn't have occurred in 2003 yet.):
The dock actually isn't that new, the only thing that's 'new' about it is bringing it on screen vs dedicated buttons. (And even on the Zaurus, with I think the 3.1 rom, the button's actions could be changed, so even configurable isn't anything new.
There are very very minor differences:
Tabs are smaller, and accessed via swiping the screen vs taping the icon.
There weren't any universal graphical icons at the bottom on Qtopia. However, there were universal physical buttons. (see above)
Lack of a universal way to get to the icons, via the start menu-like construct in the lower left of Qtopia, granted, that bar holds the notifications and similar, and has been moved to the top of the screen of both of the two new UIs under discussion.
Hardware: Stylus & finger vs finger-only. While it allows for a few things like multi-touch, capacitive touch screens suck in a lot of ways, and now resistive touch screens are starting to support multi-touch.
Hardware: Multiple-touches. that does give a bit of difference, but considering it's mostly used in photos and maps, wouldn't I wouldn't have interacted much with the Zaurus/Qtopia equivalents, as I didn't have any GPS equipment.
Also note, that most of these are present in (Original) Palms, which would push them back further in time, but I didn't use Palm much. The Palm also had the hardware buttons like the dock. (Actually had some in the touch sensitive area around the graffiti area)
Having something like the dock on screen is simply a consequence of reducing physical buttons.