I suspect the problem he's dealing with coming from windows is that the Mac OS paradigm is application switching via the dock and Command+Tab whereas in Windows the taskbar and Alt+Tab are window switching.
Command + ` only works within the app once you've switched.
You may only want to switch to one window from an application but Command+Tabbing to it brings all windows from that application on top.
Appreciate the sympathy. I'm used to minimizing applications to get them out of the way, and alt-tab on windows restores the window you want. on the mac, it only restores a non-minimized window, and command+~ only works if both windows are not minimized. Mission control also doesn't restore minimized windows. Windows Snapping was also a cool feature that isn't native to OSX, you need a third party tool - great to do a side-by-side on spreadsheet/document.
And can we get a comment about launchpad? and widgets? considering how good the iOS experience is, the desktop launchpad is horrible. and widgets should be removed, rethought or integrated for sure. both of these strike me as afterthoughts, which is bizarre considering how central they appear when you first set up the OS.
While I'd definitely suggest using hide instead of minimize, there is a way to unminimize windows from the application switcher (Command+Tab), it's just totally unintuitive. Here's what you do:
1. Minimize a window (Command+M).
2. Switch applications (Command+Tab).
3. Switch back to the application with the minimized window (Command+Tab). Before you release the Command key, hold down the Option key. Now release the command key.
Voila--your minimized window will return from the dock.
I am a recent mac convert and and the CMD + tab + Option is nothing but frustratingly finger bending. I really wish there is some way to bring the minimized windows to their maximized state when I command tab them.
I use spotlight exclusively to launch applications. Launchpad I used exactly once before unpinning it from the dock.
OS X widgets turned out about as well as every other attempt to make desktop widgets. Banishing them to their own virtual desktop solves the problem of it being impossible to use them due to that there's always windows in the way, but it doesn't solve the problem that apparently no one actually has any ideas for desktop widgets that are more than mildly useful.
For at least some applications, like Firefox, Command + ' rotates through application windows; important distinction. You can't just flip between two windows that way if you have three application windows open, you'll end up rotating through that third window.
For Windows style window switching (across all applications), use Control + F4.
You may also need to hold down the function key if you have your keyboard setup the default way, where things like brightness, volume, etc. are the primary uses of the function keys.
It's worth noting that you can remap the key easily from the Keyboard panel in System Preferences. Look under Shortcuts -> Keyboard for "Movie focus to active or next window".
