IMHO the bigger problem on Mac is the weird 'application centric' window system behaviour instead of the much more intuitive 'window centric' behaviour of Windows (and most Linux desktops).
For instance, "Alt-Tab" flips through applications on macOS, and it's possible for applications to be running even though they have no windows open, and in that case they just present a "naked" menu bar which I find utterly confusing. The whole thing feels like a dead-end UX experiment from the early 90's.
I'm mostly using the "3-finger-swipe" on macOS now to directly pick a window instead of tabbing though, but the main reason for that is not that it's better, it's just better than the weird macOS Alt-Tab behaviour.
PS: this sounds like I just switched from Windows to Mac, but I made that switch more than a decade ago, and it still feels "wrong" ;)
The fact that the taskbar has grouped windows by applications by default since XP/Vista hints at this scalability problem, with the taskbar quickly getting similarly unusable without the grouping.
I can never remember the (easy) shortcuts so this is helpful: https://learn.microsoft.com/da-dk/windows/powertoys/shortcut...
From PowerToys: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys
(Which also have the (in this context) useful FancyZones)
Back in a days when Virtual Desktops were not that handy (technically those available since win2000 if I recall correctly), I've used Blackbox for Windows and my own homemade program to quick search though all PuTTYs (written in VB6 + Winapi). Now I don't need it anymore :)
This can work really well even on MS Windows. It is unfortunately not default nor obvious to the regular user. But what comes in the box sprinkled with a PowerToy is rather good.
That is the paradigm I strongly prefer.
I have always liked the tight integration on Mac (such as printing - no driver fuss) and the UI looks really sleek. But the UX of the window/app handling does not sit well with me. Not for the lack of trying.
My first GUI was GEM Desktop which might have damaged me for life.
Edit: also if Apple cares so much about this, why do they make the close/minimize buttons so tiny?
I think daily users graduate to ⌘W and ⌘M (which are all-app standards) fairly quickly, while power users graduate to the window manager they prefer.
> …I'm still slower at this specific thing on Mac OS because I always first have to make sure the right window is focused…
You might find this useful: https://hazeover.com/
On a Mac the menu bar is always at the top. Because of that, the menu bar is at the logical end of mouse movement (it’s like a virtual wall, which the mouse can’t go beyond).
Because of this design, you can “slam” the mouse against that invisible barrier and it will stop where you need it (at least in the Y axis).
“Slamming” the mouse is always faster than trying to move it to an arbitrary point on the screen because there is no need to slow down the pointer on the screen. It just stops immediately.
The real correct solution is pie menus[1], which reduce both accuracy and distance requirements regardless of screen size. Blender has pie menus and it's one of the reasons its UI is so fast to use once you've learned it.
Also, the order of the window buttons for close, maximize, and minimize are incorrectly ordered, so a mistake causes you to click the opposite of what you actually want.