After playing around with it for a bit I agree. The main improvement is actually using the homescreen as the app selector. Using spotlight was fine when you have a keyboard, but multitasking without a keyboard was pretty terrible on iOS 14.

The only thing I am still trying to grasp is the “shelf” - I see it keeps things like mail compose windows open…but I have been unable to figure out how you are supposed to get back to them later, other than leaving the app and coming back…