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.
It takes some getting used to.
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.
Widgets are antiquated and just there for legacy reasons.
Use Hide (Cmd-H).
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.
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.
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.