People can still multitask using mouse only. It’s ok to have a hidden fast interface if you have a discoverable slow interface.

Using the mouse to switch to a given program in the take bar isn't necessarily slow. It's actually faster if you have a decent number if windows open; clicking on exactly the right one straight away is faster than repeatedly pressing Alt-Tab and seeing if the new window brought to the foreground was the right one.

One of the things that made multitasking on Windows much better for me was discovering that:

1. win+<number> opens the <number> program on the taskbar from the left. So having a bunch of pinned programs makes opening them very fast and easy.

2. Holding the windows key down then pressing the number multiple times allows switching between multiple instances of the program, similar to holding alt and hitting tab multiple times.

For example, chrome is the tenth icon pinned to the taskbar (counting from the left). So win+0 open chrome or if already open switches to the first window. Holding the windows key and hitting 0 allows me to quickly switch between multiple chrome windows.

So I don't have to mentally keep track of the current alt-tab order to switch between the second putty window and third chrome window. I just hit win+77 for putty and win+000 for chrome.

Im sure you know this but in Windows 10 if you hold down Alt after hitting Tab the first time it’ll display which windows you already have open, and hitting just Tab again will cycle though them. You can even hold down Shift as well to cycle through the list of icons but in reverse.

I'm sure you know this, but, I think at least since Windows 7, while having the Alt+Tab "popup" open, you can use the arrow keys while holding Alt down to directly navigate to the window you want to open. Very useful if, like me, you have 20 windows of browser tabs open, and the application you want is in the middle of the list.

Yes - and you can also mouse over them and click now too. All three of these interactions are, imo, very intuitive and easy to do.

After the first Alt-Tab you can also use the arrow keys to navigate to the window you need.

Sure, and you can do the same on your iPad by going through the home screen.

But you will never learn how to use the most important features of iPad OS without knowing the split screen gestures.

Perhaps so, but Apple _is_ the one consistently touting their design, UI, UX strengths. “It just works”, “we made it better”, etc.

I wouldn't necessarily call that a blanket statement, though. I'm sure they don't mean power user functions are easy to learn. I think at that point there's just a general expectation that those who will be power users / need that type of functionality will be more than capable of figuring it out.

I was lucky to have a book which introduced Windows 95 and 98 before I got my own computer in 2005. It never occurred to me that a total newb might not guess about alt+tab.