I'm using the "awesome WM" under Linux and I find it much more convenient to have "virtual desktops" and always organize them the same way (1 for personal GMail + Google Docs, 2 for terminals, 3 for Emacs, 4 for professional email, 5 for an IDE, 6 for browsing the web, etc.) and be able to directly go to the one desktop that I need using a shortcut.
It's beats tabbing / cycling between opened apps any day.
As a side benefit, each virtual desktop can have it's own windows layouts: you like your GMail / Google Docs to be full screen, use a full screen layout. You like your IDE to use 2/3rd of the screen and a browser used for testing to use the rest: so be it.
The problem with your method is that you lose lost of time tabbing / cycling and then for the 1% of the time where you need a layout more complicated than "one windows visible" you spend time picking up the windows you want to show (and potentially manually fine-tuning their position using the mouse).
So you hardly see any value in a window manager but others hardly see the value in losing time tabbing / cycling endlessly between apps when a single shortcut can display the app(s) they want in the layout they want.
Just moved to a MBP Retina for the hardware after using Linux for years, and the main thing I miss is Awesome WM.
After looking at Divvy, SizeUp and several others, finally settled on ShiftIt (primarily because of key shortcuts for resizing horizontally by custom percentages), but may have to give Slate a try...ShiftIt helps, but still no comparison to a decent Tiling WM like Awesome.
It's beats tabbing / cycling between opened apps any day.
As a side benefit, each virtual desktop can have it's own windows layouts: you like your GMail / Google Docs to be full screen, use a full screen layout. You like your IDE to use 2/3rd of the screen and a browser used for testing to use the rest: so be it.
The problem with your method is that you lose lost of time tabbing / cycling and then for the 1% of the time where you need a layout more complicated than "one windows visible" you spend time picking up the windows you want to show (and potentially manually fine-tuning their position using the mouse).
So you hardly see any value in a window manager but others hardly see the value in losing time tabbing / cycling endlessly between apps when a single shortcut can display the app(s) they want in the layout they want.