Recently bought a Mac Book Pro after years of coding on Linux. Window management in Mac OS didn't make a lot of sense to me until reading your post.

I realized I wasnt really making full use of the gestures available. They do need a little bit of practice. As Apple is trying to make it as intuitive as possible so that you feel like you are actually using your fingers to interact with the windows its easy to forget how many fingers you are supposed to use.

Also the I'm finding the dock its an awful waste of space. The only useful thing they have are the stacks, which I wish I could move to the top somehow.