But if you're Cmd+Tabbing between your two apps, the Finder is always the 3rd icon and you never get to it.
You'll literally never accidentally tab into the Finder unless you press Cmd+Tab,Tab -- which is awfully hard to do by accident.
The author says Finder "has an insatiable thirst for keystrokes". I say accidentally Cmd+Tabbing into the Finder is one of the strangest complaints about OSX I've ever come across.
(from the author) Can totally understand how for some folks this isn't an issue at all. But for spastic me it was a stubborn one I found myself losing time on. Perhaps in part because I have my repeat rate jacked way up using KeyRemap4Macbook - http://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook/.
I'd Cmd-Tab my way into Finderland a few times a day and inadvertently trigger new Finder windows instead of new Chrome windows with Cmd+N - stuff like that.
Getting Finder out of the rotation prevents this from happening. While I still might double-tab back to the original window, I usually spot that before too much typing b/c it's where my eyes originally were looking.
And aesthetically I'll always take the less number of icons when I can.
It can be frustrating when having a minimalist workspace. The frustrations occur from having no Finder windows open and accidentally CMD+Tabbing to it (quickly). Finder doesn't have to be the First item available in the Application switcher either, it is an ordered list from application launch order. (So if Finder crashes and relaunches it can be 2nd).
The potential problematic behaviour comes from the fact that the new lion feature of closing background apps only seems to apply to SOME applications and not all. So quicktime will close when it enters the background with nothing open whereas Finder will not.
You'll literally never accidentally tab into the Finder unless you press Cmd+Tab,Tab -- which is awfully hard to do by accident.
The author says Finder "has an insatiable thirst for keystrokes". I say accidentally Cmd+Tabbing into the Finder is one of the strangest complaints about OSX I've ever come across.