I wish there were a non-overlapping window manager like XMonad that I could use with OS X. Spending time arranging windows feels wasteful.

Multiple tiling windows is an idea long past it's prime and I've never been keen on Apple's particular take on this model.

Quite often I find that bringing Finder to the front covers the whole screen with the 16 or so Finder windows that I forgot that I had open and which bear no relation to the task I am currently trying to perform. A single window finder with a history and a way to split into two or four tiles might be better.

Of course the tricky thing is making this work for naive users as well as power users. This isn't an easy problem but naive users struggle massively with the current model too and that's not especially optimal for power users either.

It almost sounds like you're wishing for an Apple version of the ratpoison window manager, which was my primary working environment until recently:

http://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/

Of course, that was in gnu/linux, but copying the style would be easy.

At work, I run ratpoison on my Mac. About the only programs I use are xterm and firefox, and they can both run under X11.

A quick and easy way to get similar functionality is to use the "Hide Others" option when you right click on the active window in the Dock (hold the Option key to get it) Of course it only hides other applications -- not windows of the same application.

Another way is to hold down option when switching app by clicking another app's window or dock icon.

This will hide the current app and all its windows, and it's already enabled by default on os x.

If you like this option, you will probably like Isolator: http://willmore.eu/software/isolator/

By default, it puts the focus on the current app by blurring whatever is behind it. It's pretty customizable and can do things like hiding all other apps automatically, putting a backdrop, etc. The blur effect might work better than just hiding for some people.

One other nice thing is that it lives in the menu bar and can be called with a keyboard shortcut. So, it doesn't have to be 'on' at all times.

edit: this or other utilities and shortcuts mentioned in the comments of the article itself

I personally love Cmd+Opt+H, especially when I'm working with Interface Builder.

Pretty nifty. Really does make it less cluttered. I usually have a bunch of browser windows open each with like 10 tabs, email app, terminal, skype, komodo, IM, itunes, ... list goes on.

It kinda reminds me of how my Amiga used to work. You used to be able to drag full-screens by their title bar up and down and switch between them using an icon at the top right.

As noted in OP comments, cmd+opt click on dock icon hides others.