how to invoke the app switcher?

Yeah, maybe it doesn't play well with something I've got on the system, though there's very little on my Lion install at the moment in the way of 3rd party apps.

In any case, looks like I'll have to wait to see if Mountain L. restores this feature natively. Thx for your suggestions though.

Yeah, but that a $7 app — a bit steep if you ask me just to be able to restore a single gesture I can already do on my Snow Leopard install.

Perhaps I could ask Apple for a $7 refund on the money I paid for Lion...actually, if I asked them for a refund for all the lost functionality, I'd end up making a profit...

I posted this idea way back on the 1st page, but reading back I realize I misdescribed, saying 'Mission Control' when I meant Launchpad.

The trick is this: you can invoke Launchpad with a trackpad gesture. Since Mac OS won't let you run more than one instance of an app, if you click on the app in LP it will switch you to that app. The only difference between doing it this way and the old app switcher way is you can't actually tell which apps are already running (but then, that doesn't matter if you know what app you want to use).

To make this effective, you'd have to arrange Launchpad so that all your most common used apps are on the first screen (not a problem in my case - i have hundreds of apps but I probably only use a dozen of them on a regular basis) and ideally on the top row. When that's the case, this is just as fast and convenient as the old app switcher gesture.