If you press Cmd-Tab, then let go, and press Cmd-Tab again, yes, you get back to the first application you were in.
If you press Cmd-Tab, hold Cmd, and keep hitting Tab, you cycle through the available applications.
If you press Cmd-`, get the window you want, and do something in it, then press Cmd-` again, you get back to the first window you were in.
If you press Cmd-` repeatedly, you cycle through the available windows of the active application.
There is a slight difference in how you trigger the two behaviours—and the behaviour of Cmd-` can sometimes be a little opaque, I grant, since "do something in the window" is not always 100% clear, either to the user or the computer—but they do have analogous behaviours.
You've swapped from application 1 to application 2
Press Cmd, Press tab, Release tab, Release tab
You swap from application 2 to application 1
That if you type something after swapping window and the behaviour changes is even worse!
For cycling
Press Cmd, Press Tab, release Tab, Press Tab, Release Tab, you can move from application 1 to application 3, although it doesn't switch immediately, just shows you a menu while you hold down Cmd
Do this with windows and the actual window changes as you move, not a menu
It's poor behaviour and one reason I prefer my linux desktop to my anicent macbook. (Another reason, I've got about 15 opwn terminals, but I can't just raise 1 terminal window above my browser, I have to raise them all. Of course there's no focus-follows-mouse either, it's all very user-unfriendly, at least by default. I'm sure there's some software that might fix this, but back in the 90s when I was using Windows I remember that sort of software was just terrible. The easier option is to finally fix my linux laptop, which died around the time covid started, and thus wasn't a critical path fix)
If you press Cmd-Tab, hold Cmd, and keep hitting Tab, you cycle through the available applications.
If you press Cmd-`, get the window you want, and do something in it, then press Cmd-` again, you get back to the first window you were in.
If you press Cmd-` repeatedly, you cycle through the available windows of the active application.
There is a slight difference in how you trigger the two behaviours—and the behaviour of Cmd-` can sometimes be a little opaque, I grant, since "do something in the window" is not always 100% clear, either to the user or the computer—but they do have analogous behaviours.