alt Hacker NewsAny app should be ready to accept focus. It should never steal focus. When I start an app, and wait for it to launch, I am attempting to give it focus. I can withdraw that intent at any time by doing something else (e.g. switching apps) and the launching app should finish launching and wait in the background.
Your specific example is just repeating what I've said, but your generic point is wrong: let's say you have an important task in an app with unavoidable interruptions, during which you switch to your browser to mindlessly scroll.
You most likely want to return to the main task as soon as possible because that scrolling is just a time filler because you can't do anything productive. So you don't need any notification and extra action, just switch back asap and continue work with as little interruption as possible.
But even in the specific example that depends entirely on what you're switching from and to and for what reason. If it's for something quick non-interactive (I don't know, switch to a file browser to check the file name or something), then yes, you'd prefer to seamlessly be switched back to the main app to do the thing you launched it for.
But if it's not an important app, then yeah, you just want it to be ready for you and switch to it whenever you decide to avoid the launching delay later