Yes it is, more or less. This functionality is badly broken (by default) for international users. As the poster above you said, the ` key changes place in different keyboard layouts.
I'm using a ISO/Spanish layout and the day I discovered that Cmd+` hotkey I just couldn't figure out why the hell that key would be mapped to "switch between windows of the same app". After googling for a while, I found out what the ANSI/US keyboard layout is, and only then the hotkey made sense. Just for reference the backtick key is right next to the "P" letter in the ISO/ES layout.
Now the first thing I do when sitting in front of an OSX computer is to remap that hotkey to Cmd+ยบ, which is the same physical key in ISO/ES than ` in ANSI/US. I seriously doubt that most international OSX users know about this hotkey though. I have a few (non-techie) friends using OSX now, and none of them knew about it...
Wow, I would've thought at least OS X mapped that to "key over tab" rather than literally alt-`... (Which is the key left of backspace with the shift modifier on a Norwegian layout...).
Incidentally, I've several times considered modifying that when writing shell scripts ... on the other hand, it does make one try to use the $(...) over `...` as much as possible, which when it makes sense, makes for easier/safer handling of backspaces etc ... so not every inconvenience is a disadvantage...
I'm using a ISO/Spanish layout and the day I discovered that Cmd+` hotkey I just couldn't figure out why the hell that key would be mapped to "switch between windows of the same app". After googling for a while, I found out what the ANSI/US keyboard layout is, and only then the hotkey made sense. Just for reference the backtick key is right next to the "P" letter in the ISO/ES layout.
Now the first thing I do when sitting in front of an OSX computer is to remap that hotkey to Cmd+ยบ, which is the same physical key in ISO/ES than ` in ANSI/US. I seriously doubt that most international OSX users know about this hotkey though. I have a few (non-techie) friends using OSX now, and none of them knew about it...