I'm still having a tough time liking the split view. the problem is that even on a large UXGA monitor (1600x1200), I feel cramped when I cut the viewing space in half. And tabs, what do you guys use them for?
If you have a tab open with a playlist and a tab with Playing Now, is tab switching instantaneous? Perhaps it would be useful on my Not Rated playlist which randomly picks 20 songs. That way, the tab would keep the 20 songs constant until I rate them all (and allow me to switch views without losing the unique playlist generation).
Limited screen real estate, even on a 1680 x 1050 widescreen, is also why I never found any real use for splitting the view in half. Couple that with the limitations imposed by the global nature of the search bar, and I never went back to it.
What I did in the days before tabs, was to drag the view splitter down so that the bottom view was completely hidden, which gave me two full workspaces to mess with. Tabs have made this approach (which I could never quite manage to explain effectively) a whole lot easier to realise.
Tabs become very handy when it comes to managing different media types. Sure, strictly speaking, it's all one library, but in my mind's eye, my image library and my audio library are seperate things. They need different workflows and workspaces.
So, I kick off some music, then delve into my image library... some time later, I notice a track playing that has a slight tagging error that should be corrected now because with the best will in the world, 'later' means it won't get done!! or perhaps a track plays that makes me want to hear a particular album now...
Without the tabbed views, any of these audio related tasks would most likely result in my losing my place in my image library, but with tabbed views, it's just a simple mouse click to bring up the audio library in a different tab, do what's needed, then switch tabs and be back to work in my image library, which will be in the exact place I left it previously.
I guess, if you ever find yourself wanting to do something, but don't really want to leave the screen you're at either, then you found yourself a reason to use tabs.
My instinct was telling me that MC12 won't ship with tabs. Instead, they'd be used as the draw for v12.1 or v13. However, they've received such a rapturous reception, I'm not so sure now. The collective grumbling would be very loud in comparison to JRiver's "well, we did warn it was only experimental"
-marko.