I wonder if the next Steve Jobs will be whoever puts on his turtleneck and blue jeans, The Santa Clause-style.

I had to learn Kanji (albeit much fewer than you'll have to for Chinese) when I took Japanese in college, and the easiest way I found to learn the characters is to memorize what the simplest characters look like first. That way, the more complicated ones are just combinations of things you already recognize. Plus, their meanings are usually related in some way. Beyond that, a program named Anki helped me a great deal with learning the Kanji since I didn't have to spend a ton of time for characters that were easy to learn.

I don't know that they really need to fit the "tab" metaphor any more than word processors need to stick to typewriting conventions. Seems like most web browsers have the same tabbing behavior, after all. I would think the usability of a system where the tabs are forced to attach to their pages would introduce more problems than benefits, and most of the benefits would be purely cosmetic. $0.02.

"phantom".