There are other great reasons for using tabs. Here are some:

- Tab groups as bookmarks. For instance, I have tab groups for cartoons, daily news, apple news, etc; where each such group is a set of sites I regularly visit. My morning browsing, hence, is just a couple of clicks, and a couple of close-tab actions, instead of having to load close to 25 sites one after the other.

- on a related topic, the fact that I get feedback on what pages are loading/have loaded allows me to make better use of my time: typically, I'll read faster sites while the slower sites are loading, and have clear feedback on when the slow ones complete loading.

responding to some of your comments, the point is choice: the presence of tabs doesn't preclude multiple open windows, so, for instance, you can still do side-by-side comparisions if you wanted.

i think they do serve a purpose. that having been said, Apple is known to come up with innovative solutions to problems, so maybe all we need to do is hold our breath?