I'm with you there.
6 karma · joined November 7, 2012
Claudio (one of the developers) here.
The motivation is that you can interact with the content of the panes both with shortcuts and programmatically, as an example I can link you this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=J...
The other advantage is that if for any reason iTerm crashes or is closed by mistake, you can resume your session.