I read the anti-tab rant linked to by this article. The author of that is a pompous idiot, but this "ClassicMacland" comment is making the same mistake. It's hard to see how tabs on 8 or 9 are any less prominent than in X. And the general concept of "flipping the page" on a window's contents using a row or column of controls can be seen with the System 6 Control Panel... the current System Preferences app in X is like a very poor version of that.
One thing I wish would change with tabbed browsing, though, is having tabs on the side instead of along the top. I hate seeing tabs and tab names shrink Windows Taskbar Style. Stick them in a side bar so that the width doesn't change and the names can be read.
Hell, if the OS X Finder had a tab/favorites sidebar, this would be a big improvement over using Dock aliases, and the single-window navigation mode would probably gain more traction among long time Mac users... and then maybe Steve Jobs could stop pouting about users cluttering their desktops.