Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with the previous tab metaphor, nor do I think anyone has ever been confused as to what the controls would in fact control. Safari makes it extra clear by rendering its tabs upside down and attached to the UI chrome that makes up the titlebar, which holds the URL text box.

I think my daughter might get confused with the older style tabs. But then again, she's just learning to stack mega blocks, and when she strings together enough words to form a sentence, I can still only understand two or three of them.

What happens when a toolbar has items on it which affect the program as a whole? Do you instead go to a design with two toolbars, one above and one below the tabs? That seems like a move Microsoft would make. You know, before they started removing all toolbars from the browser.

Getting design cues from a company that forms a committee to pick a shade of blue is not really something I'd be very proud of.