The lack of split panes was what made me switch to iTerm. I don't use it that often, but it's a "nice to have" feature. Terminal.app has split panes, but it's not "two sessions, side-by-side", rather "different windows into the same session", which I personally don't like much.

And you're right. You can't change the color profile like http://kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=86353 , which might be a bummer for some one like you (you can change the 16 ANSI colors to look less horrible though!).

Why no maximize button? I don't know the reasoning behind that, but I don't miss it. Full screen apps are amazing (for one monitor scenarios), and OS X has a nice handy feature called "Hide Others" (Command-Option-H) that gives you a distraction-free experience without making the app ridiculously large (and showing you a million white pixels!)

[1] touches upon this issue and has good arguments for it.

But of course, power users need more "power", so I also use the wonderful Moom[2] which combined with "Zoom" and "Full Screen" fulfills 100% of my windowing needs.

[1]: http://www.macyourself.com/2011/02/06/why-doesnt-mac-os-xs-g...

[2]: http://manytricks.com/moom/

I may be missing something but I don't see how it's different from what has been available since Lion (and since Tiger with a SIMBL plugin). I've been using Zenburn and Solarized since what seems like forever.

Nitpick: it's different. Cmd+D splits the current buffer in two allowing to view two parts of the same output without scrolling, whereas in iTerm2 it splits into two distinct buffers, each with its own shell.

I arguably prefer the Terminal.app feature, when I have the other one with window management like with Window Magnet, which happens to handle any window, not just what's inside the terminal (in which case I'd simply use vim or tmux splits)

Yes to all though you can only split windows horizontally. Terminal is a really good app. iTerm2 is great too but a little slower than Terminal in my experience.