With any change, some people will be happy, others won't be. Reactions range from yours to this single change has convinced someone to stick with SONAR. I really don't know how many users
need not to be able to see one part out of many, compared to making it easier and more foolproof to select what they
do want to edit. As I said in a different thread, I suspect this will follow the same arc as the comping improvements in that this is about "phase 1." If enough people vote up a proposal to restore some of the "view filter" capabilities, and it can be done without disrupting attributes the majority of people want, then that increases the odds of those kinds of changes happening.
Personally, the new paradigm is
much better for the way I (and apparently many others) work with MIDI. But I understand that not everyone works the same way.