While weird when introduced, in hindsight this is exactly the right behavior, because it is the most user-friendly and it makes e.g. software updates a non-issue. Even apps like iTerm can be updated and restarted in-place, retaining all the sessions.
It's a testament to how bad Linux UX still is that this sort of idea is not only utterly alien, but instead some developers thought it was acceptable to kill running apps outright.