Visual Studio 2012 includes an overhauled Team Explorer client for connecting to Team Foundation Server 2012 (TFS) and the hosted TFS service currently known as TFS Preview.
One of Microsoft's goals with this release of Visual Studio was to have "raving fans". They want users of Visual Studio to be so happy with the experience that they go and tell others about it and how great it is to use. One part of meeting this goal has been to improve the experience developers have when using TFS and, as a result, a number of the main friction and pain points people have had are now smoothed over. In addition a number of new features have also been added to make using TFS more compelling for developers.
The most visible change is in Team Explorer with the transition from a tree view of items to a set of task-based hubs built around the activities that developers need to perform.
The second is the introduction of local workspaces for source control and the decision to make these the default...