I personally find the "Today" "Yesterday" crap annoying, but eh.
its a setting, nothing much more than that, and it can be turned on / off. but basiclly there just doing what everyone else is trying to. IBP is about to vb2 IMO
You will find that most message board software will add fetures to their product that used to be hacks for other message board software. A few years ago vBulletin was adding things to the stock feture set that had been modifications for the ubb.classic software for years. This is more or less the same thing.
I wish the IPB team luck They're excellent coders and are nice guys too. ! I have a sneaky feeling however that within a years time they'll be on par with vB...