Shouldn't devices button or device itself appear when iPad is connected?

I connected iPad to Mac and iTunes (version 11) did not come up automatically. I started iTunes and no device or device button was visible anywhere, although other posts said it should be in menu bar. I finally figured out the menu bar was for the store, but I could not see any way to navigate elsewhere. Finally I saw a post that said to use View>Sidebar to get to "old type of display". I did that, and there indeed was the iPad device, which I could then click to get to its menu. My question is: Is this the only way to get from the store menu to a device? That is, do I have to use a display option that is supposedly just there to appeal to users of previous versions? This seems very strange. The only way I could figure out to get from store menu to a device is to use View>Sidebar. That seems very, very counterintuitive and awkward. What am I missing?