UITabBarController in UISplitViewController with Storyboard - uinavigationcontroller

Question

I have UISplitViewController with UITabBarController as its master. UITabBarController contains one UINavigationController with UITableViewController as its root (it is main menu of my app).
After tapping on any cell in main menu, in UISplitViewController's detail part another UITableViewController should be presented (let's call it detail view).
In landscape mode everything works OK.
But in portrait, whet I tap on cell in main menu, the detail view is presented modally, and not pushed, like it supposed to. Also, when rotating from landscape to portrait, the main menu is presented instead of detail view, and after I click on main menu's position to show detail view, it is presented modally with no possibility to rotate or to go back.
Removing UITabBarController and setting UINavigationController as UISplitViewController's master works as I want (in landscape mode we have menu|detail views side by side and in portrait mode controllers behave like they were on regular UINavigationController). But then the UITabBarController is gone.
What I've tried:
every possible segue type - none of them works the way I want
subclassing UIStoryboardSegue to implement custom behavior depending on UISplitViewController's viewControllers param (in portrait mode it has only one view controller - master) - but I couldn't recognise classes (thank you Swift!)
What I want is to do it entirely in Storyboard (OK, custom segues doesn't count) - I want an elegant solution and I refuse to believe it's impossible.
Working on iOS 8 SDK, Xcode 6.2, iPhone 6 Plus

Answer 1

Unfortunately there is no absolutely elegant solution to this one (as far as I've managed to accomplish). Hoping that Apple will eventually sort it out, but in the meantime, this is the nicest way possible:
Place one custom segue instead of Show Detail
In perform method of your custom segue have something like:
- (void)perform
{
MasterViewController *source = self.sourceViewController;
AppDelegate *appDelegate = [UIApplication sharedApplication].delegate;
UISplitViewController *splitViewController = appDelegate.splitViewController;
if ([splitViewController.viewControllers count] > 1) {
[source performSegueWithIdentifier:#"showDetail" sender:source];
if (appDelegate.masterPopoverController) {
[appDelegate.masterPopoverController dismissPopoverAnimated:YES];
}
} else {
[source performSegueWithIdentifier:#"showDetailSmallDevice" sender:source];
}
}
[splitViewController.viewControllers count] is here just to separate large devices (iPads & iPhone 6 Plus) and the other, smaller ones
In your Storyboard, wire up one segue named showDetail which is actually a showDetail, to the detail navigation controller, and directly to the contents view controller another showDetailSmallDevice which is actually Show
(Push)
See the example:
http://i.stack.imgur.com/GQpg3.png

Answer 2

EDIT: SplitViewController needs two Navigation Controllers. The solution is that you need to insert another Navigation Controller between the SplitViewController and the DatailViewController. Then, from the TableView, preform a Segue directly to the second Navigation Controller. The SplitViewControllers wants two Navigation Controllers...
Maybe a good way could be to start a new SplitViewController project on IB. There are various default methods and properties to manage a SplitViewController. You can find something in appDelegate class, it could be a good starting point.
OLD: I like Mateusz's answer, just a point that is possible to use self.splitViewController.isCollapsed for testing if DetailViewController is or it could be shown on screen. With this property there is no need to count viewControllers.
#property(nonatomic, readonly, getter=isCollapsed) BOOL collapsed
From documentation: A Boolean value indicating whether only one of the child view controllers is displayed. This property is set to YES when the split view controller content is semantically collapsed into a single container. Collapsing happens when the split view controller transitions from a horizontally regular to a horizontally compact environment. After it has been collapsed, the split view controller reports having only one child view controller in its viewControllers property.