Nevermind the fact that some applications will be better off with hardware rendering (like playing a movie) one has to realize the following propositions:

1) Nokia wants to bring the NIT to a bigger market;
2) Nokia is aiming to improve the usability of the device;
3) Diablo has several usability related changes e.g. not requiring reflashing anymore, and the software update tray icon;
4) The hardware is there, right now, in at least the n8x0 series; unused;
5) Competitors are actively using this very hardware (e.g. smartphones), or going to use a revision of this hardware (Pandora);
6) Besides direct competitors, the main 3 OSes (latest NT series, Vista; latest OSX series, Leopard; latest Linux & X.Org 7.x based OSes) use this functionality.

Back to your question, a valid, related question would be:

What is more user-friendy
1) An error, with sound, with its own theme colour (e.g. gray), popping up on screen, with no hardware rendering;
2) An error, with sound, with its own theme colour (.e.g gray) popping up on screen, with hardware rendering;
3) An error, with sound, fading from the original background of the current application to its own theme colour (e.g. gray), popping up on screen, without hardware rendering;
4) An error, with sound, fading from the original background of the current application to its own theme colour (e.g. gray), popping up on screen, with hardware rendering?

Similar question can be asked related to the minimizing of an application.

What, do you think, feels the best to the user? Although, sure, it does depend on some technical factors there is a general concensus on the correct answer, and it is related to the way the human mind works, and we're talking about a visual interface; not CLI.

What is the first thing you do when someone physically attacks you on the street? You evade the attack.

Although, in the case of an error or information popup, you do want to get the attention of the user, you don't want to harm the peace of mind a user has when she minimizes an application. Therefore, the above minimizing example counts more than the information popup (cleverly picked to support your argument I give you that...), but it doesn't mean the example is irrelevant, and there is room for further development. For example, I would like to see an information popup showing where the heck it is related to. IOW, visually showing its parent application.