Ok so just for the sake of arguing..

What devices had 1.0??? I think the G1 had 1.1 and was upgraded to 1.5.

So, on actual devices we've had 1.1, 1.5, 1.6 and 2.0. (I don't think 2.1 is on an actual device you can buy yet?).

Now, Those were all phones.

Maemo has OS2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 (with Diablo), that all ran on non phones.

Now, most people seem to think that OS2009/Fremantle 5/whatever entire UI is a *significant* improvement over 2008's UI. This is similar to the hype you're seeing for the Nexus 1's new UI for Android. Sure, it looks nice - they are doing something right, but why ignore what the N900 also did right on IT'S UI improvment??

Also in so doing, Fremantle had to change a bunch of the insides of the OS to make it practically new - and is the only one of all the previous OS's to be on a device that can make real phone calls, not VOIP. Android, because of it's dalvik-centric design was able to run SOME previous apps.. but there was hella problems from 1.5 to 1.6 IIRC due to Android limitations hard coded into the OS.

So listing out the OS cycles still doesn't change much... as Android has had little over 2 years of active development of phone devices, where Maemo's version just came out a few months ago. Lessons learned of somethings can of course be applied from 2005-2008.. but actual software and codebase cannot. It's a whole new take of Maemo.

Is it a good or bad thing Maemo decided to completely restructure? That all depends on if Maemo can catch up... by most accounts the UI, responsiveness, navigation/menu's are a huge improvement over OS2008 and prior - so they have moved in the right direction - But now they need very fast and rapid development of bug fixes for the new codebase. Since the phone has only been out a couple months tho.. I can't say they haven't done that yet. The phone came out in Oct? Nov? And people were crying they didn't have a new firmware by December? Seriously?

Also.. a lot of people are yelling at Nokia for lack of apps... Even google has a very minute set of core apps that are from "google".. Youtube, Browser, Market, Email, etc. All the other Apps are from third party developers - not Google.

You cannot compare third party apps between platforms... that is entirely dependent on the developers - not the parent company. Developers will go where there are users.. it's catch-22 world in that aspect. What you *can* compare is a stock OS', and if you want, apps released officially from the Parent.

I don't think the actual "stock" OS from what I've read is causing anybody any real problems.. most of people complaints are in the apps - Ovi Store, Map software, GPS, etc. Fremantle I think everyone is pretty happy with (unless I'm wrong?)

I don't see where it mentions whether 2.1 Android has flash built-into the browser.. does it? Does the Droid? Is it Flash 9.4 or higher?

The lack of an Ovi Store, bad map software, and bad GPS could be legitimate complaints - as these are shared from Android to Maemo. Market, Google Maps, and Navigation. However, Navigation just recently hit android.. before that the navigation software of the Android sucked too.