As a user to whom much of this is the "hidden magic" inside the phones, I don't really care what the version number is on my phone. Fine...upgrade me from 2.3 to 2.3.4 because of a bug fix....maybe just don't change the rev numbers? Call it an SP?

My Atrix 4G is running 2.3.4 (I imagine that you refer to that as a fork of 2.3?) Will it work on 3.0? 4.0? I assume that 3.0 is a big upgrade from 2.x and as such is designed for the hardware that is being made at the time of its development.

Does the OS developer talk to the hardware people? At Apple, it's the same company so I would assume "yes." I assume that MS would talk to the hardware people when they upgrade Windows.

So, we have OS developers working with hardware people. in MS's case, they decide to offer backwards compatibility to some hardware configurations but not all (think of all the older [read: 3+ years] computers that can't run Windows 7.) There has to be a time to cut the support cord for older hardware. New OS's tend to make older OS's subsets of the new OS.

What I want is a phone that will last 3+ years and be able to work on all OS's that are released. While that may not happen, I would like the OS developers to at least continue working on the OS until a decent period of time. Give my phone 5 years and I'll be happy...VERY happy!