Exactly this. As an android developer, I'll developer my applications for the broadest range of devices that I can support. I know eventually ICS will take off,

Exactly this. As an android developer, I'll developer my applications for the broadest range of devices that I can support. I know eventually ICS will take off, but for now 80% of the market is >= 2.2. This is just another wrench thrown into the cog of advancing Android development. They pretty much have to break all their conventions before moving forward which is a pain in the ass to work through. Also, if Google actually cared about it's developers, wouldn't it make sense for them to back this decision up with an official library to support an action bar on other OSs? There's third party libraries that you can use but it just goes to show again that Google just doesn't really care which state their developers are in.