* Flash acceleration seems to be both enabled and making a positive difference in smoothness.
* UI is noticeably smoother and we got a brighter text selection caret.
* New scrollable multitasking is welcome as I was frequently hitting the older limitation of handful apps listed there
* No crashes or force closes yet
* SD card STILL does not work which is ridiculous.
Support for USB devices is an interesting thing from a number of perspectives. I don't think it puts ChromeOS in jeopardy but I do think it means some great differentiation from the iPad. Looking at the Cellbots [1] stuff that has been done with Android I can imagine some cool things with a tablet and the even better capabilities.
It will be interesting to see what they do to replace Skype now that Microsoft has a plan to own it. Without the equivalent of 'facetime' (and yes I fully expect Microsoft to limit your rights to run a Skype client on any 'mobile device' that isn't running Windows Phone) they will need a replacement. Fortunately they have the video engine in GTalk.
[1] www.cellbots.com
GoogleTV+Android3.1+joysticks = console play... considering GoogleTV hasn't really been popular, this might be what it needs to make a splash in the living room.
Anyway, it doesn't really matter as long as the icecream release is tagged (and it will be), why would we care about a year old commit when the latest can be used instead?