It took the Motif XF years to get to 1.50. And yet here we are already with the Montage! 🙂
Not a fair comparison! The Montage is first of its name... the XF was fourth of its name!
The roadmap for the Montage has scheduled improvements throughout its lifecycle. The Motif (classic) 2001, first of its name, got to 1.70 (in its second year). And finally to 1.90...by 2005. Now granted it got there, a full two years after it was discontinued (in 2003).
There were major corrections in computer audio back then (if you remember)... things went from coaxial to mLAN/FW in 2003 (Motif ES), and the storage went from SmartMedia and SCSI to SmartMedia and USB. Wild times! 🙂