Frankly, even the N900 had an easier to use interface than Android. All those buttons on the front, the weird long press "multi" tasking, the awkward browser, etc.
The N9 is just N900 lite, but with an even simpler interface. I hope it's still as customizable as Maemo 5 (in the theme changing sense)

I don't mind running with slightly worse hardware if the software is optimized enough for there not to be a difference. Except for gaming, of course, though that's not much of an issue for me.