I hope the movement towards standardization in Maemo means we'll get standard desktop elements; the background, panels, app menu, theme, icons, etc will be closer to the desktop (Gnome / GTK+) standards for these elements.

As it is, hildon-desktop is this monolithic blob with a fairly non-standard theme engine that provides very little access to those of us who would like to mix-and-match Hildon elements with other desktops. How do I get the Hildon menu to display in XFCE or LXDE? Can I get the icons for nifty Hildon plugins like the presence indicator, or connection manager to show up in other panels, please?

And of course, we've all talked about going the other way. I would like to see other apps being able to run under Maemo without much hassle.

I don't mind if Nokia uses fancy, whizzy graphics or whatever for Fremantle, or builds a nice finger UI, as long as they don't break standards to do it. Please, Nokia, aim for minimal "hildonization" here. If the app follows GTK+ standards, it should be able to use the Hildon input method, it should look "correct" on the maemo / hildon "desktop", it should be able to use the hardware keys, etc., etc...

Again, I want to stress that I think tablet-oriented apps are the ideal here, but I think it should be as painless as possible for developers to port desktop apps to the Maemo world.