Now I'm a Nokian, but now I'll try to speak here as me the consumer, not as me the company representative: I wouldn't buy a device if I wouldn't be satisfied with the things the device offers me out of the box. And as a consumer I also know that whatever gizmo I will buy, new and better ones will surely come.

To compare, I bought the Nikon D300 camera about 8 months ago. Now there is the D90 and D700 and others, giving better value and new features. I'm still happy with my D300, it takes great pictures. I've also bought a lot of stuff which got outdated almost instantly. Sony MiniDiscs got replaced by the iPod quickly, they were still good for a few things.

I didn't buy the 770 or the N800 because for me it wasn't yet the device I would have wanted for myself. (Hey well yes, we got those devices of course anyway.) I didn't recommend it to my friends either. We're - and I'm - working hard so that one day this will be different. I wouldn't continue working here if I didn't see this day coming. I really hope people see new products, both in terms of hardware and software, as positive things, signs that there are progress and better things coming.

I at least measure success in this case by popularity. No company has infinite resources. If I would be in charge - and I'm not - I would much rather invest and focus the efforts on getting great hardware and great software out. The more good software and solutions there is for a given platform, the more good backwards compatibility is needed. But if there is a choice between working for backwards compatibility for HW and SW that is not as good as it can be, or working for the future, for stuff which allows building great solutions and user experiences, I as a designer would choose the latter.

No compatibility is free, this is true for the entire device SW stack, and even for the UI layer. Something as basic as moving towards touch usability makes full backwards compatibility really hard, and having it would fragment the device UI. After we reach something really great then I would be much more worried about compatibility than what I am right now.