Meanwhile, everyone that has seen me enjoy my N800 has either gone out and bought one as well or has been asking if whether they should wait for the next new one.

As recently as a couple of days ago, a friend out of Boston was asking me whether he should get an N810, an iPod Touch or wait for the next thing from Nokia. I can't, in honesty, recommend an iPod Touch--either get an iPod or an iPhone. touch.. ugh. But then there's the N810.. or the next thing. How can I, in all good conscience, tell him that he should wait on the next Nokia device? How can I recommend the N810, seeing as how we're already being led out to pasture now?

He's not a geek but he likes technology. He wasn't interested in the openness, necessarily.. he just wanted to have what he's seen me have--a pretty good experience. I'm also very likely to be the person he'll call for support and with questions. Then there's my very ungeeky sister (doesn't want to hack at all) who now has the N800 and she seems to love it despite the limitations that I feel it has.

If you take a good, open and hackable product and just use it (ie: you're not a geeky hacker) , you can still have a very useful product so long as it's also designed well for someone to just pick it up and use it. Being open just means that people like me can recommend or even write really great apps for people like them. iPhone and iPod is only evidence of marketing genious (think: Cabbage Patch Kids back in 1984) and word-of-mouth (think Commodore 64 back in 1984), not of the success or lack of openness (think: Apple back in 1984).