Guys, you're mis-reading me. I did once chair a standards group and calmly brought together four warring corporations to produce something useful, but that was a one-off for me.

This situation isn't like that. I'm so close to losing my patience with Nokia.

Nokia talks about a cohesive community (look at the title of this thread) yet they divide it into us and them in the most patronising way.

Quim has asked for "concrete and specific". I've posted my request for "concrete and specific" reassurance, and if I don't get it then I'm out of here.

Nokia has spent bucketloads of money on open source, but don't appear to "get" how to make open source work for them.

They keep calling the N97 their pocket computer, which makes me wonder what the hell the N900 is supposed to be. OPK did it again in a Times interview today. In the same interview he keeps going on about how paid Ovi subscriptions are going to be Nokia's salvation. Well I sure hope the N900 isn't going to be carrier-locked with a compulsory Ovi subscription.

A lot is being made about the fancy-schmancy all-touch front end, but people will see through it. Just about every review of the HTC Touch says "TouchFlo is great; shame about Windows Mobile underneath". The same reviewers will say "Nokia-clutter is great; shame it's just Linux underneath". Meanwhile we can't even be confident about something as basic as whether the device will have the right kind of I/O to make it usable for our needs.

Nokia is really coming at this from exactly the wrong angle. Instead they should be pushing the power of the platform. The N900 should be Nokia's high-power "internet and a computer in your pocket" device, not their "anything iPhone can do we can try to do two years later" device.

Regards,
Roger