Quite right. I would have had this discussion publicly last year and products ready to go this year.

When will these tools come to fruition? Talk is incredibly cheap.

Time to deliver or you will entice nobody.

Let's face it. The request(s) for games, 3D engines, location aware apps, have taken a backseat to bash, emacs, tcp/ip stacks, and root access with Open Office being thrown around to counter the MS Office announcement(s).

No disrespect, but that does show a tremendously different mindset. And nothing is wrong with that at all. The Nokia Maemo set is a different set. If I want to play Touch KO - made with Unity 3D 2.5 - on my iPhone, I crank it up, play for a bit, enjoy the 3D textured, motion captured boxers in their multi-touch glory, close that app, check for any sales via the Priceless Picks - which has MasterCard and Amazon backing - for any sales nearby using my location, and head out of the house using the Trapster app that tells me if any cops have been seen near my house before I hot-foot it out in my car too fast.

With that said, I don't see any of that here on this site. We have apps that work... some damn well. I can't attack that. I won't.

But I see immediate responses to "I don't want iFart apps". I don't either. But the media centered on that stuff... because well nobody thought it was wanted and it sold. Somehow. Oh well... can't say that people all have good tastes.

And that goes both ways. Yet, to sit here, read an entire thread of IT professionals that are as far removed from the mainstream middle as the iFart puerile app purchasers too. Deliver the goods that were semi-delivered last generation. Video using the camera... that means get Skype, Gizmo, Fring, RTCom involved.

Office suite stuff... you got Microsoft involved on Symbian, and once the N900 is officially released, I'm sure there will be another announcement.

But to sit here and not notice that what's been talked about will never entice an Apple iPhone dev - lack of tools, lack of focus, lack of interest - as an registered iPhone dev, I'd not dev for this platform because it doesn't have the audience I'd seek for my products.

Perhaps if I made stuff that tweaked the dbus, bluetooth stack, or something like that... yeah. But location aware or entertainment apps... not mentioned here enough to cause interest.

I'm sure your typical stalwarts will gladly reward you with yet another thanks for anything else you state; but seriously. How many shells, emacs/vi/pico editors do I really need on a phone?