And of course the more secretive they are about the release date the less tolerant people will be i.e. if Nokia finds a critical bug this week that delays the N900 into 2010 then people will think they knew all along it would be delayed until then and they were just stringing them along.

A lack of openness destroys trust and undermines confidence. It's all very well to say the "normal" user won't be affected by this but without techies and early adopters there will be no "normal" users.

If Nokia wants people to pay cash for a platform we know is far from final (i.e. Maemo 6 and the device that goes with it is closer to where Nokia wants to be) then they need to court those users. Inviting bloggers etc to events and giving them free devices is one thing but you need unassociated people to buy the device and spread the word about it.