I think the reason the number/quality of apps is relatively low at the moment is simply because the Maemo development community is so small. I'd put this down to the initial hardware offering being less than compelling, the 770 was cool but flawed (too little processor power/memory), hence the reason I never bought one. After buying an N800 and playing with it for 3 days I'm convinced this situation will now change as the hardware seems very capable.

Since replacing my PowerBook with a MacPro desktop I've felt using the PowerBook for casual browsing on the couch was complete overkill (and cooking my balls at the same time!) With the N800 I have something perfectly suited to the task of casual browsing and a cool, ahem, *lap*