Personally I think the media player in Maemo is fine, just like that with the iPod, one just has to embrace the logic in which Maemo works and so far it seems quite intuitive for me - different from the iPod of course. That doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement of course. For example, I agree it would could to be able to create a playlist from the playlist list directly.

1. Click the header while listening to music and click save playlist to start. You can then add new songs to it, for example, by clicking a song title in a list until a context menu appears that allows you to add it to the list - or you could do this from the title menu to add all songs in an album for example. "Total shuffle" you can get from the media player main menu.

2. According to the manual physical controls in headsets are not supported as the third connector is used for video out apparently. I guess the Bluetooth ones would work. I agree this is something that needs changing when Maemo goes mainstream! For a mobile computer, though, I don't mind - I never used remote with iPod touch either personally.

3. What is slow with the desktop widget in your phone? Seems OK to me. I think the updating frequency of the equalizer is quite lax, though.

Hope this helps some.