Actually they did :-) The first iPhone was missing a lot of what people now take for granted on it, according to numerous reports.

Therein lies the problem.

Nokia is also trying to make an open source friendly device, to tap into that enthusiasm, knowledge and skill.

"A little bit dangerous..."

Which means they needed to start a lot of things from the beginning. Or at least, they had to go back a way. They couldn't take what had taken a lot more development than you might imagine, and just drop it onto this device.

The issues that bother you are really very hard to solve and take many years to get right. Sure, you can polish one thing (like the scrolling), but then you don't finish something else.

In tapping into open source, they seem to have gone for the idea that ongoing improvement with a solid base is better than polishing the pretty bits with a weak base, because the longer term result will be better all round and make us all happy, even if this stage isn't as pretty as it could have been.

Apple went the other way: make the basic things as pretty as possible, but be quite limited underneath, and don't make everything underneath actually reliable for a few releases either :-)

Ongoing improvement is the route Apple took, too, but the way it's talked about you'd get the impression every iPhone has been perfect the day it was released.

Anyways, thanks for starting this thread. The N900 does need to be thoroughly criticised so we know what people care about and can focus on improving those in particular.

And because it's relatively open, I can say "we can improve" as a non-employee :-) You don't get that with the iPhone.

As an embedded device developer, my initial impressions (without one in my hand) are that the hardware's pretty good, and the great majority of the concerns raised so far can be fixed in software.

It remains to be seen whether they will be fixed, though. Time, attention and energy are limited. But the other platforms face that problem too. Maemo has a good chance if it excites developers to work on it - not just on apps, but core improvements. And the hardware's good enough that big improvements in the user experience are, at least, possible with software updates alone.

I agree that it may make a less good impression on "ordinary" smartphone buyers. That's unfortunate. I think Nokia's taken a gamble on releasing it in this state, and I have no idea how that's going to work out commercially or in terms of reputation. But if I worked for Nokia, I would have been pushing them to make this gamble :-)

I hope it is commercially very successful, as that'll result in more people developing for it and supporting it for longer. But it remains to be seen.