I think this is quite good view. Iphone is made to be easy to use, which also usually means that it isn't that versatile. Take the "home pages" for example: for iPhone, you have several pages of applications. It's easy to lauch what you want but you only have the applications there. With N900, it takes some time to tweak it to be what you want, but you can get pretty much what you want. Some people prefer the easyness, some people want the versatility.

With N900, you might actually need to read the manual (or from somewhere else) to learn how to use it. But at least when I have tried it (still waiting for mine..) the user experience was good.

I would recommend reading reviews about the N900 to understant what it is exactly, what it can do and what it can't. Generally people tend to say that if you want primarly a phone, go for N97 and symbian (or something else), and if you want primarly an internet device (browsing, messaging, VoIP etc), then go for the N900.