it's not much of a tuning for msn out of the box, i don't think apple had the same criticism for it's out of the box usage. i find it's easier for people to look at a negative and forget all the innovations out of the box. Apple had alot of major innovations. MS had alot of innovations. we'd not be where we are today if people just looked at the negitive and said ordinary users won't do that.
why would nokia scrap it's own messaging system and leave it stagnate for someone elses? their goal is to build their own services and out of the box support is the best way.

Also aim is mainly a NAM service, MSN is used widely in europe. but in india and china where there are billions of people to cater for there's major opportunity for nokia to expand on it's services and they are doing it.

sorry for going off topic there, now thats out of my system. i think they are calling it a geek device because of it's early stage that maemo is at and isn't as user friendly as they would like it to be.

maemo 6 device or their second maemo 5 device will be more user friendly and less geek centric. (that is my understanding of it from what they have been saying with regards to the future.)

Edit:
i also think it's more of a media reference to it being a geek phone then anything else. reviewers like to sound cool too and coin terms and labels on devices.