I agree that performance is still an issue, but there are many useful apps that largely deal with information and it's display and performance is less of a concern.

The "Web will rule them all" statement is partially inspired from the fact that HTML5 will include the facilities for offline use of web apps. It really is a significant spec that will give web apps tremendous benefits and make them far more comparable to native apps in functionality. Of course, there will be lower performance, again for many apps lower performance will be rather adequate.

Anyway, Canonical is working on an android layer so that apps will run natively in Ubuntu. When this happens, the N900 should be able to run Android apps without an emulation layer, and at full speed with a port of the layer. A benefit of the write-once-run-anywhere model.

}:^)~