So you could have argued the N810 was a "first" because it was the first Maemo tablet with hardware keyboard and GPS. And, of course, the N800 was a "first" because it was the first Maemo tablet with camera and stereo speakers.

I'm basically on your side, all this whining is ridiculous. People blaming the N900 for not being what it's not meant to be are telling more about themselves than about the device here...

Anyway, one thing is true: All the buzz about Maemo 5 and how new and fresh and innovative and bleeding edge it is... all rubbish. It's the same old Maemo we've had for years. Look what's under the hood. X11, GTK, DBUS, Telepathy, Modest, MicroB, BusyBox, etc etc... Whats so grand and new about Maemo 5 compared to Maemo 4? They put a new UI on top. Well. That's only the icing and has little to do with the OS. When we speak of Maemo in terms of how long does it exist, how much time did it have to evolve, why aren't these features integrated yet or those bugs fixed... When we do that, we have to acknowledge that Maemo 5 did not magically appear out of the blue in 2009. Not doing so (and quite a few people try this trick) is just wrong.

Having said all that - well, I think it does show that Maemo has a long history and is not the first iteration of a brand new OS. It's rock stable, it's a joy to use (even for me, although Nokia doesn't support 60% of my old tablet-use-cases any longer), I'd even call it addictive. Nothing much to complain about - except that I don't use it as a phone because I hate touch screens on phones.