Just to answer this specifically as it it "my topic" (well, one of them) in this Council. While budgetary constraints and other issues prevent hiring dedicated staff, there ARE several measures / projects started recently to facilitate streamlining the QA process and improving app quality - like the supertester initiative and specialized apps - see the freshly released KISStester. These were published and advertized on respective lists and here on talk, but not (yet) officially blogged about as they are still being tweaked, "in beta" if you wish.

That said, I invite you (and all interested parties) to join the testing squad and help improving extras app quality and reliability.

http://wiki.maemo.org/Testing_Squad