Thanks for helping clearing this up.
It should be
Communities are overrated but can't be ignored.

There is a lot of research about this now going on. That is important. Yes, you point right according to Rogers early adopters. The new paradigm is called Open Innovation an that is fine but very work intensive. You need community managers who get the ideas from communities and bringing them to the mass. Both Apple and Google did this in a very bad taste.
By the open workhorse metaphor I was seeking for a good compromise, a so called bull**** bingo win-win situation.
The multitasking issue is an excellent point to look behind. We want to have the control over the devices we payed for. I didn't went for iPhone or Android because I don't want Steve Jobs deciding it for me, how I have to use my handset. Or Google not giving me the chance to run five applications at same time, wow, thats very noble Google, thanks.
A workhorse shouldn't limit the user by patronizing him. A perfect work horse should do a good job on the stuff needed like PIM synchronization and so on. Then it should give the user the possibility to fulfill his needs on his own, if the company can't do that and there are these individualistic needs out there in a complex IT world. At the other side there are some experiences making the not so well skilled user becoming a bad costumer. That is why Apple and Google are patronizing their users. They want to avoid things like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1tRWpFqRqU
(No, thats not me )
So, the challenge is to find a way to satisfy both types of users. The Anti-geek without IT-Skills and the IT-Professional.
I don't have a solution to this topic. Maybe a default preset for the standard user, which warns a user after the fifth opened app that going further "multitasking" could maybe cause delays when calls incoming. At the same time the IT-Professional should have the possibility if he knows what he is doing and maybe needs three ssh sessions, one ftp session and so on while working in his servers while listening to music and chatting with his colleagues.
The Meego should be a device with all the nice PIM and navigation abilities from Symbian and where users like the one on the video would never know about the Linux behind. But it should allow the skilled user to have choice over how many apps he want to run at the same time and also develop applications for his needs, when there is no one who can provide such application.