The front office developer brought along his hacked iPhone (which a colleague of his had just brought back to the UK from Boston) and we all had a look... I have to say it blows away the N800 in terms of usability, accessability and UI responsiveness. All applications worked and worked the same way, the gestures to perform actions such as deleting an email are intuitive and apps respond immediately - no pauses while the touchscreen fails to register or think about an event, no lag when displaying photos or videos (photo AND video scaling is impressive, the N800 even with mplayer is sadly put to shame [I blame the cruddy video bandwidth and lack of hardware acceleration]), and applications when started appear instantly.
I then pulled out my N800 and started Kagu, which inexplicably crashed (it locked up on the main scroll screen and I had to kill it, and now it's not starting at all). At this point it occurred to me that maybe Apple has a point when they try to restrict what software is installed on their devices! I also noticed how long it took apps - any app - to start on the N800 as apps start almost immediately on the iPhone whereas on the N800 the infoprint appears for several seconds before the application appears (how have Apple achieved this?) Then started the comments about my "steam driven technology" so I put it away having taken a severe verbal beating! Everyone was impressed by the iPhone - even other restaurant diners were craning their necks for a look - while the big, fat, ugly N800 was derided. Dunno what else to say really, just relating my experience of a side-by-side demonstration in front of technical people. God help Nokia selling this to mere mortals.... Chinook needs to at least match the iPhone UI in terms of appeal, usability, responsiveness and above all quality while the upcoming Nokia hardware needs to be small and light - the N800 is probably double the weight and thickness of the iPhone yet it seems less powerful than the iPhone. While products such as the iPhone remain light years ahead of what Nokia are offering, nobody will take Nokia tablets seriously except a tiny fraction of the geek population (and the friends I met today are also geeks, but worryingly even they turned up their noses at the N800). In the meantime I'm patiently waiting for the Chinook beta to appear...