Very good observasion - I like your analysis and would like to continue.

It is obvious that developing new applications for the tablet is not a simple matter. Just consider the number of things you are expected to be familiar with before you can produce something worthy of general consumption:

1. Gtk+ - if you have never programmed in Gtk+, here is about 2-3 months of evenings burned out to learn the toolkit.

2. Automake - there is a decent number of on-line manuals on the web, and yet, it is another 2-3 weeks for a novice to pick up the stuff.

3. Debian packaging - don't get me started, if you've never done it before, you would waste 2 weeks easily figuring out what's going on.

4. Hildon-specifics - I have spend good three days trying to figure out why my app would come up and be killed by dbus right away. A number of people have lived through the same thing (even yesterday, there was someone on the mailing list asking the same very question).

5. A bare minimum knowledge of d-bus and Linux file structure.

This is just for starters. Looking at the prerequisites list, you can notice that new applications written for 770 exclusively might be in the pipeline, but it would take them some time to come out.

Which leaves us with porting of what already exists in GTK+ app pool. Look at the Nokia's very own "Porting an existing application" HOWTO.
They pretty much suggest you to gut your application - you are going to end up with two different source trees to maintain. What Nokia developers should have done is to take a simple GTK+ application and illustrate how to modify it so that the changes would stay in the same source tree.

One thing that I have not figured out is how to setup $srcdir/debian files so that I can still use the same set to build .deb packages both for a desktop as well as 770.

If anyone knows the answer, please, let me know.

Enough of ranting - here is my small contribution to the brave new world of nokia 770 - if you are an aspiring developer you might find my personal notes useful:

Vlad's Nokia 770 Internet Tablet Notes

Let's together make 770 a replacement for all PDAs, iPods, $100 PCs and what-have-you out there!