If Nokia did go down this route with meego would that mean our N900's running on meego could also use all Android's apps as well?
Their batteries only lasted 2-3 hours -- hardware limitation. They were very expensive ($1000+) -- due to the cost of getting standard hardware in smaller format. Capacitive touchscreens of that size were either non-existent or prohibitively expensive -- yet another hardware limitation.
Nokia never even attempted to use the hardware advances that would have given the 770, N800 and N810 a worthy successor. The had the better software (Maemo), but never delivered the HARDWARE.
Within those limits, many of the "failed tablets" you speak of were doing quite well. Look around, how many people are using N800 -- imagine that with modern hardware, and all the software that would have been developed to take advantage of it. Would you say video at 400x240 is a software limitation? Please...
When the HARDWARE limits were lifted by mere technological progress in the past few years, software started to play a more important role. More important, yet still SECONDARY role.
Let me finally put it another way, in the hope that I can get at least a little understanding here: All the developers thinking that I am downplaying their work, see it like that instead: you have done an excellent job with software, but never had the proper hardware to run it on.