My hope is that nokia will see how popular the N900 is becoming, and realize how important support for this device will be to the future of maemo.
The next device based on the speculation I've read, will be more of a tablet than a phone. Much bigger in size than the N900. The N900 might still appeal to a very large crowd more than step 5, because of its size. other maemo devices are not even on the horizon yet.
In other words step 5 and the N900 might not actually have to compete with each other.
A steady growth in popularity of the N900 might force Nokia to invest more into perfecting the device, and maybe even porting maemo 6 to it.

Really I'm just hoping... Who knows what'll happen.
In the meanwhile I'm certainly enjoying my N900 now!

I wouldn't call making an OS suitable for capacitive screens only "broad minded"... it's actually very narrow minded.

im absolutely sure nokia will add some kind of hard ware to their next device just to make sure the n900 cant run maemo6, they have never allowed a symbian device to upgrade to a newer OS, why would they, they need to sell new devices. im more than happy with maemo5 and n900 so its not really an issue to me

so... there will be more apps produced for the new maemo 6 device than the n900???

Probably not. Developers will have heard of the Maemo 7 device by then.

Absolutely. It's a bit like buying a car. It's depressing to think perhaps that you could have waited for next year's model, but consider you'd have been walking for a whole extra year...

Obsolescence is, however, in the mind of the beholder. My Newton still works (I use it most often as an occasional fax machine). My N810, which seems to have been written off, performs sterling service in many ways. The N900 I have in hand will perform likewise until it dissolves. It does what it does now. Waiting would have meant I walked a lot further this year...

And who said you have to buy the Maemo 6 device when it comes out? If you weren't happy with your N900 you could have sold it.
Don't get frustrated by marketing tricks.

I dont think so.. This is not a symbian...

I find it interesting to observe the corporate cognitive disconnect that permits Nokia to implement a plan to use their R&D devices to build a strong community around their future flagship platform while simultaneously doing everything they can to kill that community with each successive hardware revision.

Nokia isn't a company so strapped for cash or personnel that it couldn't managed to ship both a capacitive and a resistive device side-by-side. Thus appealing to at least 50% more users.

Nokia's hedging on this platform may yet be the death of it. . . .

It would be nice if Maemo 6 would be ported to the N900, especially coming out so soon afterwards, but I'm assuming it's not going to happen...as has been said Nokia has a long history of tying a software release to a hardware release. Besides, you probably won't be missing much. The guys with their N8xxs seem to be getting along just fine.