Hmm...

*goes to Youtube.com on my N900*
*chooses a video from subscription*
*plays video and then pauses it to let it load*
*plays video*

Seems fine to me.

Now not all flash sites work (e.g. Hulu is slow as hell) but hopefully the Flash 10 upgrade will fix that by offloading the brute work to the GPU instead of having the CPU taking care of it.

T-Mobile is still #4 in the US, if that. One oddball band (1700 and they do also support 2100 btw), and a serious lack of 3G coverage near my area means that T-Mobile still has work to do.

AT&T supports 850 and 1900, btw. Mixing 3G and GSM, term-wise, would be disastrous.

Eh, neither supports the CDMA networks so the original statement is still wrong ("iPhone supports the all the major US networks while the N900 doesn't"). Point still in favour of the iPhone but not all that much.

Or a mac or decently specced PC running linux.

Flash performance is *Abysmal* on anything but windows.

This is the problem with proprietary solutions, be glad Adobe decided to bless our platform at all with support for their bloated POS.

Otherwise we'd be SOL

iphone is a toy.....N 900 is a machine!

^ what he said

What?? I have no flash issues with my Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic and Firefox.

The latter. I run top shortly after and it shows the 5 minute load average over 5, so I'm probably running too many programs -- but that's the big advantage of the N900, isn't it?

I have to agree. I've got both the N900 and an iPhone 3GS. While I really want to love the N900 I find I'm using the iPhone more regularly. The N900 has massive potential with the OS and the hardware but the iPhone at the mo really is the more complete package to use on a day-to-day basis.

I had the 770, two 800's, and two 810's, but currently I use the iPhone. I just had a friend over for Christmas who owns the N900. There is no denying the platform is the most powerful platform available on a mobile device. There is also no denying that maemo has come a long way since it's introduction in 2005. However, I still feel that a few key pieces are missing to make me want to switch to using the N900 over the iPhone. For one, the screen response is terrible. I know it is resistive versus capacitive on devices like the iPhone and the Droid, but do I really have to press so hard to get a list to scroll smoothly on the device? Perhaps if I haven't been an iPhone user for so long I wouldn't notice so much, but that alone makes the device unusable to me in a daily situation, I would get frustrated every time I used the touchscreen.
I am also so over using a stylus on a device at all. I know it's more accurate, but guess what, I'd rather have software which can figure out what I mean by a fat finger press.
While most of the UI of the N900 is pretty impressive, there are still long gaps with nothing displayed on the screen when an application loads, or no response when a button is pressed on the touchscreen. I'm sorry, but for my tastes I'd rather have a device which provides a more seamless experience but requires me to come up with workarounds.
For example, in order to connect to the Linux server I run at home from my iPhone I use an app called iSSH which is pretty similar to putty on windows. However, I have set up key pairs and screenrc so that i press the hostname in the app, the app connects me, and then screen reattaches so I'm left right where I left off, but I don't drain the battery by walking around having an active ssh connection back to my home machine while I'm out and about.
The media application on the N900 has come a really long way though. I run a uPnP server at home on the same Linux machine and there is no way for my iPhone to connect and read the directories with TV shows and Movies available. The N900 on the other hand detects it automatically and has no trouble playing 90% of the content directly through the File Manager app.
At the end of the day though, the N900 just isn't for me. I already have a laptop at home, and I have the iPhone which takes care of all media/connectivity needs that I have. The only thing that is really lacking for my personal use is small icons identifying when there are unread emails waiting, but for now I can live with that limitation.
UPDATE: I forgot to add that although the development for maemo devices is open to anyone with a repo, the number and quality of apps is staggeringly low. It is definitely a niche device, which is really unfortunate because the N900 is hands down the best hardware out there currently, but I feel like it's achille's heel is always going to be the limited application availability.