Guys, we are speaking about a device born 5 months ago! No one here remember first iPhone?!?!

You are just angry for the delay of FW. To me this is a little childish!

I'm not saying that Nokia is perfect, I just say that ti is the first company that made a device like this, so, from my point of view, Nokia deserves trust for a while.

Long post, thank for that. Except my question was why they couldn't tell us that something would not be ready in a certain timeframe. Good scenario though.

I've had my N900 for more than 6 months. (from Amazon)

Yes, it's an awesome device and I wouldn't swap it for ANY other phone currently available in the market.
But it's not right comparing it to Apple's iPhone. They never were in the mobile phone business before then.
Nokia has been making Mobile phones for a long time. Internet Tablets aren't that new to them either.

N900 isn't like their other phones. It's like their previous tablets however.
Open bugtracker, have some visibility of developers in the forums etc.
Some issues were fixed within days. But we don't see them for MONTHS.

Maybe the fact that because we get to see what they are doing, we get more anxious about getting it asap.

I work in a major enterprise-level sw company.
We have timelines/deadlines for major service packs etc.
You can't have "no target date". It'll never get finished if so.

Well, to me the lack of a significant firmware update to date shows a lack of commitment to THIS DEVICE that is worrisome given the pattern of releases on previous Maemo devices. Nokia has tended to release a couple minor firmware updates for each device with a significant drop in the level of support once the next device is on the market. Many major, significant bugs get the "Won't Fix" or "Fixed in next version" treatment, with the end result being that no device ever reaches maturity.

I believe this pattern is one of the reasons there has been little large scale or commercial application development for the Maemo platform ---- because it isn't treated as a platform. Each device is a one-off with a limited window of exploitability before the next product cycle.

I really think that Nokia has to stop thinking in terms of individual retail products and start thinking in terms of a platform that is supported over multiple devices over a MUCH longer time horizon. In the desktop application space, I have applications that were created over a decade ago that I still run on a regular basis, despite having upgraded Windows three or four times. I have been able to run three or more versions of Windows on the same underlying hardware, as well. This sort of experience has become a major expectation of users in the Smart-phone space, with Apple releasing significant new OS releases for older hardware, while maintaining application compatibility, with newer hardware simply being faster and having support for additional new hardware features. Android seems to be adopting this as well, with older devices receiving upgrades to newer versions of the OS (1.6-2.1). The expectation for business applications compatibility on Windows is on the order of a DECADE. I don't claim we need that level for a phone, given how rapidly the mobile space is developing, but I would really like to see Maemo/Meego be a stable, consistent environment that doesn't throw its user & developer base under the bus every 1.5 years to implement some new menu transition effects.

Hmm. Long post didn't work. Let's try a short one:

The core issue is false expectations not lack of communication. Nokia shouldn't have to address false expectations set by overly enthusiastic community members.

man, iphone was first apple phone, they hadn't so experience in that segment...but Nokia has many phones and great experience. But Nokia did bad phones with bad support...

benik valid point. experience should have held them in a better stead

Maybe you are right, but bare in mind that at this moment Nokia are in big influence to overtake iPhone and Android phones, also there is a Maemo/MeeGo focus rechange - it for sure takes a lot of work.

Regards.

My fear is that this is seen as essentially the LAST thorough firmware release and the reason they are taking so long to release it is that they don't want any mopping up later -- they want to be done with it so they can move on to important things.

As I say, this is just a fear of mine, and I have no evidence it is true. But the desire to finish off the N900 and not leave anything left to do would explain the delay.

lol apple has made 3 phones and is taking over the world

nokia has made 8957424165743546745 phones and doesnt know what to do