Exactly because more are buying it...

There is a lot more buzz around this device, so imagine what would happen to the future of their next maemo device if Nokia was known by everyone to have shafted all people who purchased the N900.

The next Maemo device would probably flop, or at the very least its sales be hindered.

I am sure they are expecting the Maemo6 device to have much greater success than the N900, being the 5th and final step.

It is in their interest to prove themselves on the N900.
(maybe this is why nokia was downplaying the N900, they were afraid of too much attention... but now they're stuck with it and they'll have to keep updating the device!)

Not many knew what an N800 or N810 or maemo was prior to the N900. The community was very small. It is now growing very fast and the N900 is barely out.

While they did abandon Diablo, it should be said that they gave Chinook (the original N800 OS) an upgrade path.

Hopefully their next OS will allow N900 users to upgrade as well, even if the N900 will not be able to use all the possible hardware dependent features of the new OS.

Yeah, at least @pple are doing that for their phones. Nokia better learn from @pple's success.

To answer the original poster:

Every shipped/sold device releases with a certain tolerance of issues. Because of the volitle nature of mobile devices, its nearly impossible to release something that has absoutely no issues - that is unless the device is feature simple. The more complex the device, the greater the tolerances need to be in order to assign features, fixes, and updates in due course.

Previous tablets had up to two major firmware updates before the next major version came out. This was generally ok since many of the smaller fixes came through this community's ability to find the problems, note possible solutions, and then a small-ish group of persons would work on the fix - either as something within a 3rd party application, or an unoffical fix. In some of these cases, the updates made it to an official capacity and appeared as fixed in a later update to the software.

With the last version of the Maemo OS - Diablo - a new feature called Seamless Software Updating (SSU) was introduced. This was designed as a mechanism to offer updates to device owners, without the need for a full device reflash. 3rd party developers could also utilize this feature to push out updates to devices when the updates were ready, not necessarly at a major firmware update time. This feature was also a test bed for over the air (OTA) updates for tablet devices. In most cases, this was successful enough of a feature that it was rolled into Maemo 5 pretty much intact.

Therefore, in terms of your expectations for updates with Maemo 5. There has already been mention of one update coming around the Christmas timeframe. This update would seem to address many issues not caught before the devices left the factory for global distribution (testing taking anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months depending on the aspects of the system being updated and if they will have any dependencies on carrier infrastructure). This update is not confirmed, just rumored.*

That applies only for Nokia supplied firmware. If you are using any 3rd party applications, widgets, or plugins, these might be updated way before or after then. Its up to the developers to be transparent with their release schedules in order for you to know this information. Be aware though that software development is a lot like shopping without a list - there's a store and things you need, but at some point you need to stop and purchase something. Many parts of the software development process stop simply at knowing there's a need; more successful projects get to the checkout line as soon as possible so that they can get you back in the store.

Hope that helps (everyone).

* Update confirmed, spoken in a post below this one. Look for it before the end of the calendar year if all goes well with its testing/

Well, Nokia constantly builds new firmware versions internally. Every week, at least a dozen, to find new regressions quickly.
From time to time somebody decides that some version will be made public. Hence that version needs to go through extensive testing and afterwards will be released.

Seeing people running a newer version than 2.2009.42-11 ("42" is the week) means that these people have access to internal builds, nothing else. :-)

Actually this was announced by Nokia themselves at the Maemo summit:

(I do not know who shot this photo - sorry for not correctly giving credits.)

You can expect several maintenance releases in the pipeline. Filing and voting the bugs that matter to you does help increasing the chances to get them fixed, or at least to have them resolved in some other way.

I have been programming since 1981. I am very hard on things. Bricked the loaner.. Filled the filesystem. Did a lot of dumb things to see what a "user" could break.

maemo5 is not a flaky or instable OS.

I have managed to get odd behavior and even some reboots, but recreating has been impossible. I would have no qualms at all using this for daily work.

Some of the things that bother users are very shallow issues from a systems perspective The architecture of maemo5 is very well considered and evolves based on years of experience.

Learning to contribute to this effort takes some time, but is well worth your talents.

What t.m.o. and the maemo community face with product launch is a flood of new interest from users who see every shipped app as integral to "the phone os". Knowing this, Nokia shipped a *much* more feature rich set of apps out of the box than previous versions.

It seems that the concept of the mobile device as application platform hasnt really matured in the minds of most customers.

Just to say I am impressed with the whole 'firmware upgrade' stuff. I had an n95 on first release, and there were a few upgrades. My technician kept telling me 'no don't bother' till there was one really making a difference. It made a huge difference to the phone (espcially to the camera software).

What I'm hoping is that the n900 will basically do that itself without scaring me too much. The n95 went back to the technician for upgrade, and some things were somewhat screwed up by their practice of removing everything to back up, upgrading, and just bunting it back. This time I'm counting on the community to hold my paw through upgrades.

And ArnimS, I appreciate people who push the device to see what a user could break. Cos I bet someone will, and it might be me.

IMHO, it is somewhere between arrogant and ignorant to start a thread called "were previous Maemo releases this buggy", because it implies that Maemo is quite buggy - when in fact it is a very stable OS. It also does not make a difference between the OS itself (Maemo) and the Application installed (Nokia default apps, 3rd party apps).

I've been extremely pleased with the featureset, quality and performance of my N900 during the last weeks (especially when compared to my wife's N97 :-)