This article in the NY Times says iPod/iPhone users have a choice of 140,000 apps but mainly use 5-10.

http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?...8d98b8489125b6

Sounds to me like they don't get much value from well over 139,000 of them.

Your right, i have an iphone 3G (v3.1.2 jailbreaked firmware) and converted to the brilliant N900

The Iphone has tens of thousands of applications, but alot of them are garbage.

I have seen at least 30 apps which all do the same mail function.

Alot of the games you may pay only £1 for each game but you only get a few hours gameplay if that before you complete them.

I have about 100 apps for iphone (most i dont use anymore), but most of what i have on the iphone is Cydia based (open sourced and free like what you have here).

But the difference i see between the iphone and N900 community is the N900 is more open and you have more freedom for apps which customise the desktop.

I know alot of people who critize the N900 for lack of app's. But with firefox, fring and Sygic (for gps maps) coming and come to the N900 give 6 months time and the N900 might have a ripe old app store.

iPod's sheer amount of apps got me to switch from N8x0 to iPod.

Plus everything's just snappier. I realised I hate stylus use. Sure there's no multitasking but I didn't do too much of that on the N800 anyway.

The things I wanted on the N800 which were never available (omfg http://www.xewton.com/apps/xms/ ) or just suffering from underdevelopment, are more than available in the App Store - and I've found a lot of free stuff, useful and fun. In fact I spent more time looking for apps and downloading them than even putting music on the iPod Touch.

In my job (mobile phone engineer in the UK) i unlock/jailbreal a lot of iphones, and i must say most iphones i unlock only have aroud 6 3rd party apps and half of those are useless, iv also used all the iphones and tried to like it but just cant, its stupid that we have to jailbreak it just for it to do the things we need, like multitasking, just imagine using a PC with no multitasking, it would be hell, yet steve jobs dnt include it in his phone, idiot.
so the theory is: lots of apps but most are pointless fart apps, so when some apple fanboy says yeh but we got thousands of apps just say yeh pmpl, thousands of fart apps.

It's really a misconception that 'most are pointless fart apps'.

Here's a list of useful, free ones I have:

- Remote - control iTunes on PC/Mac
- shopping list
- iXpense Lite - finance mangement
- Simple Tip Calculator
- Jumsoft Money - finanace management (great design too)
- Interactive Cocktail Entertainment (tons of how-to on drinks)
- Natural Cures
- iFirst Aid Lite
- WebMD mobile
- Medical Encylcopedia
- Touch Chords (for guitarists)
- Yellow Pages
- Chordmaster LE (guitarists)
- WiFi Get - lists WiFi spots around town and nearby connections + info
- Nikon Learn & Explore - for photographers
- Spanish DIctionary
- Know Your Rights (American rights)
- Wikipanion (for searching wiki)
- White Pages
- eBuddy (chat)/IM+ (chat)
- Skype
- Google Earth
- What Knot To Do (knot tying guide)
- Alarm Clock Free
- iHandy Level (a virtual level to see if things are straight)
- GlobeConvert currency + units converter
- iMorser - flashes/beeps morse code based on text you input and translates morse code
- Advanced Ruler
- Flashlight (yes the screens are quite bright enough to use as general flashlight)
- Protractor

then on top of that all the games... and the apps you could buy if you wanted? Damn!

Most of these things could be done in Maemo but I'm not going to wait forever for apps that others may not want, which may never come to Maemo.

So it really depends what you need.