A thought just occured to me, Ive just finished a typical day with my n900. A couple of skype video calls, recieved a few SIP calls with multiple providers, downloaded a film from thepiratebay using transmission and watched it on the multi codec built in media player, downloaded a book from irc and read that on fbreader. Can you imagine a Steve Jobs-style-Nokian with a N900 and why oh why dont they tell peeps what their phones can do?

Because the phone has so many bugs they don't want the average person to buy it.

Evidently they also do not want you to have a replacement one if your usb port falls off which is why a few of us here have been waiting for a replacement for over a month.

And although Apple is the most annoying company in the whole wide world and Steve Jobs is the most annoying person in the history of mankind it cannot be argued that they have done more than any other company to change how we view phones and they are now doing the same with internet tablets. Also many people love them because they just want a device that works rather than one where you need to spend half your day on an internet forum to get your device to function the way it should have from the outset.

Hmmm who started this thread. Seems I am the one doing the rambling rather than you.

Yep.. haters be hatin.

It really can be argued. Whatever issues you might have with Nokia (and we all have plenty), but to ignore the contribution of Nokia to the mobile market is foolish. Without Nokia we would have a very different landscape. And without Apple we would probably just now really be discovering touch screen handsets, who knows. That's pretty much it.

Furthermore i feel offended as a techie that you consider a larger iphone an 'internet tablet'.

Oh god yes, I spent hours getting my phone to be what it should have been out of the box. If it wasn't for the Maemo community I would have returned the phone ages ago, but then again that is Linux by nature.

So much potential .... wasted.

They can't market a Ferrari you have to put together yourself.

Just imagine:

i dunno, transmission worked out the box so does skype so does sip so does fbreader and the media player. Not as big a learning curve as proclaimed.
BTW marxian im amazed that nokias marketing team havent grabbed you yet!

i was doing all of that with my n95 YEARS ago.

apples are for people who, according to steve, dont want to think. they can pick it up and all is fluid and natural and looks good. but if steve didnt say you can do it then you cant do it.
n900's philosophy is more "heres some kick *** hardware, do what you will with it."
i dont want someone telling me i can do umpteen things i was doing years ago. i want umpteen people telling me they've jus found something new and cool they can do, and with a little effort i can do it too.
if theres something i cant do, i know i want to do, and i think theres a way to do it, i dont want to petition developers to make and release an app for it, its so great to say "hey TMO i want to be able to blablabla" and ilovenokia3968 reply with ten lines of code that would let me do exactly that.
with the right people working on the software n900 could have been so much more, but being more of a 'stepping stone' than a 'destination' the marketing etc wasnt there, low market share means low developer potential, and we havent been able to keep hold of the best ones we had here, and no one to take the place of those who've moved on either.
my rant done.

N900 has become the ultimate "would of, could of, should of"

I agree with gerbick, and yet I still adore the little brick.