everytime someone mentions Step 4 out of 5, i just get worried not knowing wheter to buy the N900 or not...they should have promoted it alot more... they did ok, but the promotion could have been better and i hope it will be next month when it launches... About other Maemo 5 devices also... what those could have better lol? I hope we get answers from Nokia soon...at the Maemo Summit...like how many more Maemo 5 devices will come, when will Maemo 6 come, etc. I would be really pissed if i bought the N900 and then suddenly in 6 months Maemo 6 arrives..but honestly i find that idea stupid, because if it were true, why make the N900 in the first place..

I did exactly that and got so many people asking what/who/again hehe..

If I had a n810 today I would wait to see step 5. As I don't have any of the older tablets I'll get the n900. If step 5 turns out to be something I like I'll wait a bit for it's price to drop then buy it. If not well atleast I'll get rid of the crap that is the n95(for which I payed 200eur)

For some reason the more I think about it, the more it sounds like Step 4 would be more a testing/ incubating phase geared towards developers.

Guys, there is no 'developer phase'. Every following device attempted to target a broader and broader audience, regardless if developers or users. Without users, there is no publicly sold end-user device. This is how a developer device looks like.

They dedicated an article to whine about how capacitive is better than resistive and moan about not getting invited to Nokia World (like I read in one of the comments "OWNED"), so I guess this event was coordinated before that, or it is a olive branch to see if Engadget has grown a sense of impartiality already.

Because it would be to "funny" for them to bash Nokia tech in their sponsored event...

Well I think it is not a bad marketing problem. Here are the few steps in the wrong direction that give me the idea that they are somewhat disturbed by the buzz the N900 is making :
* N900 is launched before the actual Nokia World event, like hoping the wow effect will go away in several days;
* at the real nokia world event we get the "wrong step" info telling us that this is only the fourth like a message do not buy it yet, there will be something else next year. I thought these guys, at this level, don't make such unintentional mistakes;
* Dr. Ari Jaaksi is starting his interview also at nokia world acting like N900 is not something amazing, just something for "those guys" . And this coming from the one guy at nokia that should praise the N900 like the holly grail of phones, right? After all he is VP for maemo devices ;
* on September 4 , one day after the nokia world, another step back reported at http://www.mobilenewscwp.co.uk/News/...ject_n900.html containing this specific quote: "We have a good, long lasting relationship with the networks, but we understand that they may not be happy with the user interface because it cannot be customised." How can linux interface not be customized. This again comming from Nokia executive vice president Kari Tuutti;
* again, today we get another news at http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/...900/2009-09-09 .Ok so now we get it, not that you cannot, just that nokia doesn't want it to happen. Why? Maybe because this way operators will not embrace this device?

So do you smell something rotten in Denmark? Or should I get my pills?

What I do not understand, unless there is an actual fight inside nokia departments, is why would you invest in building such a powerful device and then simply trying to push its sales back right before actually selling it.

Perhaps they fear it is going to cannibalize their S60 handsets (N97 et all), and Symbian is way more entrenched in Nokia than Maemo is.

Something similar happened back in the day in the PC industry. IBM delayed the launch of a PC with the 386 processor, to avoid cannibalizing the sales of their smallest mainframes which had a similar performance.

The result? Compaq launched the 386 PC before IBM. Ouch.

I don't want to think that for them Maemo is just a bandaid until Symbian^4 arrives...

Wow, that thing is awesome.

It's ALL a big conspiracy guys. All of it!

By the way, Denmark stinks. Good thing Nokia's in Finland!