I like my 9 screened N900, and find the software selection on the N9 worse than on the N900. In general, I find editing messages on the N9 horribly inefficient -- when I want the cursor to be exactly placed, I can't always do it. I need my arrow keys! On the N900, there is never a similar problem. Inevitably, the N9 has better hardware, and that makes a big difference, but I think they are very evenly matched when considered as complete entities. If the N9 continues improving because of the developers, it may eventually surpass the N900, but not yet, I think.

The software selection is improving but this requires the assistance of the Maemo community to port their apps to N9. For some reason there was some hostility from this community to the N9 probably due to Nokia killing off Maemo, making a poor successor to Maemo or whatever. But N900 users will slowly come round to the fact that the N9 is as good as they are going to get and the physical lifespan of their devices is limited. So either they make the best of Harmattan which is the closest they will get to Maemo or jump over to a completely new platform.

As for placing the cursor, are you aware that you can long press on the screen to bring up the cursor in a magnifying glass and drag the cursor anywhere you want, even to specific letters inside words?