Notices

You can't be farther from the truth. If the N900 was open, I could download the whole software stack in CVS right now, make my changes to anything, recompile and be done with it.

Was this possible, I would've already fixed at least 10 bugs over a weekend.

If the N900 was open, they'd communicate with us openly in official capacity, not some maemo talk forum that is community based. I talk about Nokia leaving us in the dark.

Is this open for you?

Back to the original question:
There are thousands and thousands of flash apps all over the web.
many or even most of the iPhone apps have been programmed to deal with the restrictions of the iPhone browser.
And apple made this restriction to earn much money with the appstore.

And have you tried any of these flash apps on the N900? Yes, it technically supports flash, but it's slow, buggy and pixelated. Basically a hit or miss.

Also, if the N900 was open than there'd be independent hardware vendors creating accessories for it. There is only a handful of 3rd party N900 accessories that I know of. And there are thousands and thousands for the iPhone.

same here, winmo is a UI letdown (htc do make it much nicer tho), i love moding my devices to make it my own, iv been a s60 user for 6 years, i know it inside out, moded it alot but it was time for a change as nokia keped locking users out of the system even after the s60 community hacked them nokia would issue a firmware update and back to square one, thats where maemo and the n900 came into play, i was so pleased as it wasn't locked down i got it without a thought and sold my n97, im a linux noob but in time i will mod the hell out of my beloved n900

Don't forget that the N900 hasn't been out for more than 2 months, also there aren't many people owning it (compared to the iPhone), therefore, it isn't nearly as profitable, if at all.

open as in you can ssh onto your device (without illegally "jailbreaking" it) and put whatever you want on it.

Open as in the SDK is free, and there is no overlord approving apps.

That kind of open.

is it illegal to jailbreak your iphone- surley not.

what you do with it after its jailbroken could be illegal- but if you own something you can do what you want to it.

Try telling that to Steve Jobs lol

iPhone Quality Apps for N900??

Real apps or iPhone internet apps?
If your talking about iPhone internet apps on the N900 the answer is... "There's a Browser for that".
On the iPhone not so much...
...but it does require that the N900 user be a bit more HTML savvy.

Most everything an iPhone net app pulls from the internet can be done with a user designed, locally stored web page. The page can be displayed, layed out, and contain only the information the N900 user wants. On the iPhone there may "be an App for that" but, good luck finding it.

For the not yet net savvy the simple way to do this is to find a web "gadget" or "widget" that offers embedded code. With a desktop computer Google Gadgets for your web page is a good place to start. >> http://www.google.com/ig/directory?synd=open

Open a page to the gadget you want and click "Add to your webpage".
When that page opens click "Get the code"
Now copy the HTML code presented to you (usually starts with <script> and ends with </script>

Now here comes the quick and dirty part.

1. Open a "New Text Document" on your desktop.
2. Paste the code you copied into that text document and close it.
3. Rename that document to what ever floats your boat and change the .txt extension to .htm
4. Move that new .htm file to your N900 and open it in file manager. If you like it, save it as a bookmark or to your N900 desktop.
5. Rock on with the knowledge that you can get what you want, when you want it and you don't need to rely on an app store.

To try before you buy. Copy the code below and follow steps 1 through 5.





Now as far as the N900 vs the iPhone with regards to "Real apps".
Please, don't even tease me.

Go to our meager 100+ offering of Maemo community developed apps. Read the full descriptions.
Now go to the 10,000+ iPhone app store and find ones that satisfy the full requirements of the Maemo app descriptions you read.

I'm betting the App Store can not produce even 50% that you could compare favorably to Maemo apps.