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Microsoft To Add Yet Another Smartphone OS This Year
GMGruman writes "Someone at Microsoft either really loves mobile operating systems or can't make up his mind as to which to use, because Microsoft Thursday announced yet another mobile OS, its fifth. The new Windows Embedded Handheld OS will succeed Windows Mobile 6.5 and run on at least some existing Windows Mobile smartphones. It is not the same mobile OS, known as Windows Phone 7, that Microsoft earlier this year said would replace Windows Mobile and break with it in terms of compatibility so Microsoft could better compete with the iPhone and Google Android OS."
So, they'll have Windows Mobile, Windows Phone 7, Windows Embedded Compact 7, Windows Embedded Handheld ... and the only one that sounds okay won't be out until November at the earliest, whereas the 3 others are lame pieces of crap.
Who, by the way, comes up with these names? Can you possibly make Windows Embedded Compact Handheld Mobile Phone 8 or something and combine all of the awesome features into one package... or will we just have to settle for iOS 4.x?
If they're such pieces of shit, where are the open standard wondrous operating systems?
Oh wait.
Seriously. Steve Ballmer laughed at google on stage at D:8 for having both android and chrome OS and now microsoft has 3 current, all slightly different mobile operating systems. I mean come on.
Heres an Ars Technica link as I can't find the exact video on the all things d site.
How many computers are too many?
You're making the false assumption that it's the market that decides what operating systems are available on smart phones. Hate to break it to you, but all cell phones are a terribly proprietary business with a huge barrier to entry, and if all of the present players decide that shit is the best thing to run on smart phones then that is what will run on smart phones, even if there exist holy open alternatives that will save babies from being eaten.
"The OS will feature a richer and immersive user experience..."
This can only mean that it's gonna have a 3D display with Kinect-like controls. I can't wait to fly through the keypad snatching at buttons as they rush by!
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
Yeah, maybe in your fantasy world no one would use it. If the OS is good enough, one of the phone device manufacturers will leverage that advantage to make a larger profit over the others.
Unfortunately it isn't.
The Market does decide, why do you think Android and iOS are leading the pack when it comes to growth? Why do you think all the other phone manufacturers are scrambling to keep up?
Besides, Android is fairly open and the iOS is standards compliant.
Windows Phone 7 is the only upgrade path. There is no clear hardware path, so all users can do is wait for the next gen.
But the profit split is neat via the "enterprise" idea.
A low end 'first hit is almost free' idea for the Sidekick generation.
Now you have the enterprise idea of costumer retention via proprietary data storage.
The "reliability and security features" will so protect your data you will have no option but to stay with MS.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
According to the article, Windows Embedded Handheld replaces Windows Mobile, and it is built on Windows Embedded Compact 7 the way Ubuntu is built on Linux and X11. This makes two operating systems (Windows Phone 7 and Windows EH) for handheld devices such as phones, PDAs, and handheld barcode scanners. But compare to Google's own mobile operating systems Chrome OS and Android.
Try a Nokia n900.
It's pretty much straight up Linux with the command line and apt-get ready to go right out of the box.
It's an embedded devices OS, like WindowsCE. Still annoyed at Microsoft for dropping support for .NET Compact Framework from the new Visual Studio 2008. I hope this one will support CF or I'm going to have a whole lot of soon-to-be unsupported handhelds on my hands
Android is 100% open source. Don't like the Market? Replace it. Don't like the keyboard? Replace it. Don't like Google integrations? Remove them.
If you think all of this is somehow difficult or discouraged, I think you should take a closer look at the forums at xda-developers.com, or even at developer.android.com, where you can check out the entire OS source code with git and re-build it from scratch and re-flash your phone, if you want.
All this talk about Jailbreaking Android phones is for people who want root access but *DO NOT* want to re-flash their phone. There is no such problem for people that are comfortable replacing the software. And in fact this is what you have to do with most open source projects running on specialized hardware.
I have never been happy with windows mobile I think this big change will be good now that there is competition in the industry Microsoft is going to have step up there game and keep up with apple, rim and Google. Microsoft has been falling behind in the mobile market there phones don't even compete maybe this release may actually show some promise.
http://www.thetechnologygeek.org
...in smartphones and hand held devices in general.
iPhone -- iOS Unix
Android -- Linux
Palm -- Linux
RIM -- Moving to QNX
That leaves Symbian and Windows Mobile as the two non-'nix holdouts.
Besides, Android is fairly open
Agreed.
and the iOS is standards compliant.
"Standards compliant" does not mean "standards efficient". Try to get around iOS Safari's lack of Flash vector animation by making a JavaScript vector animation player that uses HTML5 <canvas>, and you could end up with a slideshow. Does iOS Safari even support data URIs passed to an <audio> element for JavaScript synthesis?
Reading these stories about MS lately is making me all nostalgic for when what they did mattered. I can't quite put my finger on it... but at some point they lost their big and scary status.. and have just become more of a joke.. to me at least. There was a time when their whims could shift the whole market.. these days I wonder if the masses even notice their flailing attempts to 'compete'.
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. -HLM
If this Microsoft operating system is going to be incompatible with the other Microsoft operating systems, why not just switch to something else now and be done with it? Compatibility is the only advantage Microsoft software has, and that is being thrown out with the bathwater.
MEH OS is exactly how I feel about this new offering and its chances of impressing anybody in this age and time. At least they didn't get it as bad as the CrAPI one.
"We're starting to see that philosophy play out today with the introduction of Windows Embedded Handheld, which is essentially a warmed-over version of WinMo 6.5.3 with some key UI and enterprise-focused enhancements. Microsoft is specifically calling out an "extended support life-cycle" for the platform, a sign that these phones aren't for the gotta-have-it crowd -- instead, the company intends to push these things through corporate fleets where Windows Mobile has traditionally dominated, places where Windows Phone's flashy stylings and locked-down underpinnings won't have the same draw."
Mostly seems this *is* Windows Mobile 6.5 in all but name.
"...and the iOS is standards compliant."
And we all know that "standards compliant" means open, right?
If the OS is good enough, one of the phone device manufacturers will leverage that advantage to make a larger profit over the others.
That's like saying that the RIAA will be happy to sell music without DRM. It doesn't matter how good the distribution system (ie the OS in this case), they will still want to try and lock it down. Which is exactly what the phone companies do. They try to lock the phones they sell down to stop you tethering or even using SIMs from other Telcos, etc.
This is slowly changing, but don't act like they would jump on an open system just because it was technically proficient and fun to use. They would add in a whole bunch of restrictions first because they're terrified of losing their business model (hmm, should I sent a text message for £0.10 or an IM for £0.00001p.. difficult choice!).
which is totally what she said
Yeah, well the market sorta forced them to sell music without DRM right? Last I checked, none of my iTunes music purchases had DRM on them.
Like I said, it's changing slowly, but they're going to be dragged kicking and screaming the whole way. You're right that anyone with a decent service and products can make a killing, but like someone else said there's a really high barrier to entry too. It took the iPhone to even make phone designers start trying to design proper touch interfaces despite touch phones being out for years prior. The whole software and services side of the mobile market has been crap for the last 20 years, the only decent improvements have been in hardware. It says a lot that the iPhone has done so well despite usually being behind other manufacturers in terms of hardware specs.
which is totally what she said
As an N900 owner: do NOT try an N900. Nokia are even worse than Microsoft in terms of supporting their products. N900's Maemo OS is already outdated, and the N900 along with it. They must have been planning to do that even before releasing the N900, given the timelines, which is why you get people posting friendly advice to Nokia on how it can avoid death.
Nokia seem to think of their phones and OS's like Casio thinks of watches: a simple, closed-loop device that's done as soon as it hits the shelves. For all their hype of maemo's Ovi store and all, when it comes right down to doing the work and putting their money where their mouth is, it just doesn't happen. Now they're planning new products: N9/Meego, which will suck equally badly.
The only thing Nokia has going for it is Qt, which they bought in from Trolltech (along with TT itself), and they'll probably find a way to kill.
The Market does decide, why do you think Android and iOS are leading the pack when it comes to growth?
Presumably because they're the newest - a platform starting from nothing is going to see larger growth in relative terms. And it's not like there are many platforms in the phone market. For Nokia, they have Symbian at 50% of the market - it's hard to push further when you're already number one.
And remember - when we say Nokia are at 50%, that's not total phones ever shipped, that's still based on current sales. So we're already looking at the first derivative. What you're doing is looking at the second derivative, and saying "But look, these small platforms are increasing their sales at a faster rate, at the moment". Well sure, but for now, if your criterion is "what the market has decided", then the market is still deciding Nokia. (And as an aside, even if we were looking solely at the US where Nokia have no presence - I believe RIM are still number one, but for some reason they're another platform that Slashdot never covers.)
The faster growth might be a prediction of future sales - but it's foolish to assume we can just extrapolate linearly. In any case, let's just wait and see. If in three years' time, 50% of people are using Android, then great - we can say the market has chosen Android. But you can't say the market has already chosen a platform with lower share, merely based on what the second order derivatives are!
Why do you think all the other phone manufacturers are scrambling to keep up?
"Scrambling"? They're not. There are things that one has added first; but this is true with other platforms too. Also we shouldn't conflate phone manufacturers with OS - for Android, many manufacturers such as Motorola are switching to it anyway, which is indeed one of the good things about Android; it's true that that OSs that these companies previously used weren't very good. If Motorola previously produced non-Android phones, and now they produce Android phones, who is scrambling to catch up? Is Motorola scrambling to catch themselves up?
But for Nokia? No, they're doing fine, I see no evidence of "scrambling". They may have introduced some features later, but let's list all the things that Apple added, in some cases years after they were commonplace on dirt cheap feature phones, and in some cases they've yet to add: 3G, copy/paste, Java, Flash, multitasking, video recording, tethering, forward facing cameras, high resolution, running 3rd party unapproved apps (yes, someone will probably reply saying these things aren't important - well I say the same of whatever things Apple might have added first).
If they're such pieces of shit, where are the open standard wondrous operating systems?
Perhaps here? Or maybe even here?
N900's Maemo OS is already outdated, and the N900 along with it.
I got an updated version about a month ago.
The only thing Nokia has going for it is Qt, which they bought in from Trolltech (along with TT itself), and they'll probably find a way to kill.
Qt is now their standard development kit for Symbian and Maemo, so to suggest they only bought it to kill it is false. And as a new learner on Symbian, I have to say I'm very impressed. Qt looks to be a very good API. It's also cross-platform, not only meaning the same code will compile for Symbian and Maemo, but also making it easy to develop for Windows, Mac and Linux (so you can pretty much compile for 100% of the desktop market, and 50% of the mobile market). And it means you can use standard C++, where as the old development kit for Symbian apparently used an awkward cut down version.
And as for "only thing Nokia has going for it", there's more to Nokia than Maemo. Like the small matter of their other OS with 50% market share, or the hundreds of millions of phones they sell every year. Never used an N900, but I love my 5800.
In fact your entire post seems to be extrapolating from the single point of "Maemo is discontinued". By all means warn the OP, but your claims about how they therefore kill all their phones, OSs, and SDKs, is just plain ludicrous. Symbian has been around for many years. You might as well claim that because Apple have ditched their Mac OS before (not to mention 68K, PPC), that therefore they're about to ditch OS X or IphoneOS at any moment!
There are disagrees of closedness. I don't really mind the OS itself being proprietary (I probably should, though), I do mind a lot when my content (media and apps) is in a proprietary format, or, worse, DRMed, and when the distribution channels are censored.
you can have DRMed content on an "open" OS.. I'd rather have the contray, but even better, open content on an open OS, indeed. We should not condemn all "closed" things indiscriminately though, there are degrees of closedness.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
As somebody who is getting increasing pressure to support iOS in a (relatively secured) corporate environment, I can tell you that it is anything BUT standards compliant.
Try connecting one to an authenticated proxy. Looks like it works doesn't it? Well it doesn't. Inexplicably half of the outbound packets bypass the proxy and run smack into our firewall. This is for normal port 80 traffic. Or how about how the Youtube app sends a 'Host:' header pointing to gdata.youtube.com, but the requested url is actually iphone-wu.apple.com. We need to put in squid redirectors to repair the mess.
Windows, Linux, OS X all work fine in this environment, but iOS is a bloody train wreck.
Kind of takes the edge off of those who complain about Android being fragmented. Microsofts Windows Mobile push is fragmented even at vapourware state.
HTTP/1.1 400
No, you got bugfixes that essentially brought it out of beta status months after it was released. On the same day, you saw the first release of Meego, their new system, which Nokia have clearly said that they will NOT properly support on the N900. The work to fix major bugs was essentially just a woefully inadequate fairwell gesture. A full, supported meego release with potential for another 2 years of app compatibility for the N900 might have been a less stupid gesture.
I didn't suggest that at all. Clearly they bought it with the intent of using it to build a good cross-platform SDK solution for their phones. What I did suggest was that they'll probably kill it anyway, despite their good intentions, because they're completely clueless about what developers and users want from modern smartphone platform.
Now see. I just don't get this. I can totally see the iOS vs Android thing. There is little doubt that both are very usable device operating systems devised for the specific needs of a very small screen and limited input options. I'm currently using an iPhone, but realistically I think I'd be just as happy with an Android phone. My iPhone preference is about half "I find it really usable" and about half "I don't feel like changing carriers and AT&T's Android offerings suck". I've also played a bit with WebOS and it seemed usable enough.
Linux (or Windows, or Mac OS) on a cell phone just doesn't seem like it'd be any fun to use. What are they using for a WM? Anything like a standard X.org setup seems like it would be clumsy as Hell on a small screen, and most phones lack any kind of mouse. I realize that some people are willing to sacrifice usability for perceived control, or power, or freedom; but stock Linux on a phone just seems like it'd be more trouble than it's worth.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Regardless of our opinion of them as a company, this is a smart move. Backwards compatibility would add "rocks to the rucksack". If they are going to compete in the mobile market a lot of the dogma they have stuck by will have to fall away.
Exactly - the problem is not a lack of open OS solutions, the problem is that phone manufacturers and contract vendors want their own locks in place to stop people, for instance, only buying content once then easily taking it with them from phone to phone, or sharing data with people on other phones, or using their phone data package with their laptop, or any of the millions of other ways we could be better enjoying the technology if it didn't impinge on their given right to gouge us for functionality that should be free.
This was predictable.. Microsoft learned that it can succeed by changing the product name and look when it fails. Just look at Windows Vista.
[troll]
Is Microsoft going to change its name in the near future?
[/troll]
I think that there is a difference in the "lifespan" metric you two are using:
Carpetshark says that Nokia products have shit lifespans; because he is talking about the "lifespan" of a hardware product during which it continues to be updated to the latest software features(within the bounds of hardware limitations. For a pricey computer-in-a-cellphone-box like the N900, that isn't at all unreasonable, nor is Nokia's record in the area exactly unblemished.
Mdwh2 disagrees, because Nokia has been(if anything) rather retro in the pace at which they kill old OSes, and much of their hardware is among the more bulletproof stuff in the consumer sector. Even your $40 nokia candybar is quite likely to be in almost exactly the same shape it was purchased, after some years of none-too-careful use. This is also true, albeit more relevant to products that aren't the N900.
Nokia is, perhaps, the most talented of the previous generation of handset makers. Their OSes are a little quirky, and they aren't on the bleeding edge of hardware; but they churn out, by the million, solid handsets that will do whatever they did the day you opened them for a nice long while. I've had several that have done exactly that(which was what I wanted, so I was happy). Trouble is, if you are expecting the new support model, where "lifespan" means "serious software updates, not just a critical bugfix or two", they are rather tepid. Android has some dark corners that are even worse; but the N900 is the equivalent of the Nexus One, the company-endorsed OS flagship model.
Fortunately you can buy an Android phone or an iPhone and keep your app purchases between phones and carriers.(Android->Android and iPhone->iPhone obviously)
Which is a blessing compared to the absolute crapfest it used to be.
You're very out of touch, they are scrambling to match the iPhone/Android devices but are falling short. They just downgraded their sales forecasts for the quarter, and most likely for the year. http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/16/nokia-downgrades-sales-forecasts-thanks-to-competitive-environm/
Problem is, Nokia is a phone company, they know how to make phones really well. However, smartphones are more computers than phones, that's why companies like Apple and Google are leading the pack.
Give it a few more years and Nokia will be stuck selling dumbphones while Apple/Google take over the high end smartphone market.
to me this reads like microsoft is in the same pickle that palm was in when smartphones first started up.
back then they had the problem that their current palmos (garnet) was running into a brick wall in terms of capabilities. They had a more updated version available (cobalt) but no one wanted it as it was not compatible with the library of third party garnet software that was out there.
basically, 6.5 looks like someone crammed desktop windows onto a phone. Microsoft wants to get a ground up rethink of the UI out there, but have no way to also maintain compatibility with existing software.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Following trends from l33t websites like Freshmeat.net, they have decided that it shall be known as Yet Another Touted Microsoft Mobile OS *spit*
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Then the templates are implemented twice: in terms of pointers on unmanaged platforms (PC, Mac, Apple iOS, Android NDK) and in terms of C++/CLI handles on .NET platforms (WP7, 360).
From a Windows Mobile 7 Q&A
Q: What development languages are supported on Windows Phone 7?
A: Right now, the only development language supported is C#. Developers are also interested in Visual Basic, C++ and other .Net apps, Kindel acknowledged, and Microsoft may add support for these over time. But Microsoft's development strategy for its new mobile platform is if you're doing XAML programming, use Silverlight. If you're doing an interactive or 3D game, go with XNA. The version of Silverlight supported is a superset of Silverlight 3 (not Silverlight 4, which is going to be released to the Web in final form in April.)
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
'Give up all hope, ye who enter here.'
Microsoft have clearly entered their age of dementia. Apparently the idea is to give up on bullets and use buckshot instead. Something is sure to hit the target, right?
I used to think this BS from Microsoft was hilarious. Now I just feel sorry for them. I used to hope that after Gates left they'd turn into a company that was actually beneficial to the computer community. Now I've given up on them. They are beyond the reach of mortal man. They shall not be returning to our dimension.
(o_0)
Because if theres anything this world needs, Its another Microsoft OS !
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
Android is 100% open source. Don't like the Market? Replace it. Don't like the keyboard? Replace it. Don't like Google integrations? Remove them.
Except that, for the vast majority of Android handsets, you can't actually do that. You're missing one essential piece of source code: the private key you need to sign binaries with.
You're also missing the source to the baseband, many drivers (just binary blobs), boot loader, and even the Google apps themselves. 'Open' is really getting used inappropriately these days.
Nokia is the company issuing profit warnings at the moment. Nokia realises, as much as if not more than Apple, that the dumbphone market and the low end smartphone and 'feature'-phone markets are not terribly profitable. Don't get me wrong, Nokia is still a dangerous competitor, and in a market this young, things can change overnight, so the early leaders could find themselves increaingly pegged back. But Nokia's current position is more of a crutch.
I mean, c'mon, WEHOS? WE HOS!
Yeah, I'll certainly remember that -- though probably not the way Microsoft would have wanted...
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Only he has the visionary genius to lead Microsoft through the challenges ahead, to the outcome we so desperately need. Just one more year should do it. Leave the man alone - he's working.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
That's what this offering amounts to. The Windows Embedded Handheld OS is intended to run set-top boxes (think Motorola, Cisco here), GPS systems, PMPs, and other such portable electronics in addition to phones. The phones that this does go into will most likely be low-end smart phones or feature phones. M$ wouldn't dare derail the gravy train that is Windows Phone 7 that is just now leaving the station.
I think maybe people are smarter than you think they are. Would you like a Kin phone? You can get it cheap. Apparently in the past month since physical availability not one Amazon user has cared enough to even review the thing, even though you can now buy it for a penny ($349.98 off retail). Even the Microsoft haters don't care enough to log into their Amazon accounts to bash the thing, though you can be sure they will in the next day. Reports are that the platform (both Kin One and Kin Two) have moved an astounding 500 units in that month. Worldwide. That's not even one per store. Hell, that's not even one per member of the team that designed and produced the freaking thing. Just the marketing team probably has more than 500 members and even they can't be persuaded to buy it. The number is not very credible, but it's the only number we'll ever see because there's no way Microsoft is going to tell us the actual scale of their failure, and they can't deny the rumor without giving the number.
At some point in the next year a C?O is going to be troubleshooting his PC by pointing the user-side webcam of his iPhone or 'Droid at the inscrutable error display in an attempt to show exactly how his PC failed him to tech support. That'll happen with hundreds of CIOs, CEOs and CTOs, and then one accidentally freakishly intelligent member of that population will have the epiphany: the desktop sucks because it's using the wrong software, and the phone doesn't because it isn't. He'll fix it, and tell his friends, and they'll tell their friends. And then our long national nightmare will be over.
I'm thinking that Windows Phone 7 is going to be such a gorgeous failure that it will serve as a lesson to others throughout three decades of tech. It's looking like a trainwreck on the scale of a Hilton/Lohan/Spears girl's night out. It's Glitter meets Waterworld meets Uwe Boll, to give a cinematic reference. I'd make a car analogy, but such a disaster in the annals of automotive engineering doesn't come to mind. It's going to be lovely. I wish the Internet had a record button so I could replay this trainwreck over and over in slow motion in my declining years. It will be epic.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
If I were betting I would bet that between them they wouldn't move 600,000 units ever, total, even if they gave the phones away - and that's the preorders for the fourth generation iPhone for the first day sight unseen - and only because they ran out of preorder available equipment and demand crashed the servers. Based on the Kin 600,000 units for Windows Mobile Phone 7 ever looks optimistic even spread over the entire lifecycle if it ran a thousand years. Hell, 16,000 units for all the various platforms altogether looks optimistic. Not enough market for developers to be interested unless they're deeply subsidized - and to quote Steve Ballmer: "Developers!" (x60).
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I'm never buying a Windows Mobile device again. Ever. I used devices using PPC 2002 through Windows Mobile 6.0 and had problems with each, mainly the soft reset dance. I now have iPhone, and while not perfect, at least works .
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
You can already write whever you want on an Android phone.
Not if you're on AT&T, which has removed "Unknown sources" from the menu on its Android phones.
I am also an N900 owner.
While Meego won't be officially supported on the N900, it's worth noting that the N900 remains the reference platform for it. Additionally, the community support for Maemo is unbelievably good; I wouldn't be surprised at all if the N900 port of Meego remains an active community project for years. This is partly because most of the people who own N900s are geeks, and because the N900 is completely open (there are a plethora of custom kernels available for use on it).
tldr: Having a completely open device with no offical support is way better than having a closed device with official support.
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
Maybe microsoft bought Maemo? Microsoft Maemo!
because they're completely clueless about what developers and users want from modern smartphone platform.
Do you have evidence or examples of this? Not saying they're perfect, but I've yet to see evidence that other phones are particularly better.
If you take the time to read the article and comments I linked to above, you'll see others explaining the same problem, and an ex-nokia staff member explaining that Nokia are aware of the problem, acknowledge it internally, know what they need to do to fix it, but just can't get it done because of company structures.
Link? To my way of thinking, that is a contradiction in terms. Reference platform means a platform which manufacturers can refer to as KNOWN GOOD, in order to build a working solution, when implementing their own products or variants. Since the N900 doesn't even have the correct hardware to run Meego, I don't see how they could possibly claim that.
Community support for Amigas is pretty good too, but that doesn't change the fact that Commodore-Amiga killed their platform.
Since the N900 doesn't even have the correct hardware to run Meego, I don't see how they could possibly claim that.
What makes you think that?
MeeGo Hardware adaptation project for the N900 - Nokia as founding member of MeeGo project is using N900 as the ARM reference platform of MeeGo at the moment. This means that we have an active project that focuses to make a MeeGo hardware adaptation for the N900. The goal of the project is thus to open as much N900 specific drivers as possible in MeeGo scope.
http://wiki.meego.com/Meegodict
As I understand it the drivers/hardware support of Meego are being developed for the N900, since it's the most suitable ARM device available.
There's already a Meego alpha available for the N900, but there's no UI (just a shell).
If you look at this diagram, it looks like only the OS-level components are being implemented by Nokia for the N900.
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
The N900 uses an old type of touch screen that can't do multitouch (properly). Meego uses multitouch as an everyday input method.
Almost. Meego is available for Netbooks, but Nokia released "Meego Core" for the N900, not "Meego". Honestly, individual skilled hackers have released more of android for N900 so far. Nokia have said that they're not supporting N900 because it's not an open hardware platform, and so they can't release drivers for it.
Honestly... the iPhone 4 just came out with half the thickness/weight, better styling, higher screen resolution, multitouch, proper app store with books and audiobooks and thousands of (useful, commercial-quality, varied) apps, working front-facing camera and the promotion to make that a well-used communication tool. Android is similarly polished, and is making progress constantly with new versions. There are a heap of Chinese companies that have, up to now, been making cheap iPhone rip-offs, but are now able to put Android on their phones and compete on a global stage as full-blown phone manufacturers --- and promote Android at the same time. Meanwhile, Nokia is bringing out huge, expensive phones, which are only good (relative to other phones in the price bracket) because you can ignore the crappy solutions Nokia gave you and hack your own stuff in there. They're just not competing on the same level as Google and Apple lately.