The N9 was one of the best designed phones I've ever seen [1]. It's really frustrating Nokia did not follow the Maemo/Meego path. As a developer I'm not so fond of smartphones because they are not little computers, but locked down devices. Nokia's view was aligned with mine, as the first device of the series was an "Internet Tablet" (N770, released Q2 2005!)

Why they followed an erratic path instead of going full steam ahead with their Maemo/Meego platform is quite well described by the article, but does not sound less stupid to an outsider. They had a device that was in some fronts superior to iPhone much earlier, but they got stuck with Symbian first and Microsoft afterwards.

[1] http://www.theverge.com/2011/10/22/2506376/nokia-n9-review