Simplify is good, but like I said in the review, no need to remove. It just feel too much influence from iPhone. Desktop/Homescreen is very common for any OS. Some people may not need it, but it doesn't mean there's need to remove.

If you see the screen capture I provide for Maemo Desktop, you can see what I put, it's not just news feeds and so on, in fact,  don't add news feed. If you check out the links I provide, you can see many cool customizations done by N900 owners, because of the flexibility, they can do the homescreen with special wallpapers with special functions. It's all about creativity and how each same device differes from one another. For those that don't fancy homescreen of course may not understand it. Even back in Windows Mobile era, we have special theme and customization, I customize the WM2002 with StarCraft theme which really look and feel like StarCraft, I still like it until today. Then there's like HTC, SE, Moto, etc custom UI/theme and so on.

N9 just can't provide at all, it's fixed screen. For my N900, even 4 Desktop is not enough for me, just that put too many things, it will consume more resource and impact on the device performance. The difference here is choice, I can choose how much I want to customize and sacrifice on the performance; If I only want performance, I can leave the Desktop clean and only activate 1 Desktop with common shortcuts, or customize it like a Mac OS style (like some N900 owners did), but I get this device to enjoy all the features, not just aiming for fluidity, else I might as well get something more simple.