They were really trying with MeeGo, we used to joke that we had the most expensive clock app in the world because it had been remade so many times. People forget that R&D can be super expensive. Apple definitely cooked there.
Symbian though, I mean, considering the hardware constraints was crazy!
The smartphone variant of Symbian needed 2MiB of Memory and supported Qt... madness.
People wanted iPhone over Nokia, not due to its specs but due to its usability and presentation.
Let's be honest, both Symbian and Maemo/Meego were abject messes in both of these categories.