I just had a couple of thoughts on this from someone who loves the classic amiga for what they were and what they are...
I have 5 PCs, 2 Amigas, 5 beige power macs (rescued from the trash 3 G3s and 1 G4).
The PCs I have are all 64-bit amd machines except one is an X2 dual core processor.. I am currently lucky enough to be running Windows Vista X64 on that and one other machine (yes the 64 bit vista). The other two active machines one is running Windows Vista Home Premium 32bit and Vista Business 32bit.
Since I have installed this RTM release I haven't had one problem with memory, any BSOD (Blue Screens of Death) and for the most part great compatibility (no past software that doesn't run). Each machine has gig of memory, and a USB flash drive that's at least a gig with system boost enabled on it (it moves the swap file out to the very fast USB drive). Only one of my machines doesn't support aero glass but every other feature works great, it's my business laptop anyway and doesn't really need it.
The 64bit performance especially on the dual core box is amazing. It has an Nvidia 6800GS pci express graphics card which boosts my system rating to a 4.5 on their benchmarking index that comes with the machine.
Anyway my point of talking about all of this is as follows would I run Amiga OS 4 if it were ported? At this point probably not, it would lack all the shader functionality for graphics that I already have and comparing Amiga graphics to DirectX 10 is like comparing it to direct x 1.0.. The comparison doesn't hold water for me anymore (even with pull down screens which I still think is Amiga's neatest feature).
I do like AROS and that works fine for me, I boot it whenever I am feeling nostalgic. If more cool unique software comes out for it, I might be inclined to set up a box to dual boot into it, but at the moment WinAROS running as a virtual machine is just fine (plus I can run multiple instances with the Dual core support of windows asymetric multiprocessing. I used to have a Dual processor pentium back in the original pentium days, that did some killer stuff with photoshop and the dual cpu support. I am glad to see this kinda support hasn't changed. Wish an amiga like OS could take advantage of it..
When I am nostalgic and wanting the old games I have moved my entire Amiga collection to ADF and I simply boot up winUAE which works wonderfully for the stuff I do..
Simply put what would OS4 give me? With the classic Amiga's I was attracted to it's big library of graphics design programs which are no longer available (well yes they are in PC versions that you can buy, the best anyway).. If I were to look at cheap PC hardware all of the PCI cards that are supported on OS4 boards they look like a garage sale from a few years ago. We all want Radeon x1950s here these days versus a 7000. If OS 4 supports just the features of a 7000 then it's behind the times. Simply put I probably couldn't go out and buy
even on the cheap rack some of the stuff that is supported here in the USA.. It needs better device support.
OS4 would be nice on x86 but I firmly believe the time that they could even be succesful with that has come and gone. About the time BeOS was new would have been their opportunity. Now with things like Vista Media Center it just doesn't make sense to do an OS4. Maybe an OS5 :-)
Either way I agree with Hyperion not doing OS4 for the PC, it's not needed there is much better stuff out there. Maybe an OS 5 though would be cool. These guys are really innovative and if given an opportunity with new hardware and new features I think they'd do something incredible.
Don't relagate them to duplicating OS4 especially with the state it's in with support, which is not Hyperion's fault blame the hardware people and A Inc for that.
