AmigaOS 4.0 for 68k: a viable option forward?

[uncharted]

bloodline wrote:

and by 2001, the very idea of the PPC was crazy... note that this is about the time when Apple started to maintain an x86 build.

I think I should add that unlike AmigaOS, OS X has always been designed as platform neutral.  NeXTSTEP/OpenSTEP were 68k and x86 before they were PPC, and Darwin has always been available for x86 too.  

What really happened around 2001 (although there has been speculation that actually, this is not really the case) is that someone was actively pulling these parts together and tidying up.  The actual groundwork, the real work, was already done because the NeXT engineers were sensible, forward-thinking guys (if only that were true elsewhere in the industry)

Also note, that unlike Windows, as time has gone on, OS X has become less and less compatible, dropping legacy stuff as it has gone on. With quite a lot of success.  There is even speculation that Snow Leopard will drop PPC compatibility, as part of it's drive to be mean and lean.  This simply doesn't happen elsewhere.  For example, the system I'm currently employed to replace, was originally a Windows 3.1 app.

So to bring this back on topic, AmigaOS was never designed to be independent of the hardware, in particular the CPU and doing that kind of work will take a massive effort.  Secondly, to really move a platform to different hardware there has to be sacrifices made to legacy compatibility to really produce anything worthwhile.  This just could never properly happen on the Amiga. 99% of the software out there will never be replaced.

[uncharted]

bloodline wrote:

Well... that's what I said... am I having difficulty expressing myself today?

Is was around 2001 where Apple Engineers started to maintain an x86 build... that doesn't mean that Darwin didn't already exist on the x86... but it does mean that the x86 source tree is kept in sync with the PPC version.

Don't stress mate, I was elaborating on the situation, not disagreeing with you. :-)  OS X is more than Darwin (or BSD with a pretty windows manager as some around here like to call it), and the point I was trying to elaborate was that a large chunk of other stuff was already x86 as well and that it wasn't a huge upheaval to maintain.  

There is some indication that the whole "started in 2001" thing is bowl-locks anyway, and that there has always been an x86 build.