@BeOS
- BeOS failed when they tried to ship their own HW (the BeBOX)
- BeOS failed when they tried to replace MacOS as the default OS on Macs shipping at that time
- BeOS failed when they tried to take MS headon by negotiating with OEMs over shipping PCs bundled with BeOS !!!instead!!! of Windows
Be never tried to slowly build up a userbase by just shipping a good OS at a reasonable price for easy to get HW and is therefore 100% irrelevant when discussing an x86 port of any legacy OS.
I agree that hardware was not the reason but that is how Hyperion justifies PPC instead of X86 (if people interested I could search for the links, I read it two times, one from Ben H., one time from one of the Friedens)