@ Valan
Hard to believe, but OS4 relates directly to the sales of A1 hardware.
Ho ho ho. Except that no-one to do with the AmigaOne or OS4 designed the Articia S chipset, which holds back a number of innovations being possible. The Articia S chipset was already designed and its capabilities have not changed due to A1/OS4. A1/OS4 would have to sell in the hundreds of thousands of units, rather than a thousand or so units, if its backers could start calling the shots with chipset development.
Even though Motorola 'don't care' IBM is developing the PPC family to the point were it can compete with Intel and AMD on the desktop later this year.
Except of course for the small fact that OS4 isn't compatible with the new PPC CPU (the 970?) that IBM designed, and obviously won't be compatible with any of its children. That'll require more developer time, which might, if we're lucky, come in the shape of an OS4 update, but more likely to be a new version.
Not sure about this connection, but anyway even with Apples high prices they are selling and gaining in their targeted markets.
A drop compared to the ocean of x86 sales, which translates through to funding for development of the x86 architecture even further.
The only way I can see things getting significantly better regarding PPC development would be for the following to happen:
1> AmigaOS 4 + later releases combined with A1 hardware sell in phenominal amounts;
2> This causes Apple to change its tune and bring its prices down, which gets it more sales;
3> The combined increased popularity warrants more funds allocated to the development of the PPC architecture, CPUs as well as chipset;.
4> PPC begins to cut down the huge performance lead x86 has on it.
This might happen over a 10 year span, IMO. By step 4 I'd guess that the fastest x86 CPUs will be at least 5 times faster than their PPC competitors.
