If that would have been a requirement, they should have released it as an ISO instead. Wiping you HDD clean, installing OS4.1.0, OS4.1.1 on top of that, OS4.1.2 on top of that, just to be able to install OS4.1.3 on top of that is just hilarious!
Not really. AFAIK older Mac users apparently can only upgrade to Lion by having an existing OS in the first place and downloading the upgrade, so I'm not sure I see the difference. Of course, Hyperion should at some point allow users to start from a clean slate and get 'the latest' on straight away, because no-one wants to spend the best part of a day just getting the OS installed, let alone the rest of their needs set up. Development time has to be prioritised to suit both developers and users. I'm sure that as most Amiga (whether it's AmigaOS, AROS, MorphOS, etc) users are die-hard types and so are probably more interested in certain features being written well and tested thoroughly than say the installation procedure matching the expectation of an OS with multi-million-dollar funding or thousands of volunteering developers behind it.
Windows users have gone through similar (not so little) routines, Vista RTM requires that you install some patches, then SP1, then some more patches, then SP2, etc (the procedure takes hours). I really wish Microsoft would come up with a "catch all updates in one go, apply them and reboot" routine as getting Vista (just as an example) up-to-date can be a real pain. Of course with Vista it is possible simply to install Vista SP2 on a blank disk, but not everyone has access to the latest media to do that (or knows how to do streamlined Windows install discs).
Classic Amiga users have had to go through this sort of rigmarole for ages, assuming that they use their Amiga on the Internet or have custom hardware - having to install a TCP/IP stack separately, some custom libs, support for >4GB partitions, some UI add-ons to make the UI more usable, it's all the same in terms of tedious hoops to jump through.
