I like the new os4 screenshots but...

[SnowBord]

AFAIK all the system gadgets are vector images.  get some gui creation tool and have fun drawing HUUUUGE checkboxes or any other GUI attribute if you don't believe me.

Amiga E i think had one, so do many other tools.
so vectors ARE PART of the AmigaOS GUI system, probably since it's conception.. if not then definately since 2.0.

and erm no. you can't anti-alias all the icons 'when they are created' if you want a decent looking icon... they would anti-alias relative to the background.. so if the icon artist anti-aliased them for a white background and you are using say a dark blue one, it wouldn't look right would it?  it would have a gray or whiteish border.

vectors have been around since the dawn of time... probably.  they weren't 'discovered' in 95.  i forget the name now, but i have used many a vector drawing package.  Wordworth for christ sake had vector support.  i wouldn't be surprised if there's some datatype on aminet.

and what are you on about vectors only big in the past few years, especially fonts???!?!  what about TrueType, IntelliFont, etc. etc.
Workbench 3.0 had it.  So did Windows 95 or 3.1 or just about anything in circulation since the early 90s.
Again, it wasn't conceived then.. that's when it came into mainstream use!

and while we're after top performance, why not stick it on 4 colour orange and blue ala 1.3 or just use the CLI.
any modern computer (AmigaOne included) won't even blink an eyelid if we had to anti-alias everything.
GFX card accelaration would probably do it all anyway.  And considering you can run Quake 3 at something like 150FPS with all the extras, do you think some anti-aliased text or icons are really going to make your system unresponsive???

[SnowBord]

so an alpha channel won't take up computational power at all, will it?
they'll just make themselves transparent.

it's a different approach, that's all.  an alpha channel means more storage space per icon.  a different overhead.
granted though, it IS a way to go, but just an option.

if you would like partial transparency, then great, use alpha transparency.  if that's not an issue, i'd say it's a waste of storage space considering processing still has to be done.
and besides, anti-aliasing would only 'blur' the edges, not the whole image, which is hardly a problem.  a semi-transparent edge will lose some of the icon's definbition, and 'blur' within the image, not outside it.

so alpha channel's purpose is transparency, not smoothing icon borders.  otherwise, the icon is 'eaten away'.