Hyperion killing Amiga? IMO it's the opposite - while A inc and others have certainly not helped, Hyperion seem to have been steadily developing away on the new OS. Fast? Certainly not - but I cannot see how they could speed it up (to get more developers, they'd have to have people doing other things like porting games).
A half-baked AmigaOS would be terrible. For one thing, it would immidiately convince many people to go over to other solutions. And can you imagine the headlines on OSNews etc? "After ten years the new Amiga is out. And it sucks". Since it's taken them so long, it's far better to wait a little more and have a brilliant OS.
Anyway, I cannot see what they could do to cut corners. AFAIK the main work now is to port the modules to PPC and bug check. If they aren't ported then it'll be slow. If they are buggy, then it'll be slow and unreliable - not something that AmigaOS is known for.
