(Sorry, long rant - you have been warned!)
It's too late. Hyperion have always insisted there's no "market" on the x86(read mainstream AMD64/Core2Duo etc.) because of "competition" from other operating systems. Thus they have effectively killed off any remote hope the Amiga had as a platform years ago. Most realistic observers noted that the custom PPC hardware route was going to lead nowhere so it hasn't been a surprise to anyone when things turned out they way they have.
Now the problem of hardware is almost academic. Most people won't give a toss about AOS4 because it's practically in the stone age for software availability. What little there is often turns out to be primitive and relatively expensive.
What's the point of having a nice efficient OS if you have to spend ages jumping through hoops just to get your work done, or have to write your own software because what's available is ten years out of date?
AOS4 (and MorphOS) are following an outdated model. The only comparable OS I can think of is SkyOS - which like them is developed by a small number of people and is sold on a commercial basis. Despite running on commonplace hardware and having an easier API to post applications to, how many SkyOS users do you know?
The problem - and to an extent this is even worse for AROS - is the lack of software. What's the point of a fast responsive OS if there's sweet FA to run on it? Amiga software is now largely vastly outclassed by FREE offerings on Windows and Linux. Being an Amiga user involves sacrifices and that is not a great promotional concept. Having three diverging platforms within the Amiga scene has made things even worse. Look at Sputnik - it's in beta for MorphOS but it needs developers to sweat to port it over to AROS and AOS4. FFS, even if you accept that the platforms shouldn't be binary compatible the APIs should be close enough so that new software would only need a recompile - but no, instead of convergence you have divergence and even further fragmentation. It's nuts I tell you.
Years ago I contributed a short article - more of an opinion really - to the sadly stillborn Amiga.org magazine pilot. It was on the subject of cross-platform APIs and how those who wanted a future for Amiga-like operating systems should make it a priority to get such things ported so that the user base can then inherit a large catalogue of software which could then be easily ported without delay. I still think the failure to address this is as big a nail in the Amiga coffin as the dimwitted insistence on sticking with the 1980s concepts of OS/hardware bundle when no one involved had the resources to be at the cutting edge with such an approach.
Now the years have passed and I don't see any way back. I drifted away from the Amiga scene when my Amithlon system died and I found I had no compelling reason to rebuild it on new hardware - the Amiga had dropped below the threshold of what I need for a usable system, and from what I can see it's been falling even further behind in the time that has passed since then. I don't see any future growth in the Amiga scene - the commercial offerings are virtually dead in the water as viable marketable products and AROS simply lacks the focus and direction to supplant them. That it is still very much the poor man's option in terms of development resources despite the terminal problems suffered by AOS4 and MOS over the past few years is very indicative of its future potential.
I used to advocate porting AOS to the mainstream hardware platform because it made sense to wipe out the handicap of expensive inferior hardware and make it accessible to a wider audience, but I no longer see the point. The development costs and effort involved and the complete lack of a market for AOS on any hardware render any ports irrelevant. AROS is free, but as Bernie Meyer mentions in a parallel thread to this on AWN: what's the point of running AROS on your x86/AMD64/Core2Duo when there's nothing it can do better than the alternatives.
Sorry to be so negative, but reading through forums like AWN and MorphZone simply leaves me shaking my head in disbelief. The same old pipedreams, the same old dogma, the same old prejudices and the same sad pseudo-elitism that was dominant several years ago is still there now. Nothing has been learned.
Like the Neanderthals, the Amiga scene is just too set in its ways to survive in the long term and this makes me sad to see. Every time I come back to the forums to find out what's been going on I see hardly anything has progressed, month after months, season aafter season, yera after year.
Time to decide: is the Amiga scene about commercial interests or just a hobby? Is it about offering users an experience they can't get elsewhere or about keeping nostalgia alive? It can't be a bit of everything any more.
