I completely agree, as does (probably) most people who has MorphOS experience coming in contact with AROS.
Anyway, since you already gave such a good answer, I'm going to dedicate my post entirely to speculations! 
Maybe the future way forward for MorphOS will be to abandon the integrated, seamless 68k emulation at some point, together with the ambition to maintain the API as tight to the original Amiga OS API as they do today, maybe changes will be necessary at some point, if you are to make a jump to a different architecture/ISA. While it would lead to some sacrifices (turning it more into AROS, but still more than that), it could also lead to many great things, like a better HW platform, true SMP, true MP, true 64-bit, etc.
Then you would have to run the old Amiga apps through UAE or whatever, like they do on AROS, maybe that will be good enough on a x86 machine (it's not much fun on PPC). It will be a completely different manner than what we are used to on MorphOS (or OS4) today, it won't be integrated, it wont be as seemless, it's a different philosophy on "Amiga backwards compatibility" altogether, but although the thought might be a bit shocking to us at first, it seems to be enough for AROS people? Anyway, it wouldn't stop by just becoming a new "AROS Copy", since most new (and most interesting) MorphOS SW are in PPC, and is still maintained and could probably be ported to a new MorphOS "v4.0" architecture without greater troubles. Some good SW has even been brought under the MorphOS Team's wings for integration into the MorphOS package, and I think this strategy might continue.
So MorphOS would (probably) still have most of its native SW stack available, but you would have to run Amiga apps in the AROS way. MorphOS will of course still have its unique polished look and feel, the same features (and more), the feeling of a real, usable desktop, etc from MUI4, Ambient, etc, not anything like AROS. And somehow I doubt the MorphOS Team will ever settle with running MorphOS in some process on top of another OS (as they seem putting a lot of pride into building a complete OS themselves)? And as a result, it could have a better HW platform, true SMP, true MP, true 64-bit, etc, a package completely new to Amiga, a "2nd Next Generation" (meaning Third of course :lol:, "3D miga"), which neither AROS or OS4 could match. But who knows, these things are *highly* hypothetical speculations, and might not happen at all (though they have been suggested by some MorphOS developers as one of several plausible ways to a future). I guess we'll learn in time...
From what I read, I do believe this basically is the game plan.
On the one hand, I can honestly say that even if MorphOS wasn't backwards compatible (as in not having to rely on some half assed WinUAE wanna be, but being able to install and run classic apps natively), I would cringe, but I can also say that the OS is awesome enough on it's own that I would still use it and still consider it Amiga in spirit, much like I do with Haiku which has NOTHING to do with Amiga except for that "in spirit" it feels like a continuation of the technology I have grown to love over the past couple of decades.
The only thing that worries me is that I don't see to many new software releases coming out. A stand alone OS that may at some point no longer support the MASSIVE software library from yesterday would suffer without a slew of new and original apps to replace the ones we had. ImageFX comes to mind.
Likewise, as you have said, UAE is not quite as exciting as it is on x86, though as it stands, unless you are running WinUAE, the experience still isn't the greatest. Sure you can run classic non-PPC games from disk images, and that it does well, but when it comes to running a virtual environment or integrating the emulation into the OS itself...
Well I'll just say that UAE is still lacking majorly in that department and the experience is NO WHERE near at good as using a real Amiga, or the MorphOS method for that matter (even with the added ability to emulate the old chip sets which is primarily just for old games anyhow).
UAE cuts off support for classic PPC apps and games, it wastes valuable resources, and again, if the OS it is running on is not stable, then the emulation is not going to be stable (though stability is not an issue MorphOS suffers from).
On top of that, I must once again state that no version of UAE can compare to WinUAE, and that's just sad because that means that if we want to emulate classic Amiga and do it well, we have to use the OS that many of use avoided for all these years. I mean wasn't it our loathing for Windows and Mac that helped inspire so many of us to chose Amiga in the first place?
Granted, I really hope things get better for the non WinUAE varients of UAE, but so far the progress has been TERRIBLY SLOW!!!!!!! And I can only imagine that bringing JIT to PPC UAE is only going to take longer, but then if MorphOS goes to ARM, won't JIT have to be ported to ARM too?!?!
All in all I don't like this idea. I have been looking for modern(ish) hardware that I could score at a cheap price, and be able to run a large chunk of my more resoure intensive classic Amiga apps on, and until my eMac died, despite it's limited resources, has been the answer to my praryers! I would only hope that in the future that the MorphOS team would strive to maintain classic support on what ever new hardware that they may be targetting, for as long as possible. I like not needing Amiga rom images, I like not having to load up an emulator, I like being able to run my old software as if it were native, and it does not bother me in the least that I am not able to play the old games without emulation because of the chip set because when you are gaming, you are not using the OS, so I could really care less. It's when I'm running classic apps that I don't want to be running an emulator.
As for that handful of classic Apps like OctaMED S.S. that MorphOS does not run (and OS 4 does for what ever reason), I can always resort to using Amithlon, which to me, was the prefered way of taking Amiga to the future in regards to using the x86 family of processors. It still pains me deeply that Amiga Inc. (Bill) killed the project off.
Anyhow, there is my UAE rant, and why I prefer MorphOS like it is. Backwards compatible. Though again, by the time all this takes place, we'll probably be at version 4.x which I'm sure is going to be VERY impressive, and I'm sure that when 3.x comes out, developers will get excited again and will begin to start coding fresh new apps and games for it.
Besides the FPGA and Natami should be out some day, so even if my classic Amigas die some day, I'll have those hardware platforms to consider for high end Amigaing.
On a final note, one comparison I can make between AROS and MorphOS is with FPSE. I was actually able to get the MorphOS port to out perform the AROS port that was running on a 2.6 Dual Core Intel Machine with GeForce Graphics, 2Gb RAM, etc. Ironically the MorphOS port was running on my crappy little eMac with 1Gb or RAM, a 1.2Ghz PPC CPU, and classic built in ATI graphics with 32Mb RAM. All using the same exact settings at that, go figure...
And for the note, I am not here to bash AROS and start the (My Amiga OS is better than your Amiga OS) war. I am just stating the facts from what I have experienced, having gone into both OS' with high hopes. On that note I wish ALL Amiga varients the best of luck. I hope the devs from all four camps continue to work together and help each other benefit from their knowledge and experience. If it were not my love for these OS's then I would not bother to write and complain when one of them or all of them fail to live up to my expectations.
