@Samurai_Crow

Quote:

Samurai_Crow wrote: @thread Since this thread seems to regurgitate all the old arguments I'll just make a post or so to see if I'm understanding the situation correctly. Custom chips are expensive Our CPU architectures are dead Our developers are leaving Browser support sucks

Right.
Quote:

Re:Custom chips Since the AGA chipset die hasn't changed number of gates since 1992, it will fit on one chip with room to spare. Only the startup costs will be expensive. Re:CPU architecture A redesign of a dead architecture is a custom chip by definition. Since the Apollo team are developing a Vampire standalone board around a single die SoC around AGA compatibility with chunky modes added, I consider this avenue explored so it needs no further explanation. PPC had capabilities 68k didn't used to have back in the 90's but now the 68080 has those capabilities as well, making the duplicity pointless. Part of the switch to PPC was for the ability to leech compiler support off of competitors using the same architecture. That ship has sailed with the other competitors leaving the PPC architecture.

Re:Custom chips + CPU architecture.
Developing a custom chipset and/or a custom architecture does not make sense because of two things:
1) existing software doesn't use it;
2) developers should specifically write code to use it.

For those reasons it's better to stick to "standardized" hardware.
Quote:

This leads to the third point: Re:Developers The tools have bitrotted and most of the software coming out for Amigas and their offshoots are ports from other systems. With limited driver support for even semi-mainstream graphics cores the closed architecture of mainstream graphics chips has strangled us a thousand times over what the development costs of an in-house solution would have done and even that wouldn't have been cheap. One of the reasons I left the OS4 bandwagon in favor of the OS3 and AROS 68k bandwagon was that there were dozens of programming languages and toolchains that were developed on 68k and had no equivalent on PPC at the time. AmosPro, Blitz2, AmiBlitz, AmigaE

Even if those are still in development, WHO will use them again? How many developers nowadays will continue to use such obsolete programming languages / IDEs? That's the real point.

At least OS4 supports languages like Python, which is more "mainstream" and way easier and productive to use. OS3 has no Python available, AFAIK.

Anyway, the question remains the same, even if Python or other modern languages will be available for OS3: who will write specific code for this o.s./platform?
Quote:

Re:Browser support We need better JavaScript support before browser based solutions like FriendUP can land on NG Amigas and that's not going to happen overnight. Also FriendUP needs WebGL support which isn't as far away as JavaScript. Maybe in the future, FriendUP will adopt WebAssembly support which will render JavaScript at least partially obsolete by replacing its JIT technology with static compiler support.

1) This doesn't make Javascript obsolete, which dominates.
2) WebAssembly will take A LOT of time to become more used.
3) A JIT is still required even for WebAssembly, and it's 100% sure that will NOT support big-endian architectures, because nobody sane will add support for it since all mainstream architectures are little-endian.

So, the situation will not change. Unless the post-Amiga community will put A BIG PILE of bucks (because you need extremely specialized people for such task) to add this support, and OTHER bucks to continuously keep it updated (since JIT compilers are one of the most actively developed piece of software. For obvious reasons).
Quote:

Re:Options Until we get developers for new Amiga software, we're basically screwed

How do you think to get developers for new (post-) Amiga software?

Are you following the post-Amiga scene? It doesn't seems so.

Be realistic: do you really believe in what you said?
Quote:

but here are the options for modern computing developments on the Amiga: Hollywood scripting language is a new development for the NG platforms including the Vampire. It's essentially Amos for a truecolor graphics card. The downside is that it compiles about as cleanly as Amos as well. (Not great.) As a workaround there are plugins written in C much like the extensions for AmosPro.

Hollywood is available for several platforms, so it means that the applications written for it will not run exclusively for a post-Amiga machine. And it's quite likely that they will run (much) better on the other platforms.

AFAIK an IDE/RAD is available only for Windows, right? So you need a PC to develop Hollywood applications.

Long story short: Hollywood is NOT a killer application for post-Amigas.
Quote:

GCC 6.3 68k backend is being updated as a means of generating 68k codes and PPC isn't that far behind in that area as well. Since GCC is capable of accepting other frontends for programming languages not presently supported, this will help a lot. If PPC started using more modern compiler technology it would gain almost as much as 68k.

1) Bebbo's GCC 6.3 patch is still unstable, and not integrated in the mainline (upstreamed).
2) AFAIK the latest GCC versions support PowerPCs. GCC 8 is close to be released.

So GCC for 68K will remain quite obsolete compared to the mainstream, and this means also lacking proper support for many backends, included the latest C++ ones.
Quote:

(CISC is winning the war against RISC processors anyway but that's ok.)

That's highly questionable. x86/x64 is widespread and leads on performances, but Intel ships only 400 millions chips per year, and another 1/10 (?) AMD, whereas RISC chips ship several billions (solely ARM is around 15 billions chips per year).

While I'm still a strong CISC supporter, it's quite evident that there aren't new (novel) CISC designs. Whereas new RISCs are coming out, with RISC-V which looks very promising (and will take a big piece of the cake in future, for sure).

That's really a pity, because I still believe that a novel CISC design can be a formidable contender to the best RISCs around and coming. And BTW, RISCs had to become more "CISCy" to be more competitive (I don't think that there's a RISC nowadays which respects the principles / columns of the original RISC design).

Anyway, I don't want to go further OT, with this philosophic discussions.
Quote:

Disclaimer: I'm an inactive member of the Apollo team and have tried all the other options as well including MorphOS, AmigaOS 4 and AROS x86. My current fastest system is an ODroid XU4 ARM Linux board running Android 7.1.1 at the moment, due to lack of Mesa drivers for its Mali graphics core.

No PC? Strange.

Anyway you digressed a bit from the (last part of the) discussion. How do you think that the situation can change from the status quo?


@wawa

Quote:

wawa wrote: @cdimauro Quote: Even the Apple II had expansion slots, and that was several years before that IBM introduced the PC. right. i stand corrected. but ibm made it practically an open standard, and that made eveybody want to be ibm compatible in turn.

Even the Apple II had several clones and a lot of peripherals for its slots. It was, in fact, an open standard. Exactly like what a PC did several years ago.

The difference is that the PC conquered all the market, becoming the de facto only and unique standard platform, whereas the Apple II had several contenders.
quote]other than that i might have not read your paragraph in question carefully enough, tired of preceding rants. of course amiga introduced standards found in workstations at its time to a home user, most notably multitasking. i just understood you were on about expandability. sorry.[/quote]
Yup. The discussion was more general, and my writing followed as well. It wasn't focused on the expandability.


@Signal

Quote:

Signal wrote: @nikosidis However, if the future of Amiga computing is going to be the status quo then it is dead anyway.

Do you seen any signal (!) of change? I don't. There are only sinking ships...
Quote:

As for the price of new innovative Amiga-ish hardware, it will not be low cost, but just as with the classics many would somehow find the resources to buy into a future. The A1XE was not low cost but it did lead to the Sam line. The X1000 was definitely not low cost but it lead to the X5000, although not cheap it is a lower cost. Also keep in mind the A1SE/XE systems were not even supplied with AmigaOS at delivery, Linux only, and Amigans still bought into a future. The problem now is that future was 14, 15 years ago. There are companies out there right now building systems for the future absolutely based on the system philosophy of the classic Amiga. What are we doing? Making and supporting PeeCee computers. If we want a future then discussions of that future must be encouraged and begun. I have purchased; A1XE micro A1 SAM 440 A1-X1000 And still today they are naught but development systems.

Those aren't "Amiga-ish" hardware: they are just PCs with the CPU replaced by a PowerPC one.
Quote:

I for one will not be satisfied with the status quo. I simply can not accept this is as good as it will ever get and I should bow down and be happy. Not going to happen. Now let's talk about a new "Amiga", before deciding it is not feasible. Remember, this is for all flavors of the OS.

It doesn't change the situation. You cannot be happy for the status quo, but this is the reality.

How do you think that it might change? Are you seeing more developers coming? New software? New users? I don't talk about a bunch of new units per year, but a SENSIBLE increase.

I don't see it. I only see a slow downfall. Am I the only one? I don't think so.

So, accept the reality and enjoy what you have: a retro platform. Like many others.

@cdimauro

Quote:

At least OS4 supports languages like Python, which is more "mainstream" and way easier and productive to use. OS3 has no Python available, AFAIK.

http://www.monkeyhouse.eclipse.co.uk/amiga/python/
It's only V2.3.3 though.

Quote:

AFAIK an IDE/RAD is available only for Windows, right? So you need a PC to develop Hollywood applications.

There is a nice plugin for Cubic IDE available. You definitely don't need Windows to develop with Hollywood. Although the Windows Hollywood IDE is actually a nice package. I prefer to work on MorphOS with Cubic though when coding Hollywood.

Hollywood is one of the few gems we actually have on Amiga, but it's not exclusive and hence no killer application for the platform. The times of "killer apps" is over anyway.

_________________
My programs: via.bckrs.de
MorphOS user since V0.4 (2001)

@cdimauro

Quote:

cdimauro wrote: @Samurai_Crow Quote: Re:Custom chips Since the AGA chipset die hasn't changed number of gates since 1992, it will fit on one chip with room to spare. Only the startup costs will be expensive. Re:CPU architecture A redesign of a dead architecture is a custom chip by definition. Since the Apollo team are developing a Vampire standalone board around a single die SoC around AGA compatibility with chunky modes added, I consider this avenue explored so it needs no further explanation. PPC had capabilities 68k didn't used to have back in the 90's but now the 68080 has those capabilities as well, making the duplicity pointless. Part of the switch to PPC was for the ability to leech compiler support off of competitors using the same architecture. That ship has sailed with the other competitors leaving the PPC architecture. Re:Custom chips + CPU architecture. Developing a custom chipset and/or a custom architecture does not make sense because of two things: 1) existing software doesn't use it; 2) developers should specifically write code to use it. For those reasons it's better to stick to "standardized" hardware.

WRONG! There is an upward compatibility kludge on Amiga known as P96 whose shareware edition has an open-source driver for the SuperAGA on the Vampires.
Quote:

Quote: This leads to the third point: Re:Developers The tools have bitrotted and most of the software coming out for Amigas and their offshoots are ports from other systems. With limited driver support for even semi-mainstream graphics cores the closed architecture of mainstream graphics chips has strangled us a thousand times over what the development costs of an in-house solution would have done and even that wouldn't have been cheap. One of the reasons I left the OS4 bandwagon in favor of the OS3 and AROS 68k bandwagon was that there were dozens of programming languages and toolchains that were developed on 68k and had no equivalent on PPC at the time. AmosPro, Blitz2, AmiBlitz, AmigaE Even if those are still in development, WHO will use them again? How many developers nowadays will continue to use such obsolete programming languages / IDEs? That's the real point. At least OS4 supports languages like Python, which is more "mainstream" and way easier and productive to use. OS3 has no Python available, AFAIK. Anyway, the question remains the same, even if Python or other modern languages will be available for OS3: who will write specific code for this o.s./platform?

Since AOS 4 C sources are ported to P96 regularly, getting things from AOS 4 to AOS 3 with P96 is not difficult. As long as we are on the subject of getting of "joining the forces", they are already joined to some degree by all the backporting going on.
Quote:

Quote: Re:Browser support We need better JavaScript support before browser based solutions like FriendUP can land on NG Amigas and that's not going to happen overnight. Also FriendUP needs WebGL support which isn't as far away as JavaScript. Maybe in the future, FriendUP will adopt WebAssembly support which will render JavaScript at least partially obsolete by replacing its JIT technology with static compiler support. 1) This doesn't make Javascript obsolete, which dominates. 2) WebAssembly will take A LOT of time to become more used. 3) A JIT is still required even for WebAssembly, and it's 100% sure that will NOT support big-endian architectures, because nobody sane will add support for it since all mainstream architectures are little-endian. So, the situation will not change. Unless the post-Amiga community will put A BIG PILE of bucks (because you need extremely specialized people for such task) to add this support, and OTHER bucks to continuously keep it updated (since JIT compilers are one of the most actively developed piece of software. For obvious reasons).

See below.
Quote:

Quote: Re:Options Until we get developers for new Amiga software, we're basically screwed How do you think to get developers for new (post-) Amiga software? Are you following the post-Amiga scene? It doesn't seems so. Be realistic: do you really believe in what you said? Quote: but here are the options for modern computing developments on the Amiga: Hollywood scripting language is a new development for the NG platforms including the Vampire. It's essentially Amos for a truecolor graphics card. The downside is that it compiles about as cleanly as Amos as well. (Not great.) As a workaround there are plugins written in C much like the extensions for AmosPro. Hollywood is available for several platforms, so it means that the applications written for it will not run exclusively for a post-Amiga machine. And it's quite likely that they will run (much) better on the other platforms. AFAIK an IDE/RAD is available only for Windows, right? So you need a PC to develop Hollywood applications. Long story short: Hollywood is NOT a killer application for post-Amigas. Quote: Disclaimer: I'm an inactive member of the Apollo team and have tried all the other options as well including MorphOS, AmigaOS 4 and AROS x86. My current fastest system is an ODroid XU4 ARM Linux board running Android 7.1.1 at the moment, due to lack of Mesa drivers for its Mali graphics core. No PC? Strange. Anyway you digressed a bit from the (last part of the) discussion. How do you think that the situation can change from the status quo?

Not for the better. We're basically screwed. I've left the computer industry altogether. My only Windows PC is an old Atom laptop with Win7 Starter in case I need compatibility with something. I rarely do.

If somebody wants my help to build up Hollywood, I'll help with that. It has a plugin system for parsing foreign file formats including alternate scripting languages. It's based on an old version of Lua but with an interpreter and without a JIT. If somebody is willing to help backport LuaJIT to the old version Airsoftsoftwair is using and write a 68020 compatible backend for it, I'm game. Even a web browser COULD be built on top of it but it would not be terribly practical without some bucks, it's true.

Re: GCC for 68k
Hollywood is written in C as are its plugins so a newer C cross compiler toolchain will help matters as will a toolchain update for any other supported platform.

@Zylesea

Quote:

Zylesea wrote: @cdimauro Quote: At least OS4 supports languages like Python, which is more "mainstream" and way easier and productive to use. OS3 has no Python available, AFAIK. http://www.monkeyhouse.eclipse.co.uk/amiga/python/ It's only V2.3.3 though.

Exactly. I already know it, but I don't consider it because it's too old.

Even Python 2.7 (the current mainstream/industry-standard version) is getting older, since it'll be end-of-life in two years (PSF decided that, starting from 2020, it will not receive even security fixes).

For this reason many projects are already moving to Python 3.x.
Quote:

Quote: AFAIK an IDE/RAD is available only for Windows, right? So you need a PC to develop Hollywood applications. There is a nice plugin for Cubic IDE available. You definitely don't need Windows to develop with Hollywood. Although the Windows Hollywood IDE is actually a nice package. I prefer to work on MorphOS with Cubic though when coding Hollywood.

I was talking about build GUI applications with Hollywood. AFAIK only for Windows there's a built-in support for creating GUIs (that's why I've talked about RAD before).
Quote:

Hollywood is one of the few gems we actually have on Amiga, but it's not exclusive and hence no killer application for the platform. The times of "killer apps" is over anyway.

This.

@Samurai_Crow

Quote:

Samurai_Crow wrote: @cdimauro Quote: cdimauro wrote: @Samurai_Crow [quote]Re:Custom chips + CPU architecture. Developing a custom chipset and/or a custom architecture does not make sense because of two things: 1) existing software doesn't use it; 2) developers should specifically write code to use it. For those reasons it's better to stick to "standardized" hardware. WRONG! There is an upward compatibility kludge on Amiga known as P96 whose shareware edition has an open-source driver for the SuperAGA on the Vampires.

I've already counted Picasso96/CyberGraphics and AHI in the "standardized" umbrella, with OCS/ECS/AGA. Otherwise I would have directly talked of the cited chipset versions.
Quote:

Quote: Even if those are still in development, WHO will use them again? How many developers nowadays will continue to use such obsolete programming languages / IDEs? That's the real point. At least OS4 supports languages like Python, which is more "mainstream" and way easier and productive to use. OS3 has no Python available, AFAIK. Anyway, the question remains the same, even if Python or other modern languages will be available for OS3: who will write specific code for this o.s./platform? Since AOS 4 C sources are ported to P96 regularly, getting things from AOS 4 to AOS 3 with P96 is not difficult. As long as we are on the subject of getting of "joining the forces", they are already joined to some degree by all the backporting going on.

Well, you're talking of things (OS4 apps) which already exist in the post-Amiga land. Nothing new.

No new stuff -> you're not changing the status quo -> the platform is dead.
Quote:

Quote: Hollywood is available for several platforms, so it means that the applications written for it will not run exclusively for a post-Amiga machine. And it's quite likely that they will run (much) better on the other platforms. AFAIK an IDE/RAD is available only for Windows, right? So you need a PC to develop Hollywood applications. Long story short: Hollywood is NOT a killer application for post-Amigas. [...] No PC? Strange. Anyway you digressed a bit from the (last part of the) discussion. How do you think that the situation can change from the status quo? Not for the better. We're basically screwed.

Oh. Finally some reality check.
Quote:

I've left the computer industry altogether. My only Windows PC is an old Atom laptop with Win7 Starter in case I need compatibility with something. I rarely do.

I suppose that there's an ideological reason for this repulsion to PCs and Windows.

Anyway, it's your choice.
Quote:

If somebody wants my help to build up Hollywood, I'll help with that. It has a plugin system for parsing foreign file formats including alternate scripting languages. It's based on an old version of Lua but with an interpreter and without a JIT. If somebody is willing to help backport LuaJIT to the old version Airsoftsoftwair is using and write a 68020 compatible backend for it, I'm game.

That's not an easy task. But you're lucky that LUA isn't a language which evolved much. So, even if you stick to an old version, the productivity should change too much from the current mainstream version.
Quote:

Even a web browser COULD be built on top of it but it would not be terribly practical without some bucks, it's true.

A web browser with LUA on top is useless. You need Javascript, with a very good JIT compiler.

It should be very good, because post-Amiga hardware is obsolete, and has no so good performances per-se. So you need to squeeze as much as possible from a JITer.
Quote:

Re: GCC for 68k Hollywood is written in C as are its plugins so a newer C cross compiler toolchain will help matters as will a toolchain update for any other supported platform.

I know it. But you're still stick to an old GCC version. C++ coders will not be happy.

Anyway, it's only the n-th sign that there's already no future for the post-Amiga land.

@cdimauro

The RapaGUI RAD plugin for Hollywood is cross-platform. It's available on all supported platforms but Android. The mainstream ones use wxWidgets and the Amiga-like ones use MUI.

@Samurai_Crow. Correct. I didn't remembered correctly.

It's the IDE which is available only for Windows.

Quote by AmigaBlitter

Quote:

Well, if someone didn't noticed, time is passing and progress are really slow. Part III of this thread is from may-2011 (http://www.amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=33675&forum=2) Developers and companies should really get along to move the platform forward. A new call to AmigaOS, AROS, MorphOS

Move forward toward what goal? OS4 is essentially dead and hasn't seen any major improvements since it was released and there can't be more than a handful of commercial applications that are still being sold for OS4. The only other Amiga-like platforms that have seen any progress of late are AROS x86_64/SMP and MorphOS and even they are just curiosities in the world of computing. And there are even fewer applications available for those two operating systems, commercial or otherwise.

So which developers are you referring to? The hobbyist developers? Because the commercial developers left long ago and have no incentive to return. And which companies are you referring to because there's only one commercial enterprise that still deals in Amiga-like operating systems and they're named Hyperion and they've sat on OS4 for 15 years and it doesn't appear that they will fulfill any of the promise they've made many years ago such as SMP and drivers for the X1000 and A1222. If they can't even deliver drivers, how are they going to deliver on any of the other promises?

The naivete of some the these threads astounds me. You'll have better luck inviting Hyperion and the MorphOS and AROS devs to a camp fire and getting them to sing Kumbaya. The Amiga platform has nothing to offer anyone other than the nostalgia factor. And that won't support a sustainable business in the tech world.

@ferrels

People singing together Kumbaya or anything else (Irish drinking/beer songs anybody ?) sounds fun.

@thread
AmigaOS being closed commercial source so anybody who have worked on AmigaOS couldn't work on any other OS and make "clean code". Or have I misunderstood something ? So working together for a single OS is not possible after all.

_________________
Rock lobster bit me. My Workbench has always preferences. X1000 + AmigaOS4.1 FE
"Anyone can build a fast CPU. The trick is to build a fast system." -Seymour Cray

@Tomppeli

Hyperion forced that on the developer and some developer signed it. If Hyperion would officially permit that developers work together then it would certainly be possible, at least from legal side. But Hyperion is not willing to do it and I assume the same regarding MorphOS team. So the "calls for working together" popping up all 12-18 months leads to nothing

@Tomppeli

Your understanding is spot on.

@Zylesea
Quote:

Support for X5000 (A1 of which you probably speak) is no biggie for MorphOS. And it is no leap forward for MorphOS, just one more supported model of the many, many supported hardwares: Pegasos I & II, Efika5200B, close to all AppleG4 hardware (including the laptops), much G5 hardware, Sam460. MorphOS' leap wil be x64, but this is not due yet. For now 3.10 is the next step which brings nice improvements and also the X5000 as new platform. But to be honest, I don't expect many registrations for X5000, maybe a few dozens. 3.10 though is overdue and the delay very unfortunate, but eventually the release is rather close.

Then why wasn't the X1k a consideration if it wasn't a big deal?
What changed?

The red versus blue debate must go the way of the dodo bird and bury the hatchet once and for all.

The Amiga community must come together as one. Enough with the bickering!

_________________

@AmigaMac

Quote:

The Amiga community must come together as one. Enough with the bickering!

simply join us on aros-exec and aros dev ml and start developing open source stuff for aros, which will potentially benefit any possible amiga platform out there.

@AmigaMac

MorphOS has chosen Intel and AmigaOS has chosen proprietary PPC. Doesn't seem much cross over in visions to be honest and AROS just seems dull in comparison to the other two. The main issue is Cloanto and Hyperion ripping each other apart rather than the Blue vs Red wars these days IMHO.

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@BigD

Quote:

MorphOS has chosen Intel and AmigaOS has chosen proprietary PPC.

Hate to burst your bubble, but PPC is no more proprietary than x86.

Now if you want to talk about an open CPU platform, then you need to look the direction of RISC-V.

_________________

@AmigaMac

I meant custom made 'proprietary' AmigaOne PPC machines for AmigaOS compared to 'off the shelf' Intel based PCs and before that PPC Mac hardware for MorphOS.

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@BigD

Off the shelf x86 (Intel based) PCs are still proprietary, which is the main reason why any OS not developed by Microsoft struggles supporting that platform. Look no further than GNU/Linux, which has a hit-n-miss affair supporting the PC platform and its wide array of proprietary components.

Last edited by AmigaMac on 04-Feb-2018 at 12:54 AM.
Last edited by AmigaMac on 04-Feb-2018 at 12:53 AM.

_________________

@AmigaMac

OK fine but A-EON and Hyperion have 100% control over their hardware platform whereas MorphOS is more keen to allow people to use old hardware. That in my head is a battle between proprietary AmigaOne (custom hardware) and a more lenient 'use whatever you have to hand' approach from MorphOS (and even more so AROS). I think A-EON know that the profit margins are in the software but the custom hardware protects the software profits from piracy and allows Hyperion to continue as if they were asked to port to Intel they wouldn't have the capital because all the money goes to the lawyers

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@BigD

Oh I'm with you. I'd rather see A1200s reproduced with the possibility of pushing the expansion and customization market and let Amigans tinker with and build what they want that could run AOS 3.9, AOS 4.x, MorphOS, and whatever those AROS kids have to offer.

Last edited by AmigaMac on 04-Feb-2018 at 04:04 AM.

_________________

@BigD

Quote:

BigD wrote: @AmigaMac OK fine but A-EON and Hyperion have 100% control over their hardware platform whereas MorphOS is more keen to allow people to use old hardware. That in my head is a battle between proprietary AmigaOne (custom hardware) and a more lenient 'use whatever you have to hand' approach from MorphOS (and even more so AROS).

The custom hardware which you're talking about is just a slightly modified motherboard.

Nothing new, since it's very common in the PC land.

And nothing important, because what's needed is a working system (CPU, RAM, chipset, peripherals), which... should be get as granted.
Quote:

I think A-EON know that the profit margins are in the software but the custom hardware protects the software profits from piracy and allows Hyperion to continue

The piracy argument is totally irrelevant.

Hyperion got plenty of money when WinUAE added support to PowerPC which allowed to finally run OS4. In fact, Hyperion did a partnership with Cloanto to digitally distribute their OS4 FE (and this makes sense ONLY for non-physical machines. Hence: your target is clearly the emulation fans), and received a nice boost of sales. They also removed the limitation of using only the PowerPC memory (128 or 256MB maximum), allowing to use the entire Zorro memory available, which makes sense only for WinUAE users.
Quote:

as if they were asked to port to Intel they wouldn't have the capital because all the money goes to the lawyers

It's impossible anyway, even without lawyers. Hyperion has no resources to port OS4 to any other (mainstream) platform.

The 68K to PowerPC port was quite easy because they stick with a 32-bit big-endian architecture. And we know that the port was never completed (the 68K built-in emulator/JITer is required to still run part of the original o.s. binaries).

Even only porting OS4 to a 32-bit little-endian architecture requires an enormous effort, because you've to completely rewrite many things, throwing away Petunia and using only a UAE-based emulator for old 68K stuff. And of course, completely losing the seemless integration of 68K apps (and PPC apps: the problem is the same for both) into the native new system.

But that's a general problem. Also MorphOS faces the same challenges. AROS already addressed it, but as we know it's only backward-compatible with the 68K declination.

And I'm not counting the possibility to introduce modern o.s. features, which basically means creating a brand new o.s..

Anyway this is not going to happen due to the financial problems and the micro-niche to which is reduced the post-Amiga community.

Let's face the reality: