> people reading about the first reports of MorphOS wouldn't have
> been shocked. They'd have other examples to compare it to they
> had heard of that never really materialized.

The main differences between the pOS pre-release and the first public MorphOS beta release were, from my perspective:
One needed to run on top of AmigaOS while the other didn't (just required Workbench for lack of own graphical program launcher). One couldn't run AmigaOS software while the other could. One was all m68k while the other ran natively on my PowerPC.
To me, these made all the difference between a dead-end curiosity and the beginnings of a viable path to the future.

> I don't think pOS was ever officially announced as dead?

Correct, as with the vast majority of abandoned projects. On the other hand, I've just found a German forum post from 2007 that reports proDAD's information (in reply to an inquiry to allow putting the OS on Aminet) that pOS was a commercially very successful product at that time (2007!). Maybe as an embedded OS? (Edit: Further posts confirm this and speak of industrial use.) We don't know as the planned interview didn't happen, AFAIK.

Btw, fun fact: pOS can run hosted on MorphOS according to this German forum post from MorphOS 1.4.5 era.

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 03.11.2022 - 13:21 ]