@Dreamcast270mhz,

Although I agree with you that I would love to have MorphOS ported to the G5 and also someday made to support smp, so it could take advantage of the Dual G5's in the top of the line G5 PowerMacs, BUT, it really makes more sense to eventually port MorphOS over to cheap x86 hardware that everyone can buy at a good price with a warranty, or buy even cheaper used gear. Unless the jump from G4 to G5, or Cell processors can give us a long term future, x86 either sooner or later seems to be inevitable. I know a lot of people that have irrational attachment to the 68k and PPC legacy don't want to hear that, but it is a fact of life that using x86 and more standardized parts just makes more sense if we want MorphOS to survive long term.

I have been saying for probably a year or more that going to the G4 Mac models was the best solution for the short term. The team has said (at least one or two members of the team anyway) that going to smp is not likely to happen and IIRC, the move to support the G5 is also a tall order that may not be the correct next step for the team to make. Although myself and many others would like to see the G5 PowerMac to be the next target after the current work on the G4 PowerMac, G4 eMac and G4 PowerBook/iBook's is completed. Truth is that with the current state of MorphOS (it's lightweight size and lightning speed), the 1.42GHz G4 PowerMac, & eMac, 1.5GHz G4 MacMini, and 1.67GHz PowerBook models, are all sufficiently powerful to run MorphOS at a very acceptable speed for most applications that people use everyday.

Yes, we all are affected by the pollution of our minds over the last 20 years by advertising to make us think that we have to have more GHz of speed and more GB of storage space and that a 1.5GHz CPU can't be any good if there are 3+GHz CPUs available out there. But do we have to continue that flawed thinking and do any of you really believe that we have to follow the herd of cattle that don't know any better and keep upgrading to faster and faster CPU's. When is fast, going to be fast enough? I hope the MorphOS team always keeps efficiency as the top priority and as a result, code will remain small, fast and efficient.

What ever decision the team makes for their next target platform, or Mac model to support, I can pretty much guarantee everyone that they are not going to put up a poll and let the members of this site, or any other, choose which hardware platform to port to next. It is the team's decision to make and not the community, though I am sure the team reads these message forums and takes into careful consideration all of the suggestions made here that are objective and not just fanatic emotional dribble (general comment at the community, not at Dreamcast270mhz).

What ever the choice is that the team makes, the next jump to any different platform or even CPU, besides the G4 will take a great deal of work and time with the limited resources available to the MorphOS Team. This means that we will probably be using the G4 Pegasos1 & 2's and G4 Mac models that are supported by the MorphOS Dev Team, for many months before we can reasonably expect the team to support any new, or different CPU's or platforms. I don't think that is a good or bad thing, just a reasonable assumption.

Personally I think that such a small team as the MorphOS Development Team has, is lucky to have so much talent and I admire what they have been able to accomplish in creating MorphOS2.4. It is much better in many ways than Linux is, which has hundreds of times more people working on it.

For the short term I think the community should concentrate on enjoying what we have now and if they are able, to contribute to creating new apps, tools, utilities and games to use on MorphOS. Let the MorphOS Development Team work on deciding which platform or CPU is the best to move to next.