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Please, there is no need for you to tell others what "my word" is (this is not the first time you do this). My point is (was a few years ago) that you shouldn't rule out ARM for what it is now (then), when its development is so fast and there are (were) clear signs that ARM will be something completely different a few years down the line (which it will take for MorphOS to make a jump anyway).

I would love for MorphOS to go x86. My main desktop system has been a Core i7 for ages, and I love it.

That said, I own both incarnations of Efika MX (both the smarttop and the smartbook). They are a bit old now, but they are very nice, and MorphOS would have made a great home even on these machines (HW wise they are running any Sam 440 into the ground, and they were extremely cheap in comparison), and very much has happened since then. Today's fastest ARM CPU's kicks any old PPC based desktop/laptop's butt, especially so when you add the price tag to the equation, and I think it's safe to say that we have yet to see the peak of Cortex A9 generation of CPU's, let alone Cortex A15, and certainly not upcoming 64 bit ARMv8 generations we will see coming from a several manufacturers for years and years to come.

ARM has very nice media centric offerings and is all about efficiency and clever use of resources. Just like MorphOS, and in that sense it's a perfect marriage IMHO. There is however no tradition in the ARM context of providing open and general desktop/laptop computers, and while I am confident that there will always be systems like "Efika MX" available (by Genesi or others), based on *future* ARM CPU models as well, they will be easy to count, and it probably won't ever become comparable to today's x86 market. Question is if that is needed? Look at AROS; it only supports a very narrow (and quite oldish) selection of HW despite the seemingly limitless and constantly expanding supply of cool HW coming out all the time. HW support doesn't come automatically, "x86" does not mean salvation in itself. Drivers and HW documentation will always be a challange. Would a "x86 MorphOS" support the system I have in front of me and use everyday? Hardly, probably not in fact, but that's still what everyone would expect, right?

However, the Linux that Genesi provides with the Efika MX really supports the HW, *including* the proprietary accelerator controllers of the CPU! Hence there are no problems watching HD videos in various codexes, "multi media" is fast, browsing the web is fast enough even with Firefox, etc. All thanks to the drivers provided, which is all thanks to Genesi's close connection to the CPU manufacturer. Maybe access to a company like Genesi is more important than access to x86 per se? Maybe one, two or a few *fully* supported ARM computers over the years would be preferable to an endless and constantly expanding flora of anonymous/proprietary x86 motherboards containing all new combinations/generations of controllers that is very difficult for a small outsider like the MorphOS team to support, and if/when it finally is (through tedious reverse engineering), it has gone out of production since long?

If they really can go x86 in a good way, I would love it. But to me, x86 means top of the line, the edge in power, that's why I buy it. Those systems aren't cheap though, and since I already have one, I would hardly buy a second one (for $2,000+ or so) just because the controllers in my present one doesn't happen to match the ones MorphOS would choose to support. However, buying a second, fully supported $200 ARM box for MorphOS is no brainer though, I'd do that in an instant.

But maybe that's just me...