> These are usually promptly followed by "but this doesn't matter to MorphOS".

Whether transparent m68k backwards compatibility matters is a matter of individual perspective I'd say ;-) If MorphOS was going to abandon it anyway it could as well be ported to x86 instead of ARM.

> If you're moving to a different system you're going to need new
> drivers for all the hardware anyway so this makes no difference.

Huh? What have drivers to do with transparent backwards compatibility to m68k applications and libraries?

> Being a Mac user I did the true big-endian to true little-endian switch some
> years ago. It went without a hitch, to the end user the switch was completely
> invisible and I can still run PPC software to this day.

That's because contrary to AmigaOS or MorphOS' ABox, Mac OS X is not a singular address space OS that is based on message passing concept.

To clear things up, if you say that ARMv7-A can't operate in true big-endian mode (did I understand you right here?) it seems that I had misread you there:

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=11&topic_id=6726&start=92