<<If you want fancy-shmancy preemptive multitasking, then run MkLinux, or BeOS as soon as they come out for your machine. PCI support for MkLinux will be available around December, and BeOS is suppposed to be released for PowerMacs sometime early next year>>
I think the best thing for Apple would be to maintain some sort of upgrade policy for system 7.5.x and then also develop a "REAL" operating system for intelligent users. Pre-emptive multitasking isn't fancy-shmancy. It's necessary. Until you've used it extensively...day in and day out, and I'm not talking about MicroSoft's W95 version, either...you don't know what you're missing. A very significant portion of my system's crashes now are a result of hang-ups when one program takes a bit too much processor time at the wrong time, etc. causing a dataflow error for PPP.
The installed base of programs is a fairly questionable reason to hold back OS development. All the software creators stand to benefit from a new OS because it means mega-upgrade bucks. If you look at software sales graphs, the high points are ALWAYS right after a radically new version of an OS is released and they last about 8months to over a year. This is one of the reasons Mac software sales percentage figures look so bad right now....people are still switching to W95 and having to upgrade their software to run on it, whereas Apple's OS is the same software base as it was this time last year.
