I am taking this perspective: The Apollo/Vampire team is picking up where Motorola/Commodore dropped the ball late in the Amiga's history. The biggest failures were C='s inaction on upgrading the AGA chipset further and the big M's failure to keep evolving the 68K line which lead to the whole (now) unfortunate PPC fork.

This is what the team is focusing on first with the 500/600 and upcoming 1200 models... addressing the chipset and CPU failures.

After that comes embracing newer technologies such as USB, Ethernet, etc... who know when.

The stand-alone board, even if at first it only supports the 'classic' connectors will be a great first start - free of reliance on 20 year old motherboards. There is a TON of work to support even the classic setup - and it sounds like that is some of the current core's focus.

I fully expect the stand-alone boards to evolve, much like the current Vampire I, V2 and V2+ boards and the upcoming (V3?) board for the A1200.

All this talk about Firewire, SATA, USB, PCIe slots is failing to realize what a huge hurdle much be cleared just to introduce a basic stand-alone board. Yes the V=/A= team may surprise us with some features but a basic first board is a great starting point and would likely sell like mad.

We just need to be, oh yes... patient... :)

  Then there will time to focus on standalone board version 2. Keep everything the same but add a high speed edge connector for future expansion and the rest will follow. It fits the Apollo team's design philosophy - keep it small and simple!
 
  No doubt what they are doing is very significant from an Amiga perspective! And the Apollo Team will have all the glory for that.
 
  I certainly am looking forward to the first new Amiga 68k chipset since AGA.  That alone is reason to celebrate! But we can dream a little too.