"It took years after the Amiga for the average PC to have preemptive multitasking. "
Partly thanks to the MS OS/2 2.0 fiasco, also resulting it taking ten years after Intel released the 80386 before 32-bit programming became popular. Needless to say, the x64 transition went much better.
It did, but how long after the arrival of the first 64 bit CPUs did that happen? I ran Windows on an Alpha that wasn't much more expensive than a high end Pentium PC while being unbelievably faster. Would it have survived in a world where being able to run MS-DOS isn't so important? I'd say yes. 32 bit programs were the norm with Amigas ans Atari STs from day one. It was only the PC world that lagged years behind every competing platform and that dragged us back when it finally eradicated its technically superior competition.
Most of the kludginess in every modern x86 computer is dictated by the need to emulate parts of an IBM 5150.
I'd also prefer a clean break, something clean like ARM (although it's getting dirtier).
But the Itanium that intel moved on to? That isn't a clean break. It's a mistake. I'm so happy that AMD was able to force them to make something useful instead.
Partly thanks to the MS OS/2 2.0 fiasco, also resulting it taking ten years after Intel released the 80386 before 32-bit programming became popular. Needless to say, the x64 transition went much better.