This has all been dealt with over the years ad infinitum. To some, like meynaf as an assembly coder, the Amiga is clearly tied to the 68k and custom chips. Others did not care what was underneath, it was the operating system and programs that mattered. Saying either one is correct is just an opinion
Galahad's question is hard to answer (as we see here) since there are several paths of "next generation". For MorphOS, the Macs are the way to go, for OS4 it's cheap to try in WinUAE but there isn't really an inexpensive hardware option, and for AROS most things will work (some driver limitations to consider).