I'll admit that its hardware support can be a little lacking, but it's a great OS.

I think Sun bit off more than they can chew with Solaris x86. Hardware is way too varied on x86 platforms. I agree that the internals of Solaris are great on both platforms, and I have never had problems taking things I've written on SPARC machines at work and getting them working on Solaris x86. But as a viable option, given the wide range of hardware options people have on x86 PC's, I think Solaris x86 doesn't have a chance.

I agree that developers should try to make their software run on everything, but it's all about cost/benefit. Lots of people are using Solaris on SPARC machines, many fewer are using Solaris x86. If I'm writing a brand new desktop application, I'm not really inclined to spend much time making it work on Solaris. Who uses Solaris as a desktop OS?