No, I haven't bought/read/seen a page from 4e. I have, however, examined many a discussion headed by the erudite, the enthusiastic, and the exhaustive.
I have slogged through an essay or two, recently, about people who have gone into system design purely to write (as noted in Wikipedia for Houses of the Blooded) something that is, "Anti-D&D."
I find myself torn between two immediate responses. One, the, existential, "Why?" and the second, "But wait, hasn't D&D gone there, itself?"
Why?
Why? Is it that D&D didn't do something for you that you wanted?
As much as I hate the whole, "You can do anything with this game!" concept, (the "supersystem!" theory, I suppose) there's a lot to be said that the basic, "You kill things, you level!" precept was almost irrelevant to any game I enjoyed of AD&D.
One might thank necessity (or desperation) for that. It's what we had, so it's what we used to tell the stories we wanted to tell.
Now we have fantastic tools to do it with... tools that are lovingly crafted to sculpt and mold and tantalize and season to taste. Complaining that the flint we once used both as knife and scraper of clay isn't as precise as the microprobes we've designed, well, that's just ridiculous.
Should we call it guilt? Guilt that we had so much fun with something so awkward, so flawed, so racist/sexist/classist/whatnotist?
Frustration, perhaps? "We wanted so much more out of it?" Well, what stopped you from making something else? Given that I'm reading these essays IN THE MIDDLE OF NEW ROLEPLAYING GAMES, the answer would be, "Um...nothing?"
You know, the same thing that kept us happy with it; years, nay, generations of House Rules. I'm tempted to write it off as just one variant campaign; a whole book of House Rules. You cannot be the anti-D&D without D&D?
sidenote: I remember being part of a conversation with some others about how hard it is to judge how many people are roleplaying based on 'net participation. I agree with whoever pointed out that the old D&Ders are playing their 20-year games and not talking about it on forums, not looking for new rules, not sharing their games outside their long time groups. I haven't figured out how to bring the idea of this "underground" into my post-apocalyptic games quite yet, but there's this whole clan war idea that occasionally bubbles up, and not just men with axes shouting, "We love THAC0!"(disclaimer: I run House Rule-modified 1st Edition AD&D with Unearthed Arcana additions. It really is kind of like identifying my sect... Second edition is an abomination, none of the third editions even exist in my D&D worldview. Oh, and no, except for the occasional mention of it here, I don't frequent any D&D forums or even talk about it outside "my group," so I understand.)
Which brings me to 4e.
I was never tempted to delve back into it with 3rd (or 3.5) edition. Not once. With my opinions on 2e, and with my original DM's Guide as what I (at least in my heart-of-hearts) measured all other systems' books against. (Which is why I am beginning to be turned to Spirit of the Century.)
It sounds like they've made it fun again, and that's the anti-D&D. Isn't it? Wasn't that what everyone was fighting against? The presumption that it was all charts and math and rule lawyers making some obscure social profit against you via your characters? It's probably still a bunch of adventurers kicking down doors and laying the hurt against the evil undead (undead O!) but with it turned a notch higher up to awesome.
I'm willing to be convinced. For someone so firmly set in their ways, that's halfway to conversion.