Palm OS (also known as Garnet OS) is an embedded operating system initially developed by U.S. Robotics-owned Palm Computing, Inc. for personal digital assistants (PDAs) in 1996. Palm OS is designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is provided with a suite of basic applications for personal information management. Several other licensees have manufactured devices powered by Palm OS. The currently licensed version from ACCESS is now called Garnet OS, as the Palm trademark belongs to Palm, Inc.
Welcome to CWAnswers
CWAnswers is your guide to the sprawling world wide web. The directory aims to provide a useful guide made by users. You can share your knowledge as well - simply sign up and edit your first entry. For questions just contact the team at support - at - cwanswers.com.
Weblinks for Palmos
Top 10 for Palmos
Things about Palmos you find nowhere else.
Select content modules
Palm OS (also known as Garnet OS) is an embedded operating system initially developed by U.S. Robotics-owned Palm Computing, Inc. for personal digital assistants (PDAs) in 1996. Palm OS is designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is provided with a suite of basic applications for personal information management. Several other licensees have manufactured devices powered by Palm OS. The currently licensed version from ACCESS is now called Garnet OS, as the Palm trademark belongs to Palm, Inc.
Creator and ownership
Palm OS was originally developed under the direction of Jeff Hawkins at Palm Computing, Inc. Palm was later acquired by U.S. Robotics Corp., which in turn was later bought by 3Com, which made the Palm subsidiary an independent publicly traded company on March 2 2000.
In January 2002, Palm set up a wholly owned subsidiary to develop and license Palm OS, which was named PalmSource. PalmSource was then spun off from Palm as an independent company on October 28 2003. Palm (then called palmOne) became a regular licensee of Palm OS, no longer in control of the operating system.
In September 2005, PalmSource announced that it was being acquired by ACCESS.
In December 2006, Palm gained perpetual rights to the Palm OS Garnet source code from ACCESS. With this Palm can modify the licensed operating system as needed without paying further royalties to ACCESS. Together with the May 2005 acquisition of full rights to the Palm brand name, only new operating system versions from Palm may be called 'Palm OS'.
As a consequence, on January 25, 2007 ACCESS announced a name change to their current Palm OS Garnet operating system, now titled Garnet OS.
OS overview
Palm OS is a proprietary, embedded operating system to power mobile devices. Designed in 1996 for Palm Computing, Inc.'s new Pilot PDA, it has been implemented on a wide array of mobile devices, including smartphones, wrist watches, handheld gaming consoles, barcode readers and GPS devices.
Palm OS versions earlier than 5.0 run on Motorola/Freescale DragonBall processors. From version 5.0 onwards, Palm OS runs on ARM architecture-based processors.
The key features of the current Palm OS (Garnet 5.4) are:
- Simple, single-tasking environment to allow launching of full screen applications with a basic, common GUI set
- Monochrome or color screens with resolutions up to 480x320
- Handwriting recognition input system called Graffiti 2
- HotSync technology for synchronization with desktop computers
- Sound playback and record capabilities
- Simple security model: Device can be locked by password, arbitrary application records can be made private
- TCP/IP network access
- Serial port/USB, Infrared, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections
- Expansion memory card support
- Defined standard data format for personal information management applications to store calendar, address, task and note entries, accessible by third-party applications.
