Palm to Unveil Multitasking OS 5

Palm's next-generation operating system, OS 5, which uses the Advanced RISC Machines-compliant platform family of processors from Texas Instruments, will be unveiled at PalmSource the week of February 4 in San Jose.

Several InfoWorld sources in the development community say they are both pleased with some of the new features and disappointed at what it still lacks. Palm officials declined to comment.

Three significant improvements include the ability to use multitasking and multithreading in applications, improved performance using OS 5 with the faster processor, and compatibility with current applications.

A Few Omissions

On the negative side, Palm will not leverage the multimedia capabilities of its recently purchased Be operating system, meaning things such as MP3 will not be available. Perhaps most aggravating to Palm users is that utilities written by third parties to expand the capabilities of the current OS, called "hacks," will not be supported in OS 5. For example, it is a hack utility that allows users to touch the title bar and get a dropdown menu.

"We were told that every single hack will not work in the future," said a developer.

Palm and Texas Instruments acknowledged last summer that the chip maker was developing a wireless processing platform optimized for the Palm OS. Intel and Motorola have also licensed the Palm OS to optimize it for their chips, based on ARM architecture.

New: Data Conferencing

However, OS 5 will give Palm some enterprise-level capabilities, a source said.

"The multithreaded features will allow the development of peer-to-peer, wireless applications for data conferencing. In a warehouse, workers counting stock with a laser scanner can beam the information into a spreadsheet and keep in sync with other workers in other aisles," the developer said.

Faster performance will also mean that when executing a function on the Palm, the user will not have to wait, currently as much as ten seconds, to regain control of the handheld.

Backward compatibility will be addressed in OS 5 by running the older OS in emulation mode.

"Some of the old programs will run faster, some will run slower, and some won't run at all," said another developer. By deploying an ARM-compliant processor, the new OS will also give Palm the ability to gain a foothold in the cell phone market.

Developers said users will see Palm devices running OS 5 in the third quarter.