Palm OS (also known as Garnet OS) is a discontinued

mobile operating system A mobile operating system is an operating system An operating system (OS) is system software System software is software designed to provide a platform for other software. Examples of system software include operating systems like macOS ...

initially developed by Palm, Inc., for

personal digital assistant#REDIRECT Personal digital assistant The Palm TX A personal digital assistant (PDA), also known as a handheld PC, is a variety mobile device which functions as a personal information manager. PDAs have been mostly displaced by the widesprea ...

s (PDAs) in 1996. Palm OS was designed for ease of use with a

touchscreen A touchscreen or touch screen is the assembly of both an input ('touch panel') and output ('display') device. The touch panel is normally layered on the top of an electronic visual display of an Information processor, information processing system ...

-based

graphical user interface The graphical user interface (GUI "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ) is a form of user interface In the industrial design Industrial design is a process of design A design is a plan or specification for the construction ...

. It is provided with a suite of basic applications for

personal information management Personal information management (PIM) is the study of the activities people perform in order to acquire or create, store, organize, maintain, retrieve, and use information items such as documents (paper-based and digital), web pages, and email mess ...

. Later versions of the OS have been extended to support

smartphone A smartphone is a portable device A mobile device (or handheld computer) is a computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations automatically. Modern computers can per ...

s. Several other licensees have manufactured devices powered by Palm OS. Following Palm's purchase of the Palm trademark, the currently licensed version from

ACCESS Access may refer to: Companies and organizations * ACCESS (Australia), an Australian youth network * Access (credit card), a former credit card in the United Kingdom * Access Co., a Japanese software company * Access International Advisors, a hed ...

was renamed ''Garnet OS''. In 2007, ACCESS introduced the successor to Garnet OS, called

Access Linux Platform The Access Linux Platform (ALP), is a discontinued open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software Software is a collection of instructions Instruction or instructions may refer to: Computing * Instruction, one op ...

; additionally, in 2009, the main licensee of Palm OS, Palm, Inc., switched from Palm OS to

webOS webOS, also known as LG webOS and previously known as Open webOS, HP webOS and Palm webOS, is a Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software that is both free software and open-so ...

webOS

for their forthcoming devices.

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 3Com Corporation was a digital electronics manufacturer best known for its computer network A computer network is a set of s sharing resources located on or provided by . The computers use common s over to communicate with each other. Th ...

, 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 A licensee can mean the holder of a license A license (American English American English (AmE, AE, AmEng, USEng, en-US), sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to ...

of Palm OS, no longer in control of the operating system. In September 2005, PalmSource announced that it was being acquired by

. In December 2006, Palm gained perpetual rights to the Palm OS 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 Palm can publish releases of the operating system under the name 'Palm OS'. As a consequence, on January 25, 2007, ACCESS announced a name change to their current Palm OS operating system, now titled ''Garnet OS''.

OS overview

Palm OS was a

proprietary {{Short pages monitor