Okay, to be fair it's just the name that is finally dead.

A year or so ago Access Technology purchased PalmSource from Palm. Palm had decided to spin off their Operating System business so they could concentrate on making devices running both on their legacy OS and more advanced devices based on Windows Mobile.

Not much has been heard from the venerable old OS since then - after all, in the last couple of years before the sale they seem to have spent more time re-branding and re-structuring the company when perhaps they should actually have been focusing on their product.

Well finally with some fanfare the next generation of PalmOS has surfaced, and it's called GarnetOS (which if memory serves was the name of one of the forks of the development going on at PalmSource).

A couple of years ago I might have cared. I used a PalmOS powered device and even wrote some shareware apps for it. Sadly PalmOS failed to make ay real advances against the competition and newer, shinier Windows Mobile devices started appearing.

I made the switch, and haven't really looked back. Sure there's a huge number of PalmOS applications out there but with the advent of emulators like StyleTap and the growing Windows Mobile marketplace there's no reason to limit yourself to a PalmOS powered device any more.

Sure, I have fond memories of my Palm devices (original 3com Palm, Palm III and V, Clie NX70 and UX50) but I don't think Garnet will be shiny enough to tempt me back to the platform, despite it's new owners and new name.