Comment Last week we ran an article covering the launch of a new Palm OS emulation environment, and commented that development for Palm OS was grinding to a halt and the platform would soon be forgotten.

Such bold predictions were unlikely to go unchallenged, especially from a vibrant community of developers, and this missive from John Smith set the tone:

...

To which we can only reply; good points well made. A more emotional, though less coherent, response came from John Smith:

...

While John Smith points us to the thriving Palm OS developer community, and the startling breadth of projects made possible by the platform:

...

Except there is no John Smith, and there were no emails. The response to our prediction that Palm OS was dead was deafening in its silence.

So being so inexact as to use "play writes", rather than the correct form "playwrights", gets us a mailbox full of tart corrections and abuse, but saying that Palm OS development is dying if not already dead gets nothing.

We can only assume therefore that Palm OS is indeed no longer with us, and lament the passing of a truly revolutionary platform which created the (often forgotten) notion you don't need a whole PC everywhere you go. ®

Related stories

• Palm OS II launch date delayed again (3 July 2007)
• Palm hires iPod guru (9 March 2007)
• Forgotten Tech BeOS: the Mac OS X might-have-been (30 January 2007)
• StyleTap brings Palm apps to Windows mobiles (23 January 2007)
• Palm pays $44m for Palm OS source code licence (7 December 2006)
• PalmSource name consigned to the Dustbin of History (13 October 2006)