As promised, PalmSource shipped Palm OS 6, the next major release of its operating system, to its licensees at the end of last month.

According to the company, it fulfilled its commitment to deliver Palm OS 6 before the end of 2003 by shipping it on December 29. "Palm OS 6 is a major milestone for PalmSource, and we are happy to deliver the final version on schedule," said Larry Slotnick, chief products officer at PalmSource.

While Palm OS 6 is the most radical overhauling of the venerable operating system ever, don't expect to see any devices featuring it till later this year, as each licensee must tweak the new OS for its own devices. It will also be up to individual licensees as to whether you'll be able to upgrade your current Palm OS 5 device.

Back in May when Palm OS 6 was first announced, the company said the new version would focus on improved management of wireless connections, security for data transfers and more flexible input methods.

In addition, the new OS features more granular, application-level security and pluggable I/O interfaces. That would let licensees remove a Graffiti input mechanism for an alternative, such as biometrics. PalmSource also seemed to be working on tweaking OS 6 to make it Microsoft .NET compatible.

The new OS will also be the first in the company's history to take full advantage of the Be Inc. development team, which Palm acquired in 2001, and its graphic and multimedia solutions. The platform also continues along with the ARM-based architecture, first supported with Palm OS 5.0.

The new version of the Palm OS will be the first to natively support both portrait and landscape viewing and will have much improved support for multitasking, or the ability to run more than one application process at a time. Another improvement most users will appreciate right away is the removal of the 16 category limit for included applications, such as the Address book and the 4k limit on memos. Also look for support for connecting to Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes email servers as well as Web services, among other new features and enhancements.