It has only been a few days since the release of Palm's first handheld running Palm OS 5, the Tungsten T, and there is already talk about Palm OS 6. OS 6, which is scheduled to ship mid-2003, is rumored to be for the Palm what OS X was for the Mac.

Michael Mace, PalmSource's CEO, has revealed that multimedia and graphics frameworks taken from BeOS will be incorporated into the next incarnation of the Palm OS. There is some disagreement over whether this will be actual BeOS code, or if the Palm OS will simply use a series of algorithms taken from the BeOS.

In addition to advanced multimedia capabilities OS 6 promises to deliver an extensible PIM architecture. It is hoped that this will allow for innovation of the existing suite of standard Palm OS PIM applications.

Other improvements which will appear in OS 6 include granular, application-level security and pluggable I/O interfaces. The I/O interfaces will allow hardware manufacturers to include input options other than the standard graffiti input system.

Details are still emerging, and OS 6 isn't expected to start shipping until mid-2003. Stay tuned and pdaBlast! will bring you all of the latest information as it emerges.