The OS 5 Simulator
As this book is being written, Palm is readying the introduction of Palm OS 5.0. OS 5 will be the first version of Palm OS designed to run on the more powerful ARM processor (OS 4 and previous versions ran on the Motorola Dragonball processor).
Palm OS 5 will continue to support testing and debugging Palm applications on a host PC, but due to the significant changes in the lower levels of the operating system, POSE will not be capable of running the new OS. Palm is instead providing a new tool called the "Palm Simulator" (or PalmSim for short).
Rather than consisting of a single monolithic "emulator" program, PalmSim is made up instead of many smaller components built as native Windows DLLs. Despite some differences in appearance and operation, PalmSim still provides essentially the same type of functionality, enabling Palm OS applications, even those built for previous versions of the Palm OS, to run and be tested and debugged under the OS 5.0 environment.
We will cover some of the differences between the new Palm OS 5.0 tools and the existing 4.x toolset throughout this book, culminating in an entire chapter that presents an overview of the new OS and its impact on developers.