A couple of points. First, in answer to Bob's hope that "Access considers the OS to be a full mobile platform OS, not just a feature phone supporting OS," I don't think there's any need to worry about that. Looking at the architecture
here, I think it's safe to say that this system was designed from the ground up as a mobile computing platform, not just a phone. It's remarkable that they are now going to be shipping a system with an SQL relational database built into it, for example. And the fact that they are supporting applications written using the GTK+ toolkit, not just the Palm OS or MAX APIs, shows that they're really trying to attract Linux developers, for which GTK is of course very familiar.
Regarding the comments that they are "only" shipping the SDK, I'd say that shipping the SDK really
is shipping the OS. What makes it an SDK is that you can write/build/test/debug applications, which is only possible if there is a system to run your software against. I don't even know what it would mean to ship an SDK if there wasn't a completed OS, and some kind of emulator for it going out at that time.
As for the reliability of the shipping date, if it actually came out on time we'd all just be suspicious that the suits had rushed it out the door, wouldn't we? Rest assured that whatever happens it will be universally hailed by Palm OS fans as sure sign of the death of the platform and the incompetency and/or corruptness of PalmSource!
