Both companies revolutionized computing while maintaining devoted and loyal followings: Apple with its desktops and PalmSource with its handheld operating system.

Like Apple, which once battled Microsoft for the desktop market, PalmSource is up against the same much larger and better-funded enemy. Just the same, Microsoft is an adversary both companies sometimes have to play nice with.

For PalmSource, this means making Palm-based handhelds able to sync with Windows desktops. While Apple, on the other hand, needs the software giant to write versions of some of its most popular applications, such as Office and Internet Explorer, for Macintosh PCs.

While Apple clearly lost the desktop wars, PalmSource's main licensee, palmOne, is the second best-selling mobile device vendor behind Nokia and its smartphones based on the Symbian platform. Conversely, PalmSource and the Palm OS recently dropped to third place behind Microsoft and Windows Mobile in the platform wars overall, a market it once dominated.

So what's up with PalmSource not making its next generation handheld operating system Macintosh compatible? That's the question a number of Palm device users who happen to own Macintosh computers are asking. And it is a question that, as of yet, hasn't received a satisfactory answer.

With that in mind, an enterprising Palm/Mac user posted a petition online to bring Macintosh support to Cobalt. So far the petition has received about 1300 signatures.

Considering the pressure PalmSource is under from Symbian and Windows Mobile along with its shrinking market share, you would think it would maximize the number of computers its licensee’s handhelds can sync with. Especially to a segment, Apple devotees, known for its loyalty.

While not ideal, third-party vendors offer software for syncing Palm handhelds with Macintosh desktops. One such company, Mark/Space, announced it would deliver a version of its Missing Sync application for Cobalt handhelds when they ship.

More on Palm OS Cobalt

Cobalt represents Palm OS 6 with more than 80 percent new code. It is designed to support multimedia, telephony and a greater variety of form factors.

Features include hardware memory protection and the ability to use up to 256 megabytes of RAM. PalmSource said Cobalt exploits all flavors of networking and allows users to hold multiple sessions with different networks, from Wi-Fi to mesh networks to metro Wi-Fi and Wi-Max, plus the 2.5 and 3G wide area networks.

The new version of the Palm OS also improves compatibility with Microsoft Office and Outlook, with past versions of Palm OS, and with other enterprise software. It supports multitasking and multithreading, larger screens and includes extensible communication and multimedia capabilities.

The first Cobalt handhelds should ship this Fall.