Sunnyvale (CA) - In a move to differentiate the mobile operating system from the devices on which it runs, Access, the company that owns the OS, has renamed Palm OS to Garnet OS, as an attempt to remove the connection to the maker of Palm devices.

Three months ago, the company behind the operating system changed its name from PalmSource to Access, and since then has been trying to gain name recognition other than the recognition that it was tied to Palm. This also highlights another change for devices running the OS, as the "Palm Powered" mark that used to grace the packaging of Palm OS devices will be replaced with one that reads "Access Powered".

It is a move that will likely cause more confusion for consumers instead of reducing it, but in the corporate scheme it makes sense. The operating system is used almost exclusively with Palm devices. However, the new name could help it to branch out to other devices. Palm OS was probably the biggest operating system to be independently developed and owned but have a name that was tied to a specific brand of device.

The name shuffle comes as Access is working on a new mobile platform based on the open-source Linux platform. The company currently refers to it as the Access Linux Platform.