OS Developments

The overall strategy is to continue supporting Risc OS for the next two to three years, whilst Galileo is being developed into a fully-featured OS.
Galileo will be a pre-emptive multitasking system, with multi-threading support, and the much-publicised "Quality of Service" resource allocation.
The centre-piece of Acorn's technology development will be based on a combination of Galileo and the ASIC 3 "Superchip", running Java. The API will be Java based, and will include support for Personal Java.
The initial launch of Galileo will be very focussed on the requirements of the first customers. Modules for more general use will be added later. Time-to-Market is the overriding concern here.
Risc OS will continue to be developed in parallel with Galileo.
The first improvements to Risc OS will be to support running Java. Areas to be addressed include Long filenames, handling of Java Classes, and the limit on the number of files in a directory. Improvements will also be made to the OS' memory handling.
All of these modifications must still be backward-compatible.
Phoebe will be launched with Risc OS, since it is an evolutionary development. Switching to Galileo too quickly would be an unacceptable risk.