Apple makes a great UNIX®

From the earliest days of Mac OS X, Apple has touted its UNIX®-like nature. Introducing Darwin, Steve Jobs made a point of describing Darwin as “very Linux-like” when introducing OS X during the January 5, 2000 keynote speech at MacWorld San Francisco. (Though I’m sure more than a few geeks gnashed their teeth at Apple’s iCEO describing the new kernel the way he did: “It’s very Linux-like. Very much so. It’s got FreeBSD UNIX, which is the same as Linux.” 🤦)

But I digress. Anyway. To this day, Apple acknowledges the UNIX (and UNIX-like) origins of its operating system: “Darwin is based on proven technology from many sources. A large portion of this technology is derived from FreeBSD, a version of 4.4BSD that offers advanced networking, performance, security, and compatibility features. Other parts of the system software, such as Mach, are based on technology previously used in Apple’s MkLinux project, in OS X Server, and in technology acquired from NeXT. ... BSD is a carefully engineered, mature operating system with many capabilities. In fact, most of today’s commercial UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems contain a great deal of BSD code. BSD also provides a set of industry-standard APIs.” https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/KernelProgramming/Architecture/Architecture.html

Apple has touted the UNIX capabilities in advertising as well (albeit not much lately):

And, putting the cherry on the top, since at least Mac OS X Leopard 10.5, circa 2007, Apple’s computer operating system has been a Certified UNIX®, and as of this writing (macOS 10.15 Catalina) continues to be so certified.

Apple. Making kick-ass UNIX machines for more than 20 years.