Leopard qualifies for official UNIX 03 certification

It's no secret that OS X is based on BSD Unix, and it looks like Apple let a little more of those roots shine through with Leopard -- The Open Group has just awarded OS X 10.5 Leopard UNIX 03 certification, meaning that Apple joins Sun, HP, and IBM as the only certified vendors. The spec covers libraries, system calls, terminal interfaces, commands and utilities, internationalization and the C language, meaning that software vendors can easily port server and non-GUI apps to and from OS X with minimal effort. Although this was already mostly the case, it's always nice to see the circle complete, isn't it?

[Via TUAW]

[eddie @ Aug 1st 2007 11:13PM]

Nice, nice. Hopefully this will make more people take interest in it, and cracking it and making viruses for it and all :D

[Eric @ Aug 1st 2007 11:30PM]

This is kind of old news... http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/certificates/1190p.pdf

[Sirius @ Aug 2nd 2007 3:05AM]

Terminal supports tabs? I didn't know that.. I was just thinking how useful that would be while I was working in Ubuntu (whose terminal *does* support tabs but not a real transparent background)..

[densone @ Aug 2nd 2007 3:23AM]

Yeah, that must be new for Leopard, but OSX has had iTerm for a while which is really nice in the most recent versions. It supports tabbed Terminal and sending the same command to many windows and the creation of bookmarks.

[Karl @ Aug 2nd 2007 3:28AM]

In leopard it does.

Also, a UNIX core is certainly why I'm switching. Most engineering apps are made for Unix, but Linux is just not a good GUI OS. It's powerful, but it's just not as easy to use out of the terminal or feature rich as OSX. Besides, Apple have some great hardware, especially in the portable market.

[brad @ Aug 3rd 2007 2:17AM]

Dude, Mac has got a nice Gui, but have you seen , or experienced Compiz Fusion lately, it beats the pants off anything apple has to offer. Dont belive me?, got to youtube and search for compiz-fusion, click on any of the first 5 listed. It is by far a better gui experience than apple is going to release.

Imagine whats to come, then again apple can always steal these and incorporate it in 2009's release (OSX Thiefcat) ;)

[Preston Ursini @ Aug 19th 2007 7:32PM]

While you are right that the visual effects with Compiz/Beryl may look better than those of Mac OS X's in a side by side comparison, the effects tend to get in the way and hinder productivity, unlike Expos. Also, KDE or Gnome are not as easy flowing or well designed for a serious workstation. X Windows has a good philosophy behind it, it does not suit well in terms of memory management and performance. Also, it is hard to get any decent graphics cards working under Linux with ease. Linux would be great if it were a community developed operating system, and not a kernel. The whole 1000 distributions that do the same thing is messy. An official Linux Distribution + Others for testing new ideas and such would be nice. The first thing I would want to see is a nice GUI and packaging system for managing drivers. A driver package should include source and binary drivers, and then they can be installed through a nice command line utility or gui.

[Johnny Appleseed @ Aug 2nd 2007 7:01AM]

So...does that mean we get uncle Steve's blessings to run OSX on windows based PC's? Please....?

[Alex Voda @ Aug 2nd 2007 8:20AM]

No!
The reason OS X is only avaible on Apple hardware is drivers.
Microsoft and the Linux comunity chose to make driviers for any existing hardware.
Apple skipped this problem. They make their own hardware so they have no prob with drivers.

[Xzavier @ Aug 2nd 2007 8:34AM]

Apple makes hardware, or designs hardware?

[Nick @ Aug 2nd 2007 10:49AM]

Xzavier you sure do like to split hairs dont you?

[Marcos @ Aug 2nd 2007 10:54AM]

The MAIN reason OS X is only available on Apple hardware is not drivers. The MAIN reason is that Apple MAKES MONEY selling hardware. That's the business model and that's why there are no Mac clones (anymore).

[matt @ Aug 2nd 2007 9:28AM]

Does this imply changes on the server side of the house?

[Krod @ Aug 2nd 2007 11:18AM]

It still won't ba able to hold a candle to Vista...

[JuggleNuts @ Aug 2nd 2007 11:37AM]

Can someone *PLEASE* explain WHY creating these voting machines is - apparently - so extremely difficult?

[Kbunch @ Aug 2nd 2007 11:42AM]

Woot. Yet another reason why I want a mac. I will be picking up a MacBook in the next 6 months.

[freemikekelly.org @ Aug 2nd 2007 4:31PM]

Go Apple! Vista's becoming heavier, buggy and awful, being outsold by XP still. And Leopard is packing in more functionality but making the core stronger on an already rock solid foundation. The fact that they cared enough to take this step shows their attention to detail. Its like anyone can write a web page, but when you make it XHTML valid, it just makes you that much better.

[michael @ Aug 2nd 2007 4:45PM]

Vista : Heavier? The last time I remembered, an OS doesn't way a thing. Maybe the DVD disc, but it's pretty light.

Buggy? Uh, I think somebody has been reading MacRumors too long. There's no bugs, except with Apple's software like iTunes and Quicktime problems. Which they had plenty of time to fix.

Awful? Can you emphasize?

People are still wanting XP, because there's already many things that work with it, and because of stupid rumors and false info. coming from guys like you.

If you'd actually tried Vista on a great machine (my Sony Vaio), you'd be surprised how great it works.

And this is coming from a guy that uses Macs. For real.

[freemikekelly.org @ Aug 2nd 2007 5:16PM]

I appreciate the constructive criticism. I've been a Windows user since 95 and I'm also a computer technician and MSCE certified at that. So I know my Microsoft stuff. First hand. I used Vista for a few months and just incredibly disappointed. Its just seems like XP with alot more RAM eating effects stacked on. And buggy, not new bugs. Just not fixing old bugs! Why is the heart still the registry? Adding (the very annoying) UAC which completely breaks workflow so you can say "OK" to everything is not a security fix. Its just Not. I'm always rooting for Windows to clean up their act and make something I can be proud of them for, it just hasn't happened it. Perhaps Windows 7 will be what they promised Vista would have been.Meanwhile, Apple saw OS9 was crap so they ripped it all up and made OSX with a beautiful UNIX core and overlaid the most gorgeous front end seen in any OS to date. And cleaner and less confusing than Vista. I now use a 4 year old PowerBook G4 running the latest version of Tiger with no sweat and no issues. Find me a 4 year old PC laptop that can run vista with all the "effects" turned on and see how good it runs over a few years.So as a complete professional who has used both extensively, as of right now, Apple is kicking Microsoft's @$$ in the OS department, sorry. Years ago I would have said the opposite, and maybe years from now I'll back up Microsoft again, but come on. Their attempts as of late are pathetic. Has nothing to do with the shiny apple and their smart marketing.

[Maddles @ Aug 3rd 2007 1:27PM]

To Michael:

Before I begin let me just say that the only time I've ever touched a machine running Vista was at a store....

Anyway, where do I begin? Sure, Apple have had a while to get iTunes and QuickTime running beautifully on Vista but I seem to recall something major Apple has done in the last 18 months. Microsoft Office 2004 is still only PPC and Office 2008 has been pushed now to 2008 from late this year. It's actually really annoying. Surely you'd think with so much time they could have pulled off an Office 2007 for Mac OS X? Thank god for NeoOffice.

And Vista still must have bugs. That one computer I played with that had Vista on it was unable to do Flip3D at all and it was a pretty powerful machine. Personally I have to agree with freemikekelly.org on this one. I was surfing the net the other day and came across the IE blog. After scanning down I saw a post that preached the importance of web standards, none of which IE supports right now. Throw in the fact that my mates, who I know have at least an above average knowledge of computers, have had XP do something to them that's not particularly nice and then I'd have to say that I am indeed a Mac person. Never has Mac OS X crashed, froze, or just gone out to lunch on me without myself doing something stupid like saving thousands of pictures to the desktop all at once or using unsupported software.

Above all what do I hate most about Windows? It's huge ****ing dependance on drivers!