Leopard gets UNIX seal of approval

As you toss and turn in your bed every night in the summer heat, one disturbing thought continues to echo through your sleep-addled brain: “OS X is UNIX-based, but it’s not UNIX—what’s that all about?” Well, I”m here to tell you that you can finally rest quietly at last. The Open Group has officially certified Leopard as UNIX “on Intel-based Macintosh computers.”

Apple is only the fourth company to receive this prestigious certification; it joins only HP, Sun, and IBM. InfoWorld’s Tom Yager explains what this means to us average Mac junkies:

There are UNIX pretenders, and there is the real thing. Mac users, realize that qualifying for UNIX is no small feat, especially for an open source, BSD-based OS…Apple is to be commended.

The UNIX 03 specifications cover libraries, system calls, terminal interfaces, commands and utilities, internationalization and the C language. That’s the whole enchilada for ISVs (independent software vendors) porting their server and non-GUI applications to OS X.

Sounds like all good things for Apple in the enterprise market. And for your eight hours of beauty rest every night (not that you need it; we have it on good authority that all of MacUser’s readers are attractive, intelligent, above average folks, who completely understand the above post, even if the writer doesn’t).

[Thanks, Dave!]