Apple’s Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard’s “commercial credentials recently got a major boost from the Open Group. Thanks to the efforts of Apple’s OS boss Kevin Van Vechten and his team, Leopard has cleared all of the hurdles required to attain UNIX 03 certification. That places Apple in elite company. Only Sun, IBM and HP are certified, so OS X turns the Big Three into the Big Four,” Tom Yager reports for InfoWorld.
“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,” Yager reports.
Full article here.
Nice one Apple. More hard work going on at Apple on every front…
Well, this good news ought to take the stock today!
Make that “tank,” not “take.”
Somebody put this in layman’s terms for me…
Believe it or not, this IS a big deal.
YES ! ! !
This is a major show of respect from serious gear-heads. One less thing the Windows-loving IT guys can use to shut Apple out of the Enterprise. The “low-cost” end of the server pool just got richer.
DLMeyer – the Voice of G.L.Horton’s Stage Page pod cast – currently featuring the ICWP Retreat
M@c, this is like when an IT guy gets a “certification” – it says Leopard is ready to do the job – right. It says a script written for a BASH, TCSH or Korn Shell will do pretty much the same things on all four OSs.
This is major, if Apple really wants to get into the Enterprise Server world in any way. And … isn’t that what Xserve is all about?
it also means ZERO COST to have Unix applications on Leopard. If you have an app written with UNIX 03 standard in mind, essentially you may, say, develop it on HP-UX, then just compile and link to have it run on Leopard, and viceversa.
No more the “All nice and dandy but will my application run on Mac OS X? How difficult is it to port it?”. If it is written along the standard the question thence makes no more sense.
@Mac
Apple is doing a really great job of merging so man different technologies into OS X. Thus OS X is really unique and the first of its kind that combines so much proprietary code, open source, and Unix.
Making OS X UNIX certified will remove additional barriers to moving OS X into the Enterprise space. Before this, OS X was a UNIX like OS which means there could be significant differences between it and a real UNIX System.
The apple engineers have been working very hard to resolve all the incompatibilities with merging UNIX with Mac OS. Leopard like Tiger must have substantial “under the hood” coding work to get it this far. Just outstanding!!!!!
This should encourage enterprise level developers to port more of their code to OS X. They should now have all the tools expected of a real UNIX box at their disposal.
Ordinary users probably will not notice much in day to day operations….just the computer scientist, IT people, and general Unix geeks.
I agree, this IS a big deal. This should really help boost Xserve sales…
The InfoWorld article is dated July 30. Why is the Open Brand Certificate, http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/certificates/1190p.pdf dated May 18. Was this a secret?
Thank you! That all makes sense to me, and spells good news for Apple certainly.
And, yes . . . this great news IS tanking AAPL once again. I wonder where the floor is.
Does this mean I will finally get my long lost tip cmd?
what is unix 03?
Safari feels much snappier now.
Standby for Microsoft’s reply:
Vista to get Eunuchs 03 Certification in 2011.
“Vista to get Eunuchs 03 Certification in 2011.”
Let’s hope not! We need to keep Ballsmer around as long as possible.
To hell with Xserve sales. The question becomes, “You have that really nice UNIX mainframe, why not put a really nice UNIX 03 certified desktop up front to talk with it?”.
I’d much rather sell 10,000 desktops, than I would 1,000 Xserves.
FREAKING SWEET!!! Now I can say “I use UNIX at home,” without there being a little asterisk hovering over my head saying pointing to a note that says, “Well, its really ‘UNIX-like.'” I’m not saying that to be sarcastic. This gearhead thinks this is a huge deal, not just for corporate use, but for UNIX geeks in general.
really nice UNIX 03 certified desktop
What the heck is a UNIX 03 certified desktop?
Or laptop, server, tower, you name it. You do not certify hardware as being UNIX certified!
Thurman, your question exists only in your mind.
@Gregg Thurman
“To hell with Xserve sales.”
That is not the correct thinking if we are trying to break into the enterprise. If we can get OS X in the data center, then it will become easier to get it on the desktop. Baby steps. Now that OS X will be officially deemed a “real” UNIX platform, more IT depts will be willing to give Xserves a try. Once exposed to OS X directly from a technical standpoint, the desktops will slowly begin to follow. “So, we can have this same stable, rock solid OS on our desktops as well?” “Let’s take a look into that.”
Interestingly, the certificate only covers Leopard on Intel-based computers.
Does this mean that Apple haven’t done the same “under-the-hood” work on PPC systems?
If so, this is the first evidence that PPC MacOS is coughing up blood?
I will name my first born Unix