Interesting results from asking Google whether macOS is Unix or not <https://www.google.com/search?q=is+macos+unix>. The first quality
(i.e. non-AI) answer I got was this <https://www.reddit.com/r/unix/comments/qwklm4/is_macos_unix/>:
MacOS is officially Unix™ (as a slew of pedantic nerds will
inevitably point out in every thread like this) so that clueless
managers can tick boxes on forms. Meanwhile, that's not what the
rest of us mean. If you say something is running on a Unix system,
MacOS is obviously not what comes to mind. Describing Macs as
"Unix" is just being unnecessarily obtuse.
The software itself also betrays this reality. It's certified
Unix™, yet, for example, POSIX semaphores don't work. There is a
stub header they added in there that just silently does nothing,
which is apparently okay. There are many things like that. This is
more "Unix" than, say, FreeBSD ? Hah. I guess it is if you care
more about bureaucracy than reality...
MacOS is clearly more Unix than Windows, and clearly less Unix
than *BSD. This becomes obvious when you port "Unix" software
across these systems: porting across BSDs and Linux is usually a
"fix up a few minor details" sort of task. MacOS and Windows, on
the other hand, both tend to require whole new portability layers
because the systems are significantly different.
Sometimes Windows is even easier, since if you need to touch the
Mac level stuff, you have to interact with an entirely different
universe that clearly doesn't stem from Unix at all. The
interfaces aren't even in C! The Open Group can - for a price -
call that Unix™ if they like. I don't care.
The quality of the discussion tends to deteriorate in a lot of the--
subsequent responses, but there are still one or two definite
takeaways.
First of all, macOS is just as much “Unix” as IBM’s z/OS is.
Also, macOS derives from NeXTStep, which in turn derives from BSD,
which doesn’t actually have any official Unix code in it.
Oh, and here’s another bit of trivia: macOS is built on a microkernel called “XNU”, which stands for ... “XNU’s Not Unix”.
So there.
But that doesn't mean it’s misleading to call it Unix either.
On 08 Nov 2025 04:23:58 GMT, Brock McNuggets wrote:
But that doesn't mean it’s misleading to call it Unix either.
Remember that trademarks are meant to be used as adjectives, not nouns.
You can call macOS a “Unix system”, but it is not itself “Unix”.
On Nov 7, 2025 at 9:49:47 PM MST, "Lawrence D´Oliveiro" wrote <10emi5a$2bk2d$[email protected]>:
On 08 Nov 2025 04:23:58 GMT, Brock McNuggets wrote:
But that doesn't mean it’s misleading to call it Unix either.
Remember that trademarks are meant to be used as adjectives, not nouns.
You can call macOS a “Unix system”, but it is not itself “Unix”.
Fair.
On 08 Nov 2025 04:54:24 GMT, Brock McNuggets wrote:
On Nov 7, 2025 at 9:49:47 PM MST, "Lawrence D´Oliveiro" wrote
<10emi5a$2bk2d$[email protected]>:
On 08 Nov 2025 04:23:58 GMT, Brock McNuggets wrote:
But that doesn't mean it’s misleading to call it Unix either.
Remember that trademarks are meant to be used as adjectives, not nouns.
You can call macOS a “Unix system”, but it is not itself “Unix”.
Fair.
I just realized, I did the same. ;)
On 08 Nov 2025 04:54:24 GMT, Brock McNuggets wrote:
On Nov 7, 2025 at 9:49:47 PM MST, "Lawrence D´Oliveiro" wrote <10emi5a$2bk2d$[email protected]>:
On 08 Nov 2025 04:23:58 GMT, Brock McNuggets wrote:
But that doesn't mean it’s misleading to call it Unix either.
Remember that trademarks are meant to be used as adjectives, not
nouns. You can call macOS a “Unix system”, but it is not itself
“Unix”.
Fair.
I just realized, I did the same. ;)
On 08 Nov 2025 04:23:58 GMT, Brock McNuggets wrote:
But that doesn't mean it’s misleading to call it Unix either.
Remember that trademarks are meant to be used as adjectives, not nouns.
You can call macOS a “Unix system”, but it is not itself “Unix”.
On 2025-11-07 23:49, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:
On 08 Nov 2025 04:23:58 GMT, Brock McNuggets wrote:
But that doesn't mean it’s misleading to call it Unix either.
Remember that trademarks are meant to be used as adjectives, not nouns.
You can call macOS a “Unix system”, but it is not itself “Unix”.
Not one person who buys an Apple computer does it because they're
looking for a UNIX computer. The people boasting about the Mac being
such a machine are grasping at straws, looking to sell it as something
other than an ultra-convenient machine secured by a walled garden incorporating a time bomb if you use it for longer than the company
intended you to.
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