Thread: Unix Popularity
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Old 2nd July 2008
ocicat ocicat is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ninjatux View Post
Also, I do agree that Apple's market share didn't increase because OS X is Unix.
The fact that OS X has roots in FreeBSD is incidental. Apple was in dire need of a stable operating system as they had a string of failures (First, Pink & Blue farmed out to Taligent, followed by Symphony...) throughout the '90's. One of the things that Jobs brought with him from NeXT was their hybrid Unix system based upon Carnegie-Mellon's Mach kernel with a FreeBSD 4.0 userland. Moreover, Jobs brought a number of NeXT employees who were knowledgeable about its inner workings, so this group formed the core of Apple's new OS group.

There was something of an effort in the earlier releases of OS X to attract technophiles given that the basis was essentially Unix, & it worked to a degree. A number of standard Unix applications still run on OS X, but Apple's culture is based on trendy stylistic issues rather than geeky internals. As long as it works, they are happy.

Given that Apple had the resources to pay for the certification, they are officially recognized as being an official Unix vendor by the Open Group:

http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/c...ates/1190p.pdf

...so they can pull out a pedigree if need be, but the company's goal is to perpetuate its brand of coolness, not technical focus.
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