Since version 10.5, OS X has been UNIXTM. This means that it is certified by The Open Group as conforming to the Single UNIX Specification (SUS). Technically, this only applies to OS X on Intel Macs. The certification only applies to a specific version of the operating system on specific hardware, and Apple did not pay to have OS X certified on PowerPC hardware.

This certification ended a trademark lawsuit initiated by The Open Group against Apple, which had been describing OS X as UNIX in spite of lacking the certification. The Single UNIX Specification (SUS) is a superset of the Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX ) standard. POSIX defines a set of interfaces that can be implemented by any operating system, and the SUS provides an extended set of definitions that only make sense for UNIX-like systems.

Because OS X is certified as being UNIX, it can run any programs that are written to the published UNIX specifications. These provide a rich set of applicationlevel interfaces, although they do not include any support for graphics. Apple provides an optional X server, X11.app, which implements the X11 protocol used by most other UNIX systems for communicating with displays. X11 is designed to be network-transparent, meaning that you can run applications on one system and display their interface on another. This lets you use OS X as a client for remote UNIX applications, as well as running them locally.

If you write an application using X11, then it is unlikely to be accepted by most Mac users. X11 applications are definitely second-class citizens on a Mac desktop. They don’t use the same menu bar or Dock in the same way as other applications and only have limited support for the standard OS X pasteboards. X11 has the advantage of being supported on a lot of other systems, and so it can be used as a starting point for porting UNIX software to OS X. If you start by compiling the software with minor modifications, you can run it in OS X under X11 and check that it works. You can then write a new GUI layer for it. This is very easy for applications that are designed with clear separation between their models and views, but harder for others.

If you are writing server applications, then you may want to stick to the standard UNIX interfaces. Alternatively, you can use the Foundation library on OS X and one of the open source implementations of this framework when you port your application elsewhere.

Source of Information : Addison Wesley - Cocoa Programming Developers Handbook (December 2009)

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