[randall]

there’s no downside as far as i’m aware.

[mdasen]

There isn't much downside, but it probably involves a small amount of money (paid for the certification) and it means spending time making sure that everything remains 100% within spec. There's lots of little edge cases where BSDs differ from the spec and it means that Apple needs to take care not to drift from the spec.

[al_borland]

Apple remaining in spec sounds like a good thing from a compatibility point of view.

Am I missing something? I’m not sure why it’s coming off like people are complaining about this?

[Analemma_]

It’s a spec that doesn’t really matter in practice. Like some other comments said, Linux, BSD and Solaris are “Unix but not Unix(tm)”, and nobody cares.

[jorams]

As pointed out by amiga386 both here[1] and in earlier posts, macOS is not actually compliant with the Unix spec and never has been. This has apparently not been a hindrance for the certification of every single non-compliant version. Unix certification for Apple might not involve anything other than payment.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45239534

[bawolff]

Presumably certification costs money (?)

[monkeyelite]

Probably a small amount especially when they just need to tell them what changed

[bawolff]

Given how little their target market cares about being a "real" unix, a small amount is probably more than the benefit it brings in.

[monkeyelite]

We are talking about it.

[bawolff]

Talk is cheap.

[monkeyelite]

In marketing, getting others to talk about you is not cheap.

I don’t know what to tell you. Pick your theory:

A) apple does it for no reason and it is a waste of money B) they do it because they are aware or benefits that outweighs the small certification cost

[hopelite]

Famous last words