Unix on Rise? Mac’s OS X May Mark Spot

Unix rising? Maybe, but the story isn’t just Linux, and maybe it isn’t just on the server.

Like many people, I was intrigued, if puzzled, this month when Sun Microsystems told the world how much it loved GNU/Linux. I’m still not precisely clear where the open-source operating system – better known as just plain Linux – fits into the Sun firmament, but it’s safe to say that Linux got a serious boost.

Sun’s move was only the latest such announcement from a big enterprise vendor. IBM’s embrace of Linux has been well documented, and even Oracle recently said it’s putting Linux front and center in its strategy.

All these moves had more to do with servers than clients, however. For all its strides above and below the desktop (the latter in embedded uses), Linux hasn’t made enough progress to get me off Windows, much as I want to shed the Microsoft monopoly.

Yet I’m typing this column on a PC running a variant of Unix. In fact, this version of Unix is becoming by far the most popular for desktop users, at least in the U.S.

The PC is a Macintosh.

Apple’s Mac OS X is Berkeley Software Distribution Unix under the covers, with Apple’s typically elegant user interface on top. There’s a lot about the operating system that’s unfinished, but on balance, I’m finding myself increasingly comfortable with it.

Not long ago, the notion that the Mac could become the ultimate Unix desktop computer would have been ludicrous. But Apple’s done a remarkable job of bringing an industrial-strength operating system to the desktop without irreparably breaking older applications, which run in the “Classic” mode without modification.

Apple worked hard to get networking running well, particularly in corporate settings. But that’s only part of the battle. If a company is wedded to Microsoft Exchange, OS X is basically a nonstarter. There’s no OS X Outlook client, and the OS 9 Outlook client isn’t up to snuff with the Windows version. At least Microsoft’s Office suite for OS X works well, better in some ways than its Windows counterpart. Meanwhile, some vendors have yet to port their most popular applications – Adobe’s Photoshop, in particular – to OS X, an odd lapse.

Maybe the truly interesting potential for the version of Unix called OS X is yet to be realized. Unix programmers now have a platform that could be orders of magnitude larger than any they’ve ever seen. What new applications might emerge?

In the several months I’ve been using OS X, I’ve returned to the days when computing was fun for hobbyists. That’s not an endorsement, needless to say, for a general-purpose platform, where the main requirement is that it should just work. But to the extent that software innovation might revive after a long dry stretch under the thumb of the Redmond monopolist, the industry could be in for a new phase of innovation, especially since this is one platform Microsoft doesn’t control.

Oddly, the rise of the new Mac OS could end up being good for Linux. Applications that run well on OS X could be ported back to Linux, giving developers a larger target market than they have today.

Are we going back to the future with Unix? It’s no longer a trick question.

Dan Gillmor is technology columnist at the San Jose Mercury News. Contact him at dgillmor@sjmercury.com.