The first desktop version, Mac OS X 10.0, was released on March 24, 2001. Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and all releases from OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion to macOS 14 Sonoma are UNIX 03 certified
I don't like MacOS, but it's actually able to be called UNIX.
I mean Mac OS has its place. There's a reason so many music producers and coders choose that OS. It's a rock solid stable approach for those use cases.
That being said, personally I would always prefer Linux but that's mostly because I don't do those things.
I don't even particularly hate windows, I just like PopOS better
Not sure why the Linux community is convinced macOS is better than Windows. macOS has the same big issues Windows has (Spyware, ads, and the inability to delete the built in browser) while having worse issues like not supporting openGL/Vulkan, not allowing the user to install old apps, the inability to install hardware, and the small issue of only a select few Linux distros that work with it. Windows isn't good, but it's still better than macOS in most regards.
I know a lot of people like macOS, and I'm sure they get a lot done with it. For me however, it's easily my least favorite popular OS. That's even considering the terminal running zsh by default, which is miles ahead of Windows.
A quirk that recently bit us at work is that Safari has a maximum allowed version based off your OS version. Now if it was just me as a user, I'd download a 3rd party browser. However, as a developer, I have to build solutions that work for every "reasonable" browser. This means I can't use features that every modern browser has, including Safari, because Safari from 4 years ago didn't have it.
I vividly remember when a friend of mine who runs a small graphic design studio was sent an archive file macOS couldn't open natively and asked me for help. Never having used a Mac and without any clue as to which tools the stupid app shop (which was rather new at the time) held, I couldn't for the life.of me get the blasted thing to obey me, until I found a terminal. I then installed build utils and compiled the frickin' unpacker I needed myself since it only had Linux binaries. Worked like a charm.
From a product design POV there's something to be said about having control over every aspect of the system. I can see why people enjoy using apple stuff. It's not for me though.
Had to show a person today how to install Nextcloud. Literally Nextcloud and we couldnt find a way to move to the home folder. Its somewhere in a menu but damn macos is fucking weird, like a toy.
I always thought it was like "the apple unix" or "the better ios which doesnt suck" but actually it seems just as locked down and childish like a toy.
MacOS is way more often worse than Windows than how Linux does it.
Linux sometimes have important settings hidden in config files that are different in every distro. Sometimes an API is legit worse in Linux, than in Windows.
MacOS has a lot of things that cannot be set at all, constantly deprecated APIs, not to mention it's locked into overpriced hardware. CoreAudio was only better than the Windows native offerings until XAudio came, and Pipewire for Linux seems promising from at least a developer standpoint.