- There's a lot of chatter here about macOS' Unix certification. But in a post shared by another user, it appears that the actual content of that Unix certification vindicates OP— macOS' official Unix compatibility requires disabling SIP:
> So, if you want your installation of macOS 15.0 to pass the UNIX® 03 certification test suites, you need to disable System Integrity Protection, enable the root account, enable core file generation, disable timeout coalescing, mount any APFS partitions with the strictatime option, format your APFS partitions case-sensitive (by default, APFS is case-insensitive, so you’ll need to reinstall), disable Spotlight, copy the binaries uucp, uuname, uustat, and uux from /usr/bin to /usr/local/bin and the binaries uucico and uuxqt from /usr/sbin to /usr/local/bin, set the setuid bit on all of these binaries, add /usr/local/bin to your PATH before /usr/bin and /usr/sbin, enable the uucp service, and handle the mystery issues listed in the four Temporary Waivers.
https://www.osnews.com/story/141633/apples-macos-unix-certif...
So it seems very fair to say then, that features like SIP and the SSV are genuine turns away from Unix per se, even given the fact of the certification.
by sgjohnson
8 subcomments
- > Here’s our first problem, as those are located in the Signed System Volume (SSV), so we can’t change them in any way. The same applies to the other 417 LaunchDaemons and 460 LaunchAgents that account for most of the processes listed by Activity Monitor. In the days before the SSV it was possible to edit their property lists to prevent them from being launched, but that isn’t possible any more when running modern macOS.
SSV can be disabled. It would be ill-advised to do so, but Apple intentionally allows you to do that. In fact you can strip away every single security layer of macOS, including allowing unsigned kernel extensions to be loaded. This document is a bit outdated, but it should still be possible to do all of that. https://gist.github.com/macshome/15f995a4e849acd75caf14f2e50...
Feels like the article is just a cheap dunk on macOS. Has Apple perhaps baked in a bit too much into the SSV? Definitely. Even the Chess.app is in there.
Does it really matter? Almost certainly no.
- > To the Unix purist, this might appear wasteful and unnecessary, but macOS isn’t, and never has been, Unix.
I get what they mean, but macOS is even Unix certified. https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/
- I don't understand why Apple doesn't offer a headless MacOS or at least a path to a minimal install. Those mac minis make a great little server box but losing 8GB to hundreds of processes, before you've done anything, just feels wasteful and inelegant.
- Not directly related, but look at this Mac OS 9 screenshot from the article:
https://eclecticlight.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/macos914...
Look at the contrast. Look at the buttons. Look at the scrollbars. Look at the readability. Look at the clear button labels.
If only our computers still looked like that...
- I've never personally understood the point of macOS for power users (other than cases where you're required to use one e.g. for work). I can understand it for casual users who just want something simple that works for basic tasks, but what does macOS offer a power user that Linux doesn't, and which makes it worth sacrificing the ability to run your machine the way you want? In Linux you'd solve OP's problem by just building up from a minimal distro like Arch or NixOS.
- I badly need slimmed down macOS for CI VMs. Yeah, some little things can be cut out but most of the time not.
On the other hand, macOS is not that much memory-hungry as one might think. Like, a 4GB VM can start and build software.
- I think for many the key driver behind wanting to slim down the OS isn’t RAM or CPU use. It’s wanting to control their experience of using the computer. If the OS didn’t feel bloated nobody would care if there were 1000 processes that occasionally woke up briefly.
So what makes the OS feel bloated? It’s stuff you don’t need or want pushing its way into the foreground so you can’t ignore it. Notifications and popups are a huge culprit. Best most anxiety reducing thing I did yesterday was turn off pointless notifications like Music showing the name of the new song it’s playing. And used Little Snitch to make sure I’m never getting an update downloaded or nagged about ever again.
by vlovich123
1 subcomments
- > Does that matter, though? This whole sequence was completed in 0.144 seconds, using lightweight inter-process communication with negligible use of resources, and only repeats hourly.
Once upon a time there were teams at Apple obsessing over stuff like this because in aggregate it’s a meaningful impact on battery, especially for a service that is functionally disabled. Wonder if it doesn’t matter or there’s low hanging fruit and just so much “dead code” that isn’t actively owned by anyone but also not causing enough problems to matter.
- > To the Unix purist, this might appear wasteful and unnecessary, but macOS isn’t, and never has been, Unix. It’s a closed-source proprietary operating system designed for use by millions of consumers and regular users.
Not only it is a certified UNIX, regardless of the yes and buts being discussed in other threads already, the complaint would apply to all commercial UNIXes, some of them still around not yet killed by Linux.
by userbinator
0 subcomment
- Several years ago I remember making something that could be considered a custom "distro" of macOS that would be VM-oriented and as minimal as it could be for CI purposes, by starting with the recovery/installer partition and adding what I needed while deleting what I didn't. Not surprisingly, there was next-to-no precedent of such that I could find, and my biggest source of information was the Hackintosh community. Nonetheless it was not too difficult, if tedious, to do so, and the final disk image size I arrived at was less than 1GB. In general the macOS community is, to put it bluntly, mostly computer-illiterate non-power-users who will either advocate against you or otherwise have no idea what you're talking about. In contrast there's a HUGE amount of existing information on modding Windows, and of course Linux sits at the other extreme.
by WillAdams
1 subcomments
- Having trouble understanding how this discussion, and TFA don't mention:
https://www.puredarwin.org/
which would be where I'd go if total control of the OS on Apple hardware was wanted.
- What Srouji giveth, Federighi taketh away. Apple's version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_and_Bill%27s_law
by thisislife2
0 subcomment
- For those wanting some semblance of control over macOS system processes, consider experimenting with App Tamer ( https://stclairsoft.com/AppTamer/ ). I was sceptical about it but "rogue" system processes, like Spotlight Indexer / Engine, that randomly demanded and hogged 100% of the CPU is now a thing of the past for me, after I used App Tamer to set it to not use more than 20% of CPU resources. It can supposedly stop (kill?) processes too, and I am experimenting with that too. But yeah, I think it's time to dump macOS (thankfully, I am still using an older version so my experience is less shitty).
- Our machines all have CPUs that can execute on the order of 10^9 instructions every second. Why waste time worrying about a few hundred processes that use next to no CPU time?
by peterisza
4 subcomments
- It's such a shame that we have come to this. MacOS is basically Windows now. :(
by ChrisMarshallNY
1 subcomments
- Well, one of the "nice" things about classic mac OS, was that you could write an app that could register with the system, to receive every user event (like keypresses and mouse movements). We used to make fun extensions, with this...
I'm sure that couldn't ever be abused...
The new UNIX-based OS may have its warts, but it is just a bit more secure.
- It would be nice to be able remove some or all of the iOS bloatware apps but you have to disable system protection and they will just reappear on the next macOS update. They really need something similar to the "Windows Components" screen that lets you check or uncheck things that are bundled in the windows install.
by karlitooo
1 subcomments
- Was really hoping this would be an article on the OS file size. /system using 80GB on a 250gb drive is crazy. Don't get me started on the state of library directories and app bloat.
by compounding_it
0 subcomment
- It's sad to see apple go from customer experience first to investor satisfaction first. There is a lot of pressure on iOS26 and Tahoe being bloated and slow with planned obsolescence clearly taking centre stage.
People can hope that apple takes their operating systems as seriously as their ARM chips, but it doesn't seem likely. A cycle of 'performance and bug fixes year' will happen which gives them an excuse to bloat further operating systems that are in the pipeline. This is the worst part. We will fix now to show you we can do it and then bloat it in subsequent years so that you upgrade your devices.
- Misleading title, should be “you can’t”
- If you don't like the conclusion, and you have an M1 or M2, see also https://alx.sh
Asahi's not perfect, but there's no restrictions. You bought the computer, after all.
- Regardless of whether its UNIX or not, the author's tone in the replies to all the comments under that particular comment really put me off.
- I love how we want to trim macOS down. I totally get it. I open Activity Monitor and think, "WTF?" At the same time, my current job requires I use a Windows laptop, and I have to admit, "Wow, we have it pretty good over here..."
Not saying this isn't a valiant effort, but I kind of feel like Mac users are stretched out on a lounge chair at the beach complaining the Bloody Mary could be a touch more spicy.
- I'm not sure who the author is, but the fact they choose to be stymied by SSV (which can be disabled) to avoid investigation down that path, which is similar to the path enthusiasts do with Windows to build tools like Tiny11, NTLite, and distributions like Atlas, feels intellectually lazy. Asserting that macOS is not UNIX (it is, quite literally, including the most recent release Tahoe) and then arguing with folks who corrected them in the comments, makes me think the author wasn't really interested in answering the question they put forth and instead were trying to mystify readers to shut down exploration and curiosity.
It is entirely possible to gain an understanding of those processes running on your computing system and to decide which process you don't want to run at startup, this is regardless of the desires and intents of the maker of the computing system, as long as you retain control of the hardware. Many of the Windows optimization tools at various points even involved community made binary patching. There's no basis to claim that it's not possible to understand or take actions, it's just that the Mac community has a different set of priorities and focus areas than other computing communities, so nobody in the community has yet invested the effort to do so.
You could summarize this blog post as answering "No" to the question in its title, without actually exploring the question to determine if that's a true answer. It's not a true answer, and won't be until we completely lose control over our own hardware.
- Don’t read the comments. Author responds like a tool.
- I have often considered making a set of scripts to do just exactly this (after disabling the SSV so that the system can be modified).
It would be no less secure than any modern or common linux OS, which do not use a read only signed root.
- Instead of forcing iOS onto laptops, they locked down MacOS.
- TL/DR: No.
Betteridge's law of headlines applies.
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