We're certain that some of you are still coming to terms with the fact that Apple is replacing the traditional Macintosh operating system with a colorful candy shell on top of some big, ugly command-liney stuff, but sooner or later you're probably just going to have to accept it: the future of the Mac is Mac OS X, and under the hood, Mac OS X is UNIX. The good news is that Apple is doing a pretty spectacular job of shielding "normal" users from those arcane strings of commands that lurk beneath the surface; the better news is that those arcane strings of commands and a full BSD UNIX layer are attracting a whole different class of geek to the Mac party.

Now, before you say something awful about not wanting UNIX geeks in your neck of the platform, we'd like to remind you that the AtAT staff has been using UNIX for longer than we've been using Macs. (Here's the part where you stutter and say something about how some of your best friends are UNIX geeks, but you wouldn't necessarily want your sister to marry one.) For our money, nothing but good can come from inviting some of the nerdier element over to "our side," because cross-pollination is a wonderful strategy for diversification and strength. Mac geek, UNIX geek-- can't we all just get along? (Of course, we draw the line at frolicking with Windows geeks; you've got to have some standards.)

Anyway, we're pleased to see that Apple isn't shamefacedly trying to hide the fact that much of Mac OS X's buzzword-compliance comes from its UNIX underpinnings; indeed, the company is actively courting the UNIX community to come on over and kick the tires. C'mon, what nerd could resist the utter cool factor of debugging shell scripts in a terminal window on a widescreen-sportin', gigaflop=pumpin' PowerBook G4? Suddenly Apple's product line holds some palpable appeal for a whole slew of computer-using kin that would previously rather trim their toenails with a chainsaw than be caught using a Mac, and Apple's taking advantage of that fact; according to The Register, two panelists at the annual USENIX BSD Conference beamed in from the mothership in Cupertino.

That's right, both Jordan Hubbard (who recently jumped to Apple from FreeBSD) and Ernest Prabhakar addressed the UNIXy throngs and put forth the interesting-- and potentially alarming-- notion that since Mac OS X now ships on every Mac, and BSD UNIX is in Mac OS X, BSD is now "three times more popular on the desktop than Linux." These guys are enticing UNIX die-hards not by emphasizing the Mac's point-and-click ease of use, but by mentioning that Apple "has one of the biggest gcc compiler design teams in the world" that is "working to get optimization developed at Apple integrated into the main code tree." Geekspeak, anyone? Says Hubbard, "the Macintosh has always been very fascist, but we're now starting to embrace the diversity of BSD. We'd love you to bring your X11 application to Mac OS X."

The more the merrier, folks; dive right in, the Aqua's fine! And for those of you who are still a little nervous about what a sudden influx of command-line-using hardcore nerds might do to the makeup of our platform, relax; the worst that could happen is that you'll wind up with more applications from which to choose. Well, that and your sister might elope...