San Francisco (CA) – The Open Group announced that both Apple’s latest operating systems have been awarded a certificate of conformance to the UNIX 03 standard.

Mac OS X Leopard and Mac OS X Server Leopard are the first operating systems from the open source BSD base to meet the certification requirements of the Open Group, which were developed for the Single UNIX Specification version 3.

The certification is significant both for UNIX as well as Apple users. On the UNIX side, Mac OS X is now considered to be extending the installed base of UNIX systems in the marketplace with a mass-market desktop platform. For Apple users, the certification allows users to take advantage of other UNIX 03 applications that are currently available from Fujitsu, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Sun Microsystems.

Mac OS X 10.5, dubbed “Leopard”, was launched in late October and brought more than 300 new features, according to Apple. The manufacturer said that more than two million copies of the software were delivered within two days of its introduction.