The release of Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) is fast approaching and it’s clear that Apple Inc. has once again pulled out all the stops on it’s newest operating system. Steve Jobs has spent time in the spotlight talking about the new eye candy and performance enhancements in Leopard but behind the scenes, Kevin Van Vechten and his team, have been focused on something a little less flashy.

With OS X Leopard, Apple has joined the the short list of companies who have achieved UNIX 03 Certification and while the story hasn’t been in the news headlines it could mean very good things for Apple, particularly in the server arena.

Since it’s initial release in 1999, Mac OS X has had great potential as a server operating system but it’s been overlooked by many system administrators as a novelty. After all, why use a UNIX clone when you can get the real thing in the form of Solaris or HP-UX? With their successful push to achieve UNIX 03 Certification, Apple has settled that argument once and for all and their answer is Leopard.

For the first time ever, Mac OS X is officially Unix and their timing is perfect. So what does it take to achieve UNIX 03 Certification? The short answer is some good old fashioned hard work. If you are interested in the long answer, I’d recommend reading the Guide to UNIX 03 Certification.

When Leopard is released later this year it will be interesting to see if these efforts pay off in terms of adoption rate among system administrators. In 2008, it would be nice to see some of the big dedicated hosting companies offer some Mac OS X packages to compete with the plethora of Windows and Linux hosting packages currently available.

In the meantime, Apple continues to polish Leopard in preparation for it’s release and Mac users around the world wait in eager anticipation.