On: In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999)

[skydhash]

MacOS is a very complete, very well funded desktop environment targeted towards the general user. You want anything extras and you land in applications using private apis and the command line.

[steve1977 → skydhash]

The command line is not a "foundational layer" in macOS, that was my point. It exists on the same layer as the GUI does.

[thesuperbigfrog → steve1977]

The foundation of MacOS is a fully-compliant Unix:

https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/apple.htm

The GUI is built on top of the Unix foundation and does not stand alone or work without it.

The 'FoxTrot' comic made a big deal about this not long after Mac OS X was released:

https://www.gocomics.com/foxtrot/2002/02/25

[steve1977 → thesuperbigfrog]

The foundation of macOS contains elements of UNIX (or rather BSD) and the OS is UNIX certified, I‘m fully aware of that. But these are two different things.

For one thing, UNIX != command line.

In the same vein, Windows NT is not based on DOS anymore, even if it has a command line which resembles (parts of) DOS.