Both the Mac OS X and iOS evolved from an earlier Apple operating system, Darwin, based on BSD UNIX. iOS is a proprietary mobile operating system owned by Apple and it is only allowed to be installed in Apple equipment.

Is Apple OS Linux based?

You may have heard that Macintosh OSX is just Linux with a prettier interface. That’s not actually true. But OSX is built in part on an open source Unix derivative called FreeBSD. … It was built atop UNIX, the operating system originally created over 30 years ago by researchers at AT&T’s Bell Labs.

Is Apple a Linux or UNIX?

Yes, OS X is UNIX. Apple has submitted OS X for certification (and received it,) every version since 10.5. However, versions prior to 10.5 (as with many ‘UNIX-like’ OSes such as many distributions of Linux,) could probably have passed certification had they applied for it.