In 1999, Apple announced it would release the source code for the Mach 2.5 microkernel, BSD Unix 4.4 OS, and the Apache Web server components of Mac OS X Server. This was developed into Rhapsody in 1997, Mac OS X Server 1.0 in 1999, Mac OS X Public Beta in 2000, and Mac OS X 10.0 in 2001. After Apple bought NeXT in 1996, it announced it would base its next operating system on OPENSTEP. The heritage of Darwin began with Unix derivatives supplemented by aspects of NeXT's NeXTSTEP operating system (later, since version 4.0, known as OPENSTEP), first released in 1989. Starting with Leopard, macOS has been certified as compatible with the Single UNIX Specification version 3 (SUSv3). It is composed of code derived from NeXTSTEP, BSD, Mach, and other free software projects' code, as well as code developed by Apple.ĭarwin is mostly POSIX-compatible, but has never, by itself, been certified as compatible with any version of POSIX. It previously existed as an independent open-source operating system, first released by Apple Inc. Darwin is the core Unix operating system of macOS (previously OS X and Mac OS X), iOS, watchOS, tvOS, iPadOS and bridgeOS.