alt Hacker NewsmacOS 26 that is /altered/ is UNIX. macOS that ships on every Mac is not certified UNIX -- but it can be made to match if you're willing to give up security.
You should read through the actual certification - https://www.opengroup.org/csq/repository/noreferences=1&RID=... (there are a couple more in the repo).
To run the VSX conformance test suite we first disable SIP as follows: [...]
Feel free to disable SIP on your Mac. I certainly won't be doing so on mine.
You’re confusing operating mode with operating system.
SIP/SSV don’t create a different macOS, they restrict mutation and introspection. They don’t change the POSIX surface, the SUS semantics, or the kernel interfaces being certified. They just stop test harnesses from instrumenting the system without elevated privilege.
By your logic, no modern OS is anything it claims to be unless you run it in an insecure debug configuration. Linux isn’t POSIX because you need root. Windows isn’t Windows because kernel debugging exists. That’s obviously nonsense.
The Open Group certifies macOS 26 as shipped. Temporarily relaxing protections to run a conformance suite does not produce a “different OS”, it produces a different trust configuration of the same one.
Saying “it’s not really UNIX because SIP is on” is like saying a container isn’t Linux because it doesn’t let you mount /proc without extra privileges.