[TazeTSchnitzel]

I wonder if Apple risks losing its technical (i.e. programmer) users. If OS X stops feeling like a UNIX-like OS to technical users, and they move away, OS X may receive less attention from developers. And that won't be good for the platform.

[snowwrestler]

The whole point of this move is so that technical users will get a fully up-to-date version of X11, rather than whatever old version was up-to-date when the OS went gold master. Technical users will have little trouble installing it (Apple makes it easy), and will appreciate being up to date. Meanwhile my parents won't miss it.

Another example of this way of thinking is that Apple apparently removed the web server software from Mountain Lion as well. As someone who builds LAMP sites for a living, this is fine with me because the Apple versions of AMP were always out of date or had some quirks. Everyone I know who develops for LAMP on Mac OS X runs MAMP or Virtual Box, not the software that ships with OS X.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

Ah, fair enough. I'm not an OS X user, but I have heard about Apple's tendency to have out of date open-source (and therefore often insecure or buggy) libraries and software.

[mikeash]

As long as it's possible to install the technical apps, I don't really care whether they ship with the system. I don't imagine many technical users would care, although I could be wrong. You never got a compiler with Mac OS X without downloading and installing one separately, and many other tools people like to use have to be downloaded separately too.

[neverm0re]

It actually always came on the install media up until very recently.

[Someone]

Also until very recently, users bought the OS on DVD and installed it on gigantic hard disks.

Now, Apple optimizes for distribution over the Internet and installation on SSDs. That is also why Mac OS X no longer ships with that printer driver DVD.

[neverm0re]

You don't say.

[mikeash]

True, forgot about that, since it was almost always out of date and not worth using. In any case, it didn't get installed by default, so I think the point still stands.

[ctdonath]

Apple went to great lengths to get OS X validated as a full-on UNIX. To what degree do developers in general confuse UNIX itself with good-riddance mis-associations therewith which cause unnecessary friction against modern development? (Can we drop vi already? fine paradigm unto itself, but counter to any other 21st-century UI...)

[super_mario]

Except vi is part of POSIX specification and hence you can not be certified UNIX without it.

http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/toc.htm

[whichdan]

Oh come on, suggesting to drop vi is practically flamebait.

[rogerchucker]

You want Apple to drop vi from Mac? Pathetic