And for a few years now (since ‘real’ emacs was removed, I think) ‘mg’, which is a terminal-based eMacs-alike.

Pico is also still included (and aliased to nano, funnily)

I think I’d also point out that an operating system including or not including a specific piece of software is just not a big deal. The whole point of the operating system is to provide a framework to install other applications.

The iPad didn’t include a calculator for, what, over a decade? And it didn’t really matter.

> The iPad didn’t include a calculator for, what, over a decade? And it didn’t really matter.

It made for a lot of ad-powered free calculator apps. I think that part wasn't particularly good for users.

Yes in practice people used either an ad based free calculator app, a web based calculator, their phone, etc. I maintain this isn’t a big deal. Annoying and I’m glad they fixed it, but not a big deal. Or, just pay like $1 or something for a proper app.

I bought PCalc anyway, it’s better than the standard app.

Until Catalina, emacs and nano were also included.

nano is now an alias for UW pico, since Apple won't take any new versions of GPL tools.

ed is old, but osx bash is ancient

I'm sort of surprised they didn't just build a bash compatible shell.

Well, they switched the default shell to zsh.

That's fair, I use macOS but I wasn't sure if I installed zsh or if it was what it came with, since I also use it on my Linux installs.