I am confused: why Emacs keybindings in OS X?

[Alan <lngndvs@gmail.com>]

Enigmas or Cruel Jokes?

I have avoided Apple and Microsoft operating systems for 20+ years; yet this year, I was required to use Apple and OSX for a new job, and decided to plunge in head first.  I was in for some revelations and some confusions.

1. Emacs is hardly found in any GNU/Linux distro, except if installed by oneself.  Yet, in OS X, it is there, ready to go.   ????  What is the history of this?

2. On OS X, Emacs keybindings (or what I call Emacs Keybindings) for navigation, at least, are ubiquitous.  (And the iMac keyboard is much more comfortable to type on that a similar laptop keyboard from a Thinkpad.)  Yet, Emacs on OS X, at least in my case, does not adhere to the same keybindings as closely is on Linux.  WTF?!

3. I have grown comfortable with much of what is happening on the OS X system.  Yet, I have found that for all the proprietary claims that I have lost data and (on and iphone) contacts have been randomly lost.  I think my position is going to be something like that I have read by Donald Knuth: I will only trust my family jewels to GNU/Linux.  So I have gone back to GNU/Linux.  

And, guess what?  The Emacs keybindings are not de rigeur on the GNU/Linux system!!!  


I am NOT comfortable with a few ethical/philosophical issues.  In particular, for example, CUPS works really, really well on OS X.  The boycott against Apple is off, but Apple is still not paying it forward.  I am more than uncomfortable with Apple's attempt to ensnare users in a consumer mode.  

Do the keybindings of Emacs, and of the desktop on OS X derive from a common ancestor, independently, or is something darker at work?

Alan