Software Update… what Apple should be doing

Lately I feel like a complainer, but I assure you, this is not about complaining. This is about reality. Apple should update the whole stack of software periodically. I’m not just talking about the iApps and their Pro apps and the core OS X. I’m talking about the other software that ships with OS X.
I’m talking about things like Ruby, PHP, Perl, Apache and so on. Why should Apple update this stuff? Because they ship it! Because their default installs are not well documented. Because this stuff is not only difficult to update/upgrade for mere mortals, but even for programmers! And last BECAUSE APPLE HAS ALREADY GOT TEST UPDATES/UPGRADES AT APPLE! That’s right, I have no proof of this, but you better believe that they do install and test this stuff. It is in their interest as a booming development platform to have working, popular software.
The trouble is, they leave up to everyone else to update/upgrade this stuff. I know what you’re thinking, different systems admins might not want to update/upgrade this stuff because they’ve got some custom install that is working well for them. Fine. This isn’t stuff you have to opt in on. You can already opt out of any upgrade. While they’re at it, Apple should be creating graphical installer packages for these things. Make it easier for developers to continue choosing OS X. Include a nice GUI’d SVN or CVS type system to allow for concurrent installs and builds. It is well within Apple’s budget to higher a couple of dorks to manage setting up a few different “dork stacks” which you could then sign up to through an ADC account. This would allow you to not worry about manually keeping a particular “dork stack” up to date and at the same time create LARGE groups of developers who are working with the same setups at the same time.

And for sake of all of us, update those stinkin’ man pages!