Oh, sure, it's definitely not a good idea to change what the unqualified python binary refers to. But I interpreted "refusing to ship an up-to-date global python interpreter with macOS" as meaning that Python3 isn't shipped at all, with the binary name "python3").
Is that the case? If so, I still don't understand the reasoning.
I don’t think anything in macOS (the base OS) requires Python, does it? If not, then, I don’t see why Apple would want to ship any Python with the OS. Let people install the Python version they want and then the users will have to maintain it.
The comment I asked rhe question of said:
> the problem is apple. they are (understandably) refusing to ship an up-to-date global python interpreter with macOS
Ie the claim is that it's causing a problem for users. I don't have an opinion about this point, but it is the premise of my question.
For anyone that's still using python2 (as a nearby comment mentioned), there is now at least a warning to avoid using the default Python 2.7 (/usr/bin/python). For an OS vendor, this transition takes a long time... but at least it's in process.