Not about setting ligatures for print.
So the whole argument is kind of moot. Having ligatures in console vi is not what made the Mac "historically be far ahead of other platform". In fact for the first 15 years of its life the Mac didn't even have a console.
Even in the desktop GUI program world, where ligatures in programming IDEs and editors are a possibility, they're still an extremely fringe endeavor.
That said there may? be languages other than English where ligatures are more than decorative, and would be more useful to have in a terminal.
They could start by not mimicking 50+ year old hardware terminals down to arcane (and performance killing) details, supporting better and more powerful autocomplete and similar interactions, inline images, full colors, and so on...