> Apple doesn't really have any interest in making it easier for people to use Macs for anything that doesn't benefit their closed ecosystem - they are still ok with you using it for open source or enterprise work so long as they don't have to do anything special. That part of their stance has been very consistent.

Besides being used internally as mentioned, making the Alpha Geeks (to use Tim O'Reilly's phrase) happy would be prudent for their continued success. If the Alpha Geeks aren't using your product, they will not recommended it to their friends when asked for computer advise, and it will not be installed in relatives' home where the Alpha Geeks tend to do tech support.

The Alpha Geeks was how Apple probably got more popular that PCs in the first place, and they may now have a lot/enough inertial to keep moving forward, but Microsoft and PCs used to be the 800-pound (400 kg) gorilla, and they're less so now.

There's a lot of Unix-y stuff being used in academy, research, and HPC: plenty of folks there would be just as willing to switch to a PC with Ubuntu/Debian/CentOS (which run the world's HPC clusters) if macOS gets in the way of their workflow if Homebrew or Macports don't work.