This reminds me of the controversy when Apple decided to stop developing (and pre-installing) Java. Strictly speaking, nothing any Java developer had been doing became impossible, but a lot of things became more inconvenient, more complicated and / or more frustrating. It felt like Apple didn't care and they thought (rightly or wrongly) Apple should.
This Xcode 4 situation feels like the same thing. Maybe the status quo will return after Lion is released, maybe not. Right now, however, things are a bit more inconvenient / complicated / frustrating and it feels like Apple doesn't care all over again.
What happened was that Oracle was to assume continued development of Java on OSX. What was reported was Apple was completely dropping it. In fact, I just received a notification that a new version was ready.
And up to that point Apple was slowly killing Java development on the Mac. Updates were less frequent and ages behind other platforms. And you only had one choice to get the JDK, Apple. At least with Oracle, it's assumed, updates should be arriving regularly and in line with other platforms.
Which is what Apple was saying all along when the controversy started.
This Xcode 4 situation feels like the same thing. Maybe the status quo will return after Lion is released, maybe not. Right now, however, things are a bit more inconvenient / complicated / frustrating and it feels like Apple doesn't care all over again.