Awareness of it has little to do with owning an Apple box. It was discussed quite a bit in the *nix world a few months ago.

I have no love for XML either, but it's self-validating, which is crucial when you're dealing with something similar to init. They could have developed a different format with similar properties, but that throws out the benefit of an already-existing set of tools. Furthermore, XML is less ugly than reams of shell script.

Throwing out the entire idea just because you don't like one aspect is questionable. The inertia that the *nix community displays to some good ideas is really annoying to me, particularly when they come up with trivial excuses.