Unix command line utilities are available have been available for Windows machines as well through cygwin for the last decade. Java development on a Mac has some oddities not shared with Windows/Linux/Solaris due to their development environment being supplied by Apple.

Labor competition. When a tech worker or manager feels threatened and wants to belittle a coworker's skills they start on about the coworker's 'communications skills' and so forth. In reality they are trying to paint themselves in a relatively brighter light, but are going about it in a wrong way.

These type of rants are ALWAYS from whiny insecure non-degreed programmers who have maxed out their career potential. It's obvious that programmers without degrees would desire to mitigate the value of their competitors CS degrees. If put into a hiring position, they will be reluctant to hire someone more qualified than themselves. Non-degreed programmers effectively try to "unionize" against degreed programmers through hiring practices and propaganda such as this topic.

The heart of the matter is that being layed-off means that a former employee can collect unemployment benefits. Fired with cause means that benefits are unavailable.