All of the other ones I've seen have a web interface which can be controlled via curl or links scripts. For example, I had a buffalo router that would eventually get into a state such that it would not reconnect to the DSL modem when the connection was reset, so I had a script to check the state of the internet connection and force the router to reconnect (or reboot itself if that didn't work).

You can't do that with the airport line of routers.

Try to load /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginitems.plist in vim and tell me if that is an xml file. However there is a converter that can convert non-xml (binary) plists to xml format, so it doesn't matter that much.

The point still remains that there are configuration items that cannot be changed outside of the GUI (not everything is represented in plists as far as I can tell). I would love to be proven wrong in this.

Another example outside of my list above isn't exactly OSX, but it is close. The Airport Extreme router cannot be remotley restarted or configured without using the proprietary GUI. I came close by doing some applescript that I invoke from the shell, but that doesn't work all of the time.

Really? I love doing everything from the command line, but am unsure how to do the following (at least I can't find anything after scouring google for some of these). Is it possible to do the following? I just picked some from looking at the system preferences pane:

* Time Machine: Configure what to back up
* Time Machine: Restore files
* Configure Parental Controls
* Change an account's picture
* Configure an account's login options
* Configure when to put the monitor/computer to sleep
* Change the desktop background
* Change the screensaver
* Configure the sounds
* Spotlight: Configure what to index
* Configure filevault settings
* Disable automatic login

I'm aware that some of them may be achievable by editing plists, but of those, the plist may not be in a human-readable format. Others I don't know where to change those settings outside of the GUI.