I'm a bit confused about some of the things he says are missing.<p>* <i>Command line mode to open/edit files without touching the mouse</i><p>Is this from inside the editor? What's wrong with ":e <filename>" ?? If it's from outside the editor it's an OS issue. What am I missing?<p>* <i>Good default shortcuts for copy and paste and other standard operations</i><p>I can't talk to the defaults, there there are half a dozen ways of picking up one piece of text and putting it somewhere else. If it's a single line you're interesting in, for example, then just "yy" will copy it, search or move to your new location, then either "P" or "p" depending on whether you want it before or after.<p>* <i>Easy way to record and replay macros</i><p>What's wrong with the "q" command?<p>It sounds like he hasn't yet really found half the things vim does. I fully agree that it takes a long time to become a vim master, and the commands require study - they aren't "discoverable," but it sounds like he just needs to pick one of his gripes and figure out how to solve it. Then move on to another.
What you expect as defaults can be quite subjective.<p>Having worked on Vi/vim for over 20 years on a variety of systems, I actually expect <i>other</i> apps to behave like vim. I too have used a Mac for over 10 years but use vimperator on my FF browser, use file managers and other apps that allow for hjkl and other vi-ish strokes.<p>I am not sure the defaults you mention for C&P and Undo were around when Vi was written. So expecting Vi to behave as a Mac app may not be very fair. I've tried MacVim, but i prefer using Vim inside a Terminal in Screen.