There are many things I want to say in reply to this. So I’ll bullet point them:

* yes, do not buy equipment that has acquired so much tech debt that it still requires telnet.

* there are a million telnet clients out in the world. And ones far better than the default OS one. Apple not shipping one standard is not the end of the world or really anything more than a mild inconvenience for the small handful of people who need actual “Telnet” as opposed to Netcat or socat, both of which are far better than base Telnet.

You can have it, it’s not on the base install.

99% of Mac users never use it, directly or indirectly. Asking that they have it anyway is a self centric view.

You can still have Telnet!!!

It just isn’t installed by default when 99% of users have no desire for it.

Ubuntu and derivates removing telnet from the default install, along with other basic tools like traceroute etc, was one of the driving factors toward me creating my own distro. I'm sick of basic stuff being omitted because somebody just decided it's not needed anymore.