Oxford says Apple's OS X is a Linux distro 3151

A crosspost like this is usually indicative that SOMEONE is trolling. I note in the interest of full disclosure that I am posting from comp.os.linux.advocacy. I am also not a mac user.

The only possible issue I can think of that one could run into on OSX, or on any other non-unix linux, is the fact that many other tars do not default to standard output (they instead default to output to the tape drive. quite logical in the historical context where tar originated)

tar cf - dir all same as above (but read on)

The tar command is not very well-standardized. What little standard does exist requires an explicit f - to go to stdout.

Not exactly 'standard'... And doesn't gpg have compress? Or you could compress it on the target host, if you feel like it - ssh compresses the data en route, so you're not taking up a lot of extra network traffic.

gnupg is hardly 'standard' - what linux distribution are you on that you didn't need to download and install it?

Part of the power of OSX comes from the fact that the command line is still available.

Or you could use the "carbon copy whatever" tool that was named downthread.

Generally, I'd use scp for remote storage instead - your restriction on local temporary space is a special need say, you're running out of space and intend to delete the local files afterward and NOT a general requirement for such an operation.

"Easier to use" does not mean it's easier to do everything. At strongest, the phrase means it's easier to do many things and not harder to do anything.