I don't understand the reasoning behind the complaints:
- Apple want it to be really easy to make Apps for their platforms
- That is why they created and continue to invest in Swift (and Xcode, and the platform SDKs) - not just to be fast, but to be easier to learn and use correctly.
- Other languages, and platforms which are based on those languages, have an easier time because they have dependency managers.
- Dependency management on Apple platforms was (and still is) pretty poor by comparison. There's no simple first-party solution.
- The very existence of the SwiftPM project indicates that Apple considers this an important hole.
What would you even want Xcode to do with a SwiftPM package? If I had to guess, at least I'd want a nice GUI to find 3rd-party packages and easily add/remove them from my project. Basically, provide a GUI for manipulating the Package.swift file, and delegate building the project to the SwiftPM build system.
Xcode's bread-and-butter is creating frameworks and GUI application bundles for iOS and macOS platforms. SwiftPM's Package.swift file does not support creating those kinds of products. There is nothing to integrate right now - at the very least, the package manager needs to fill those holes (and it's coming soon: Swift PM, Bundles and Resources).