Maybe NTFS is garbage. But there are many (most) external drives formatted with the FAT32 filesystem which is IMO absolute garbage (e.g. you cannot write files bigger than 4 gigs)! So NTFS would be the much better option for cross-platform usage of external harddrives since Windows cannot handle other file systems than NTFS and FAT. So IMO NTFS support is a must-have for any future MAC OS!
So the burden of cross-platform compatibility is on Apple? You said it yourself "Windows cannot handle other file systems than NTFS and FAT," so why do they get off clean? Microsoft could whip up a driver no problem.
Any driver for NTFS that doesn't come from Microsoft is a hack. Even if Apple does it, and hence it will not be free from problems. Which is why I don't think they have let it out of the bag. I personally wouldn't want to play around with half-baked file system drivers, if you do, more power to you.
Here are some solutions other than NTFS 3G:
http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/
HFS+ support in Windows
Here is the best one. Connect your NTFS drive to a Windows box (I am guessing you have one if you need NTFS), share out said drive, mount it on your Mac. Done, NTFS write and read.