Containers don't run on osx, but docker isn't responsible for the containers anyway - lxc is.

The "docker" program builds and runs natively under osx just fine, like any other Go binary.

Docker doesn't and hasn't used LXC for a long time. It uses libcontainer, which is their own implementation of a container runtime. Even when Docker did use LXC, the Docker daemon was required for management. The Docker daemon only runs on GNU/Linux and Windows, so there is no sane definition of "native" where the statement "Docker runs natively on OS X" is correct.

Docker hasn't used lxc for a long time. And the Docker daemon doesn't compile on OS X.

I think the meaning is the docker tools/client runs on OSX, so one could just run a remote host or VM with docker installed and use the default tools for running/connecting against the remote host...

Personally, I wish more of it worked as transparently as what Joyent provides for their server implementation.