@Nobble
Your arrogance made me register here. This is a perfectly fine question, but you respond as if OP had asked something completely ridiculous. He/she has not.
I came here via Google as you should ALWAYS consider when answering in a forum. At the current point of time, OP is completely right when saying that VM is the default version. XAMPP does not even ask, if you want the VM version or not, there is no obvious choice until you recognize, it is too late. For example:
No, its not.
YES, it is.
If you enter https://www.apachefriends.org/de/index.html (might be not an active URL in the future), you see a few green default buttons for downloading the software. When using MacOS, the filename is: xampp-osx-7.3.8-2.vm.dmg
If you have a download button on the main page, you use it and do not navigate to some sub page. And the starting page says NOTHING about that the default version is the VM version.
Why is it strange? Do you know about Virtual Machines and how these are implemented in your network?
Because you would expect that Internet is forwarded to the host system. If you use some guest operating system via VirtualBox, for example, you always have Internet access by default. So, if you use a VM, you are used to have Internet access. It is fair to say that it IS strange here.
It also makes sense. You might want to run some system locally in that it is not accessible from outside. But why should it not have access to external webpages? For example, I use a LAMP stack and for Laravel projects to be updated, you use composer and composer gets all the packages online. This is one fundamental use case for LAMP systems, so... YES, it is strange that Internet does not work here. (clearly, you can use composer to update by navigating to the mounted path with the host system and use composer here, but why forbid Internet access for the VM?)
Another point: If you use any external service like ReCaptcha, OAuth etc. which might validate data with other Internet services, you need Internet. This is also true if you have a local test system.
So what? Xampp is explicitely meant for local development only, NOT for hosted websites. That is clearly stated in the README as well in the dashboard: "XAMPP is meant only for development purposes."
How does "development purposes" translate directly to "local development [without Internet access]"? It does not and does not make sense as stated with only few examples above.
Perfectly valid question; arrogant, useless and misleading answer.
Indeed, I have the same question as OP and it makes sense. If anyone helpful would like to help OP, I would be glad as well. Thank you (you might consider deleting your answer, so that other users who find this thread do not lose time through you)