FWIW: On Mac OS X 10.9.5 using Python 3.4.2, IDLE's interactive shell (started from the IDLE.app icon):

>>>print('hello\b\b\b\b\bHELLO')
helloHELLO

From the command line using python3 interactive shell:
>>>print('hello\b\b\b\b\bHELLO')
HELLO

Both return a <class 'str'> for type('hello\b\b\b\b\bHELLO') 
Interestingly, both behave the same when executing:
>>>'hello\b\b\b\b\bHELLO'
'hello\x08\x08\x08\x08\x08HELLO'


I'm not sure that IDLE is used much on OS X since the Terminal is easily available. Since K12 education may use it, it would be nice to have consistency across the OSes.