Bundle doubling in seven years: macOS is getting bigger
Apple once boasted of offering a lean operating system with macOS. But here too, there is now something like "bloat".
macOS 26 alias Tahoe: Continued strong growth.
(Image: Apple)
macOS is becoming more complex and opaque: Apple is packing more and more public and private frameworks and other bundles into the system. Developer and Mac & i author Howard Oakley has now compared different versions of the operating system on his blog and makes the "bloat" clear.
Growth in Apple's private packages
In macOS Mojave (10.14) from 2018, the central system folder /System/Library, containing all necessary frameworks, still had just under 4800 bundles. With macOS 26.2, released in December, the number has grown to over 9800. Growth was particularly high in private frameworks, which are officially only available to Apple – however, it happens that developers still use them. In the worst case, this can cause serious problems if Apple makes (of course undocumented) changes.
Videos by heise
While there are now 853 public frameworks (down from 546), private frameworks have increased from under 2000 to over 4000. Kernel extensions grew from 546 to 853, and the number of other folders from 2000 to 3200. One of the reasons is adaptations to different chips. For example, the total number of bundles increased by 900 with the introduction of the M3, by 600 with the M1, and by another 600 with the M4.
Envious Developers
Even if you halve the number found – which can be sensible due to the directory app crawler used by Oakley – the aforementioned growth figures remain. Overall, public frameworks increased by 157 percent and private frameworks by 276 percent. Apple is now making it more difficult for developers and their apps to directly read the contents of private frameworks. If devs try to do so, their application will likely not be allowed. When private frameworks will be opened to all developers is solely determined by Apple.
Those who program on the Mac and know that Apple's own apps are already allowed to do things that are not normally permitted, get annoyed. Some bundles are also private for security reasons – sometimes, critics argue, this can also be a pretext.
Empfohlener redaktioneller Inhalt
Mit Ihrer Zustimmung wird hier ein externer Preisvergleich (heise Preisvergleich) geladen.
Ich bin damit einverstanden, dass mir externe Inhalte angezeigt werden. Damit können personenbezogene Daten an Drittplattformen (heise Preisvergleich) übermittelt werden. Mehr dazu in unserer Datenschutzerklärung.
(bsc)
