Last month, I analyzed the programming languages and UI frameworks used to create iOS 17. This month, let’s analyze macOS from OS X El Capitan 10.11 to the latest macOS Sonoma 14 and answer a few questions:
What is the total count of binaries within macOS Sonoma? Which programming languages are used to develop these apps? How many apps are written with Swift? How many apps are using Mac Catalyst and SwiftUI versus AppKit?
The WWDC 2019 had a major impact on the UI toolkit landscape: while the venerable AppKit APIs remained available, Apple removed the old Carbon APIs and introduced 2 brand new frameworks: Mac Catalyst and SwiftUI.
Apple sporadically mentioned some apps built with these new UI toolkits. In this article, I try to bring a better overview of Apple’s use of AppKit, Mac Catalyst and SwiftUI in the different versions of macOS, from macOS Mojave to macOS Ventura.