[swiley]

I think part of the issue is that there are fewer and fewer people who are both apple enthusiasts and have been apple developers for a long time.

Up until snow leopard lots of very old APIs had been kept around so actually pulling things apart was not only an interesting thing to do but even profitable (because the knowledge gained would be useful for years.) Contrast Apple's current generation of operating systems where the API churn is comparable to lots of JS frameworks. Not to mention how unfriendly the company has been to smaller developers