The Accounts framework provides access to user accounts stored in the Accounts database. An account stores the login credentials of a particular service, such as Twitter, that can be used as authentication for the service. By implementing the Accounts framework into your app, you do not need to be responsible for storing account logins yourself. Instead, the user can grant access for your app to use their account login credentials, bypassing the need to type their username and password. If no account for a particular service exists in the user’s Accounts database, you can let them create and save an account from within your app.

The Address Book framework provides access to a centralized contacts database, called the Address Book database, that stores a user’s contacts. Applications such as Mail and Messages use this database to present information about known and unknown persons.

The Address Book UI framework provides controllers that facilitate displaying, editing, selecting, and creating records in the Address Book database.

The Audio Toolbox framework provides interfaces for recording, playback, and stream parsing. In iOS, the framework provides additional interfaces for managing audio sessions.

The AV Foundation framework provides an Objective-C interface for managing and playing audio-visual media in iOS and OS X applications.

Core Foundation is a framework that provides fundamental software services useful to application services, application environments, and to applications themselves. Core Foundation also provides abstractions for common data types, facilitates internationalization with Unicode string storage, and offers a suite of utilities such as plug-in support, XML property lists, URL resource access, and preferences.

The Core Graphics framework is based on the Quartz advanced drawing engine. It provides low-level, lightweight 2D rendering with unmatched output fidelity. You use this framework to handle path-based drawing, transformations, color management, offscreen rendering, patterns, gradients and shadings, image data management, image creation, and image masking, as well as PDF document creation, display, and parsing.

The Core Location framework lets you determine the current location or heading associated with a device. The framework uses the available hardware to determine the user’s position and heading. You use the classes and protocols in this framework to configure and schedule the delivery of location and heading events. You can also use it to define geographic regions and monitor when the user crosses the boundaries of those regions. In iOS, you can also define a region around a Bluetooth beacon.

The Core Motion framework lets your application receive motion data from device hardware and process that data. The framework supports accessing both raw and processed accelerometer data using block-based interfaces. For devices with a built-in gyroscope, you can retrieve the raw gyro data as well as processed data reflecting the attitude and rotation rates of the device. You can use both the accelerometer and gyro-based data for games or other apps that use motion as input or as a way to enhance the overall user experience.

Core Video provides a pipeline model for digital video. Partitioning the processing into discrete steps makes it simpler for developers to access and manipulate individual frames without having to worry about translating between data types (QuickTime, OpenGL, and so on) or display synchronization issues. Applications that do not need to manipulate individual video frames should never need to use Core Video directly.