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

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.

macOS Launch Services is an API that enables a running app to open other apps or their document files, similar to the Finder or the Dock.Launch Services eliminates apps having to query the Finder to open an app, document, or URL for them. The macOS Finder itself uses Launch Services to perform such tasks. Because the Finder performs no additional processing beyond calling Launch Services, any client using Launch Services for these purposes behaves identically to the Finder.

The Social framework lets you integrate your app with supported social networking services. On iOS and OS X, this framework provides a template for creating HTTP requests. On iOS only, the Social framework provides a generalized interface for posting requests on behalf of the user.

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 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.

The Foundation framework provides a base layer of functionality for apps and frameworks, including data storage and persistence, text processing, date and time calculations, sorting and filtering, and networking. The classes, protocols, and data types defined by Foundation are used throughout the macOS, iOS, watchOS, and tvOS SDKs.

The Open Graphics Library (OpenGL) is used for visualizing 2D and 3D data. It is a multipurpose open-standard graphics library that supports applications for 2D and 3D digital content creation, mechanical and architectural design, virtual prototyping, flight simulation, video games, and more. You use OpenGL to configure a 3D graphics pipeline and submit data to it. Vertices are transformed and lit, assembled into primitives, and rasterized to create a 2D image. OpenGL is designed to translate function calls into graphics commands that can be sent to underlying graphics hardware. Because this underlying hardware is dedicated to processing graphics commands, OpenGL drawing is typically very fast.

The UIKit framework (UIKit.framework) provides the crucial infrastructure needed to construct and manage iOS apps. This framework provides the window and view architecture needed to manage an app’s user interface, the event handling infrastructure needed to respond to user input, and the app model needed to drive the main run loop and interact with the system.