Are the marginal benefits of macOS being closed-source today already almost falling behind open source?

General
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After reading a round of related articles and discussions lately, my conclusion is actually quite clear: in the past six months, there really has been more discussion than before around “whether the benefits of macOS being closed-source are being weakened.”

But one thing needs to be clarified first:
These discussions usually aren’t framed directly as “should macOS be open-sourced,” but are scattered across several more specific topics—security, the developer ecosystem, platform openness in the AI era, and Apple’s continued reliance on open-source components. In other words, it’s already a real direction of discussion; it just hasn’t been consolidated into a single unified debate topic yet.

1. “Closed-source = more secure” — this narrative is being weakened

Apple has always been good at packaging a closed ecosystem as a source of security and stability. In the past, this logic worked well:

  • Closed, therefore more controllable
  • Controllable, therefore more stable
  • Stable, therefore more worry-free for users

But over the past six months, some macOS-related discussions about TCC, privacy permissions, and system service vulnerabilities have in fact been weakening this narrative. Because there’s a very real question sitting right there:

If being closed-source didn’t prevent critical vulnerabilities and permission bypasses, then how much security benefit does closed-source really bring?

This doesn’t mean “open-source is definitely more secure,” but it at least shows: the security premium of closed-source no longer holds as naturally and automatically as it used to.

2. Developers like macOS, increasingly not because it’s closed-source

Many developers still like macOS today, but the reason is rarely “because it’s closed-source.”
More common reasons are:

  • The Unix userland toolchain feels natural
  • The GUI experience is acceptable
  • The ecosystem for commercial software, creative software, and mobile development is complete
  • Apple Silicon has strong battery life and energy efficiency

That is to say, what people recognize today is often:
Apple’s ability to deliver an integrated machine-and-platform, not “closed-source” itself.

In other words, the source of macOS’s value increasingly looks like:

  • Hardware
  • Ecosystem integration
  • Toolchain
  • Commercial software support

rather than “closed-source itself.”

This is key. Because it means:
Closed-source may still be a means for Apple to maintain control, but it may no longer be the most core source of macOS’s value.

3. In the AI era, the marginal benefits of closed platforms are more easily questioned

In the past, platform closure could often buy consistency, quality, and stronger integration.
But in the AI / Agent era, the pace of external innovation has clearly gotten much faster. What developers interact with at high frequency are:

  • Local models
  • Open-source inference frameworks
  • Python / Rust / JS toolchains
  • Agent / automation workflows
  • Third-party integrations and system enhancements

Whereas Apple’s style is still:

  • A strict permission model
  • Opaque deep interfaces
  • Automation capabilities with hard boundaries
  • Controlled platform openness

So an increasingly common judgment appears:

In the AI era, the more closed the platform, the more likely it is to slow down peripheral innovation.

This doesn’t mean macOS must be open-sourced, but it does show:
the benefits of closed-source aren’t as unbeatable as they once were, while the opportunity costs it brings are easier to see.

4. Apple itself actually knows that a purely closed loop isn’t the optimal solution

Apple isn’t “closed about everything.”
It has always done a very typical kind of “selective open-sourcing”:

  • Darwin / XNU have open-source parts
  • Swift is open-source
  • WebKit is open-source
  • And a series of Apple Open Source projects

This shows Apple itself also knows:
for things like language ecosystems, browser engines, foundational toolchains, and public components, being completely closed is not the highest-return choice.

So Apple’s real strategy is more like:

  • Keep the core platform control closed-source
  • Selectively open-source parts that benefit ecosystem expansion

This alone already says a lot.
If “closed-source maximizes returns at every layer,” Apple wouldn’t need to open up things like Swift and WebKit at all.

5. So what’s the answer to the question?

If we rewrite the question more precisely, I think it’s not:

Should macOS now be fully open-sourced?

but rather:

Do macOS’s core advantages today still mainly come from being closed-source?

My judgment is: increasingly, no.

Closed-source certainly still has benefits today:

  • Ensuring platform control
  • Maintaining commercial moats
  • Preserving dominance over system interfaces
  • Preserving room for software–hardware co-optimization
  • Preserving interpretive authority over signing, review, and the security model

But at the same time, its marginal benefits are indeed declining:

  • The security benefit isn’t as solid as before
  • Innovation speed isn’t necessarily faster than open-source ecosystems
  • In the AI era, external toolchains are getting stronger and stronger
  • Many capabilities developers truly rely on don’t come from “belief in closed-source”

So my conclusion is:

Today’s macOS is still valuable as a closed-source system, but it’s no longer that “one trick that works everywhere” core source of advantage.

More bluntly:
What macOS relies on more now is Apple’s hardware, ecosystem integration, and product delivery capability—not “it’s strong because it’s closed-source.”

And that’s why, in the past six months, more and more people have started seriously discussing:

Whether the benefits of macOS being closed-source today are already about to be overtaken by open-source.

Reference Links

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Adding a follow-up that leans more toward “what real users would actually want to change.”

If we reframe the question from “Is it good or bad for macOS to be open-sourced?” to “Once macOS is open-sourced, what do people immediately want to cut into?”, then based on the public user projects and discussions I’ve seen recently, the direction is actually very concentrated: most people don’t want to tear macOS down and rewrite it—they want to first cut out Apple’s annoying default design choices, system restrictions, and smug ‘smart’ interactions.

1. First cut: kill animations, de-theatricalize it

This shows up even more frequently than I expected.

A lot of power users, if they could touch the system’s lower layers, wouldn’t first ask for “flashier UI”—their first reaction would be:

  • disable Space switching animations
  • disable window open/close/zoom animations
  • disable Mission Control transitions
  • reduce UI feedback latency
  • make window behavior more direct, more tool-like

Mature macOS window managers like yabai even treat “disable Space switching animation” as a selling point.

That suggests what many users can’t stand isn’t that the system isn’t pretty enough, but that the system keeps trying to teach you what ‘elegance’ is, while you just want speed.

So if macOS were truly open-sourced, I strongly suspect the first wave of popular mods wouldn’t be new themes at all, but rather:

  • de-bloat macOS
  • disable all animations
  • low-latency UX build

Saying “first wipe out all animations” doesn’t feel niche to me—if anything it feels very mainstream.

2. Second cut: change the window system from “for viewing” to “for producing”

This trend is also very obvious.

What many users really want to patch isn’t wallpapers, but to take a hard swing at macOS window management:

  • add tiling window management
  • keyboard-first
  • freer multi-monitor logic
  • freer multi-desktop/Spaces rules
  • less mouse-driven interaction

In plain terms:
turn macOS’s window system from an “aesthetic desktop” into a “productive desktop.”

You can tell from the long-term activity of tools like yabai / skhd that this isn’t a tiny group of tinkerers entertaining themselves—it’s a persistent hard need.

3. Third cut: remove tracking, remove accounts, remove cloud dependency

In recent public projects, the clearest shared consensus is:

  • no tracking
  • no telemetry
  • local-first
  • no cloud
  • no account
  • plain files

Some recent macOS projects state these outright in their descriptions:

  • Local Hours: local-first, pure JSON, no account, no analytics
  • ScreenTranslate: on-device OCR + translation, no server
  • Stik: pure local markdown, no “second brain,” no account system
  • Cai: local clipboard actions, local models first

This suggests real users aren’t especially eager for a “smarter, more cloud-based, fully managed” macOS.
What many people truly want is:
a quieter, more local, less surveilled macOS with less platform interference.

4. Fourth cut: rework the menu bar, background residents, and small utilities

This one feels very real too.

A lot of public projects lately are focused on:

  • menu bar management
  • OCR / translation
  • clipboard enhancements
  • quick capture/notes
  • local small-model actions
  • lighter always-on background tools

The mentality behind these needs is basically:
“I don’t want to change OSes—I just want the rough edges of this one to be fixed into something usable.”

In other words, many real users don’t want a revolution. They just want to patch the seams Apple never properly fixed—lightly, fast, and quietly.

5. Fifth cut: add the system-level control Apple refuses to give

This is one of the biggest targets for advanced users.
For example:

  • stronger networking control
  • finer-grained per-process outbound restrictions
  • freer automation and hooks
  • more open system APIs
  • fewer “we’ll decide for you” boundaries like SIP / TCC

The fact that open-source firewalls like LuLu can stay widely used for so long already says a lot:
many users have long felt macOS doesn’t give enough in “system controllability.”

If macOS were open-sourced, this area would very likely get hit hard—possibly producing results even faster than UI rework.

6. What real users don’t look like they’d do first

At least judging from recent public projects and discussions, people don’t really look like they’d jump straight into:

  • rewriting the kernel
  • forking a full community macOS distribution
  • fully replacing Apple’s official desktop stack

The reasons are practical:

  • the engineering workload is absurd
  • driver compatibility is hell
  • the highest-frequency pain points aren’t in the kernel, but in Apple’s added restrictions, interactions, and boundaries

So the more realistic first wave is definitely:

  1. remove restrictions
  2. remove animations
  3. remove telemetry
  4. fix the window system
  5. strengthen system control tools
  6. open up interfaces that were previously sealed shut

7. My current take on the question

If macOS were truly open-sourced, the first things most likely to explode in popularity probably wouldn’t be a “community macOS,” but a “macOS debloat / de-Apple-ify toolchain.”

Basically a whole set of things like:

  • disable animations
  • tiling WM
  • no telemetry build
  • local-first build
  • stronger firewall / automation / hooks
  • sane defaults for menu bar and clipboard

At the end of the day, what real users want isn’t to “reinvent Apple,” but:
to chop off the parts of Apple’s current setup that are too action-heavy, too restrictive, too controlling, and too smugly ‘clever.’

And what you said about “clearing animations first” feels very much like the first cut that would happen.

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