UI shell in UIKit Obj-C, over a C++ or CoreFoundation (C) business layer, talking directly to sqlite.
I haven't seen the source of Apple apps and frameworks in over 10 years now, but I hope for their sake a lot of it has moved to Swift by now.
If I were CFed I'd mandate 2026 as the Year of Claude Code Radar Burndown. Their backlogs are insane and Apple actually addresses maybe 5% of what it knows to be wrong in a given year. Make it 2% when a UI Refresh is mandated.