I started working on iOS apps around that time as well, soon after I started programming. If you put your mind to it tracing the startup process of an iOS app is not actually as difficult as you think it is, especially if you skim things like “how does RunningBoard manage my app’s lifecycle?” or “is this launch being logged by CoreDuet?”. Also, FWIW, Core Text has several engineers working on it–text rendering is not a solved problem in the slightest–and is public API depended on directly by many apps.