Nope, competently-written apps can do everything with only user permissions 99% of the time.
Most of the time when mac installers require an admin password, it's due to a combination of incompetence and malice.
Very frequently I will just unpack installer bundles by hand and drag things where they need to go. No admin password required, and when it is actually required for some functionality, it's usually something really stupid that could have been done differently. E.g. a common one is to install a startup item that boots a background task when you start your computer, but they could just as easily have booted the background task when you launched the app.
