Large monolithic apps can be an ecosystem in their own right that is broadly comparable to an OS. And it is common to find apps that adopt Unix philosophy out of necessity within the ecosystem. This is not obvious to an outsider, and requires an understanding of the domain.
A good example is ArcGIS which on the surface is ridiculously monolithic. But within the toolbox function are several hundred programs that do only one thing and are composable. This approach is also seen in video or image editing workflows where a user works with a particular set of tools. The main difference is that the programs use a types system that is appropriate to the domain rather than just text.
The OS only really exposes an interface for working with OS level objects. That sometimes aligns to a workflow but not always. And we should not expect disciplines to align their techniques to OS level objects if that is not a good fit for the actual domain.
A good example is ArcGIS which on the surface is ridiculously monolithic. But within the toolbox function are several hundred programs that do only one thing and are composable. This approach is also seen in video or image editing workflows where a user works with a particular set of tools. The main difference is that the programs use a types system that is appropriate to the domain rather than just text.
The OS only really exposes an interface for working with OS level objects. That sometimes aligns to a workflow but not always. And we should not expect disciplines to align their techniques to OS level objects if that is not a good fit for the actual domain.