Comment by jwells89

I think Apple hasn’t followed Microsoft on status item (that the name of menubar icons on macOS) management is simply because they didn’t intend for the API to be used even a fourth as much as it is.

In older releases (back when in it was still known as OS X), persistent status items weren’t something devs could do without dipping into hacks. That part of the menubar was intended solely for system stuff, e.g. the display and sound menus.

There were always APIs for transient status items, but those were intended for use by “normal” apps with a dock icon that you have open only temporarily to accomplish some tasks (which means these status items wouldn’t accumulate). Status items added this way couldn’t even be rearranged like the system ones.

So in short, there’s no management because they’re designing for the user who has a couple of status items, not 5, 10, or 15+.