hub: Although the Mach-O binary format does use "hardcoded" dylib paths (they are more like hints, though), the paths can be relative to an executable (as in an application bundle). This is how you are supposed to distribute applications. You can rewrite the load command paths post-link with install_name_tool(1), or influence the search path for dylibs at runtime with the dyld(1) environment variables (though I consider this a hack to be used only at development time).

The way dyld works is different (than dlls on win32 or "shared libraries" on Linux/BSD/etc.), but it most certainly not broken. It's just as flexible as anything else (actually more so, in many respects), you just need to RTFM.