Interesting read. I had embedded Python in one of my apps and I wish I had known about being able to zip the distribution. To save space, I compiled all the .py files into .pyc bytecode files, and tediously removed a bunch of modules my app didn't need (tkinter, antigravity, ...), along with setting PYTHONDONTWRITEBYTECODE. You can probably still do this, of course, in addition to zipping it all up.

I had compiled python myself and used static linking instead of dealing with install_name_tool, although I do wonder if I should have built a dynamic library instead. Anyway, compiling from source (or adjusting the homebrew formula?) gives you control and being mindful of eg: LC_VERSION_MIN_MACOSX as already mentioned here.

For my specific use case, I also wanted to use Apple's GCD and have Python do all of its work on a secondary thread. I had to make sure the interpreter would only stay on a single thread (whereas GCD normally doesn't make such a guarantee).