Yes, this is not a limitation in Free Pascal or Delphi. The ShortString type still exists and is limited to 255 bytes. But the AnsiString, WideString, and UnicodeString types are variable length and can be up to 2 gigabytes:

http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Berlin/en/String_Ty...

In the case of classic Mac OS it was part of the API.

With 640 KB it wasn't as there was a lot of space to have bigger strings.

Besides, there were arrays as well, and TPW had safer strings without that limitation PCharStr.