NSView scale animation is not smooth - cocoa

Question

I am trying to scale an NSView that is 56x56. The animation is applying scale of 0.95 and an alpha of 0.75, autoreverse and repeats infinitely. I have the animation working however the animation is extremely chunky (not smooth).
How can I use CAAnimationGroup and CABasicAnimation to animate these properties smoothly?
You can see the chunky animation in this gif
The animation code looks like the following
private func transformWithScale(_ scale: CGFloat) -> CATransform3D {
let bounds = squareView.bounds
let scale = scale != 0 ? scale : CGFloat.leastNonzeroMagnitude
let xPadding = 0.5*bounds.width
let yPadding = 0.5*bounds.height
let translate = CATransform3DMakeTranslation(xPadding, yPadding, 0.0)
return scale == 1.0 ? translate : CATransform3DScale(translate, scale, scale, 1.0)
}
func startAnimation() {
let layer = squareView.layer!
layer.removeAllAnimations()
layer.anchorPoint = CGPoint(x: 0.5, y: 0.5)
let scaleAnimation = CABasicAnimation(keyPath: "transform")
scaleAnimation.fromValue = transformWithScale(1.0)
scaleAnimation.toValue = transformWithScale(0.95)
let alphaAnimation = CABasicAnimation(keyPath: "opacity")
alphaAnimation.fromValue = 1.0
alphaAnimation.toValue = 0.75
let group = CAAnimationGroup()
group.duration = 0.8
group.autoreverses = true
group.timingFunction = CAMediaTimingFunction(name: .easeIn)
group.repeatCount = .infinity
group.animations = [scaleAnimation, alphaAnimation]
layer.add(group, forKey: "scaleAndAlpha")
}

Answer 1

Try this one:
let container = NSView(frame: NSRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: 300, height: 300))
container.wantsLayer = true
container.layer?.backgroundColor = NSColor.blue.cgColor
let content = NSView(frame: NSRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: 150, height: 150))
content.wantsLayer = true
content.layer?.backgroundColor = NSColor.red.cgColor
container.addSubview(content)
let layer = content.layer!
let scaleAnimation = CABasicAnimation(keyPath: #keyPath(CALayer.transform))
scaleAnimation.fromValue = CATransform3DScale(CATransform3DIdentity, 1, 1, 1)
scaleAnimation.toValue = CATransform3DScale(CATransform3DIdentity, 0.85, 0.85, 1)
let alphaAnimation = CABasicAnimation(keyPath: #keyPath(CALayer.opacity))
alphaAnimation.fromValue = 1.0
alphaAnimation.toValue = 0.75
let group = CAAnimationGroup()
group.duration = 0.8
group.autoreverses = true
group.timingFunction = CAMediaTimingFunction(name: .easeOut)
group.repeatCount = .infinity
group.animations = [scaleAnimation, alphaAnimation]
let center = CGPoint(x: container.bounds.midX, y: container.bounds.midY)
layer.position = center
layer.anchorPoint = CGPoint(x: 0.5, y: 0.5)
layer.add(group, forKey: nil)
PlaygroundPage.current.liveView = container