Music.app and TV.app Use JET in macOS 12.2 Beta
Filipe Espósito (tweet, via Philipp Defner):
As first noted by Luming Yin on Twitter, Apple Music in macOS 12.2 beta now uses AppKit – which is macOS’ native interface framework. 9to5Mac was able to confirm based on macOS code that the Music app is now using JET, which is a technology created by Apple to turn web content into native apps.
Some parts of the Music app were already native, such as the music library. But now Mac users will notice that searching for new songs in Apple Music is much faster as the results pages are displayed with a native interface instead of as a webpage. Scrolling between elements has also become smoother with the beta app, and trackpad gestures are now more responsive.
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Yin mentioned that the Apple TV app has also been rebuilt with a native backend. While this is indeed true, 9to5Mac found out that Apple had already updated the TV app with JET technology in macOS Monterey 12.1, which is available for everyone.
Note that Music was always an AppKit app (not Catalyst). The difference in 12.2 seems to be that more content within the window now uses native controls. Personally, I didn’t notice a change, perhaps because I don’t use the Apple Music areas of the app.
I still think the apps look and behave oddly. The design still feels like iOS, not Mac. The thumbnails still flicker. The stores still feel like bad Web pages.
Previously:
- Apple Music macOS Review
- A Step Back
- iTunes XML and Music in Catalina
- Music.app on macOS 10.15
- macOS 10.15 to Break Up iTunes
Update (2021-12-17): Nick Heer:
These changes seem exclusive to the Apple Music parts, which — like the iTunes Store — have long been webpages rendered in the frame of a native Mac app. They have always felt slow and disconnected from the main app. In MacOS 12.2, these web-based sections are now interpreted as native Mac views, and Music feels noticeably faster because of it.1 Scrolling is smoother, and the spacebar now pauses and resumes playback correctly. These improvements and the significantly reduced CPU consumption in MacOS 12.1 make me believe that someone at Apple really does care about the Music app on MacOS. There is hope.
“Native”.
Those seem to be using JET which does some kind of voodoo to make webviews use native AppKit stuff.
IMO not native. Maybe “sucks less”.
LOL don’t get excited anyone. You know which other app uses the Jet framework? App Store app[…]
I don't get why ppl are excited about JET but bitch about React Native when it seems to be the exact same shit on paper.
It’s weird. It’s not like there’s no API for Apple Music. They use it for iOS.
See also: MacRumors, Hacker News.
Update (2021-12-20): Saagar Jha:
The new “native” Music on macOS is such a great example of misaligned priorities. We’re all so used to Electron garbage that it’s almost unthinkable that it’s possible to go from WebKit garbage to Cocoa garbage, and yet Music did exactly that instead of actually getting better.
[…]
Which brings me my point: Mac users (myself included!) love to talk about how Electron is irredeemable, being a memory hog or not responding to keyboard shortcuts or using custom, inaccessible widgets. And those are actually major issues, which is why we keep bring them up, but they’re not what is wrong with Music.
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No, the problem with Music is that it just straight up doesn’t work. The design isn’t “not Mac-like”, it’s just sloppy. It doesn’t use all your RAM, but it’s certainly not performant. These are not things a UI toolkit can fix.
3 Comments RSS · Twitter
Only reason I have to use Music.app is that I'd like library info to be in sync with iPhone...
I wonder why many people moaned a lot with new Safari's unified tab, but not with Music.
What's that only pixels progress slider (Where's HIG?), small control buttons and useless large header area with playlists which occupies nearly half of its content.
It even doesn't remember column sort settings when it's set to Album with artist/year option.
[…] reports are attributing this to internal Apple framework called JET which should allow porting of web apps […]
[…] it’s “a technology created by Apple to turn web content into native apps.” That raises some questions as to the improvements afforded by this update, since other web-to-native technologies are often […]
