Music and TV Apps Use JET in MacOS 12.2 Beta ⇥ 9to5mac.com

Luming Yin:

macOS 12.2 beta is now available, featuring smoother scrolling in Safari on the latest MacBook Pro with ProMotion, and a native Apple Music and TV experience backed by AppKit views instead of web views.

Filipe Espósito, 9to5Mac:

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. Of course, more refinements are expected for both apps in the upcoming macOS 12.2 betas.

Michael Tsai:

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.

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.

Then again, the preferences window in Music is still modal. Some things will never change.