Apple Is Rebuilding Apple Music As a Full Native App (9to5mac.com) 38
Apple is rebuilding Apple Music as a full native app with the first beta of macOS Monterey 12.2. 9to5Mac reports: Back in 2019, when Apple introduced macOS Catalina, the well-known iTunes was replaced by the Music app to better reflect the company's strategy on iOS and tvOS. However, although under a new name, the Music app on macOS retained the iTunes backend, which was basically a bunch of web content loaded into an app. While this works for most users, having web content within apps makes the experience less fluid. Luckily Apple is finally changing this with macOS Monterey 12.2 beta, which includes some big changes to the Music app backend.
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.
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.
Great news (Score:2)
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Best of both worlds (hear me out) (Score:4, Interesting)
Streaming is nice, but I kinda like owning my music.
I've looked into using Apple Music because of the feature to upload my music collection and stream that together with the available Apple Music catalog. That is really excellent for my use case, where I can listen to pretty much anything but still slowly grow my own collection. My only gripe with Apple Music is that it is useless on Windows, and I'm forced to use Windows for work. Spotify seems to be accepted, but I can't really start to install something like iTunes on a work computer. Not even going into the UX of iTunes when just playing music.
So until they create a decent Windows client I'm stuck with Spotify.
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What's wrong with using your phone for streaming?
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What's wrong with using your phone for streaming?
Mobile bandwidth is expensive, in some countries mobile coverage sucks, when you cross a border you become a 'robbery by roaming' victim, ...
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Oh, so your employer won't let you on the wifi? Sounds shitty.
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I like to keep focus on my two screens when working. So if someone calls on Teams or anything I would prefer not to change headsets or needing to stop music on a different device.
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Ah, but like you said, iTunes does act as an Apple Music client on Windows. If installing an application is forbidden, there's the web version at music.apple.com.
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I did try the web option, and I guess that could be an option. But it would be so much better with a small efficient native client to do the job (imho).
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Setup a plex server for your music library.
It has a web based client, a desktop app, a phone app... you get to keep control of your library, but also have all the conviences of a streaming platform.
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Looked into using Plex when I considered purchasing Sonos, but it turns out that Sonos itself require SMB v1 to access a fileshare (which is out of the question) or you need to publicly expose your Plex server in order for Sonos to use Plex (which is also out of the question).
Actually when I think about it, that would also be solved by using Apple Music.
Hm. Really hope they make a Windows client. That would solve all my music probl
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Fuck i hate when Apple does this shit. I specifically told safari to go to http://music.apple.com./ [music.apple.com] I expected hypertext back. It interpreted my command and gave me something else. What a shitty future we find ourselves in.
Apple can f*ck right off in this regard, IMHO. (Score:1)
Point in case: I've left the Apple Mac/macOS Camp a few years back after 13 years of being a pleased and happy customer. Their post-Jobs low-end pricing has lost any value proposition to me and recently their product lineup has started to become flaky and bloated, a bit like back in the day when Apple was about to die and Steve Jobs came back and redid Apple from the bottom up.
They still build good stuff and my machine from work is a Touchbar MacBook and it's quite OK. But this Apple Music thing is one of
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Again, this isn't some cheap-ass Chromebook (where the playbutton would actually do what it is supposed to) and this also isn't any of that MS Losedows crap that comes bloated with ads and annoying in-your-face noise by default.
Ironically, it would also do what it's supposed to do on a cheap windows laptop. Tell us again how windows is crap. I mean, it is, but that fact makes your argument kind of hilarious.
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Fun thing for you to consider. Is key part that "value proposition of Apple products continues to decline" or "in my book".
Because a lot of people as they get older and wiser lose the incentive for displaying outward status with items. At which point, re-evaluation of "is this thing I used to use actually good enough for the purpose I want it for without the extra value granted the displaying of status aspect of it" may drive you to that very same conclusion.
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So the 13" Touchbar MBPro I'm using right now costs north of 2k Euros. It's a luxury product with enough performance and memory to be feasible for contemporary professional web development - i.e. 5-4 Chrome/Blink/Electron Apps and Stacks plus an IDE running simultaneously without the machine making too much noise or bucking under load.
"is this thing I used to use actually good enough for the purpose I want it for"
As I understand Qbertino's comment in the context of the field of web application development, only a premium MacBook meets these two requirements:
1. The machine has enough RAM to run several desktop applications, each of which contains its own separate copy of Chromium because a multi-platform runtime resembling the web environment increases the convenience to the application's developer, without thrashing swap.
2. The machine is licensed to run an operating system that lets the user test the client side of
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That seems to run contrary to his reasoning why it's no longer a product that is not worth it to him. The need to code workarounds for that specific scenario is still there, and in your scenario, that is the vendor lock-in. It's literally irrelevant what other companies make and how competitive they are in point 1.
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Point in case: I've left the Apple Mac/macOS Camp a few years back after 13 years of being a pleased and happy customer. Their post-Jobs low-end pricing has lost any value proposition to me and recently their product lineup has started to become flaky and bloated, a bit like back in the day when Apple was about to die and Steve Jobs came back and redid Apple from the bottom up.
They still build good stuff and my machine from work is a Touchbar MacBook and it's quite OK. But this Apple Music thing is one of those things that get me super-pissed. Let me explain: So the 13" Touchbar MBPro I'm using right now costs north of 2k Euros. It's a luxury product with enough performance and memory to be feasible for contemporary professional web development - i.e. 5-4 Chrome/Blink/Electron Apps and Stacks plus an IDE running simultaneously without the machine making too much noise or bucking under load. Neat stuff. This luxury class machine has a regular play button just like any other respectable computer these days, along with a set of other mm function buttons + expose, dashboard, misson control and all the other neat and fancy default Apple stuff. So far so good.
Now here's the kicker: Whenever I press that play-button, regardless where my current input focus is, Apple Music starts up and smacks an Apple Music ad into my face, regardless wether I'm tracking the logs of a running process or right in the middle of debugging a backend. Again, this isn't some cheap-ass Chromebook (where the playbutton would actually do what it is supposed to) and this also isn't any of that MS Losedows crap that comes bloated with ads and annoying in-your-face noise by default. This is a luxury priced, luxury branded "quality" product that someone just dropped 2+ grand on that comes with effing Pop-up Ads!! I literally had to invoke my expert skills and search the web for a solution which does exist: It's an open-source macOS daemon package that you install and runs a F*CKING SYSTEM SERVICE that prevents the playbutton from triggering this Apple Music subscription thing.
In a nutshell: The value-proposition of Apple products continues to decline in my book. And I couldn't be bothered less wether Apple Music became a native app or not.
Wow, a manifesto. Do you par chance live in a cabin in the woodlands of Montana?
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[...] So the 13" Touchbar MBPro I'm using right now costs north of 2k Euros [...]
Wow, a manifesto. Do you par chance live in a cabin in the woodlands of Montana?
I think we may need to summon a Bobby to apprehend this particular Unabomber, mate.
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Just take the touchbar. Defaulting to do application specific tasks, like if you start Teams and start a sentence with "I", it will suggest that you can now move your hands over to the touchbar and press "I" since it detect that you might want to write that. (?!)
I realize this is more a Teams issue than Apple issue, but it seems post-jobs Apple is more focused on "What can we do?" as supposed to Jobs' "What would the user like?" approach.
Well, they di
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The beginning of Apple's decline in intuitive and useful hardware & UI design goes back to when they decided we have been using the scrollwheel on a mouse the wrong way for 15 years. About the same time some bozo at Apple decided that Save As should be replaced, by default, with a cumbersome Duplicate functionality. And also around the same time they decided that after 10 years, the default functionality of the green window button should change from expand-shrink to window-fullscreen. Oh, and let's
who cares (Score:1)
i stopped using the current Music app when apple decided to pester me for a subscription nearly every time i launched the app. i don’t suspect the new version will be any better.
A breath of fresh air (Score:4, Interesting)
Fixing The App (Score:2)
Let's hope I can again sync my devices with iTunes and that my music collection can be played without the "can't be played in this country" message that pops up for a bunch of my songs. Songs that I've ripped from my CDs. It's been like that for several years now no matter what I try to correct it. I picked up an Android phone a few months back when my old iPhone bailed and it works better in that regard but my playlists and Genius lists are still on my iPhone X and iPad Pro.
[John]
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When I upgraded the library
Fsck Apple Music (Score:2)
I'm sorry, but Apple Music is categorically the most annoying music app there is. If I even so much as touch the buttons on my bluetooth headphones, whoosh - up comes Apple music asking if I'd like to "get started". There's absolutely no way to turn it off, unless you fancy turning off OS protection and deleting the binaries for it. I believe Wikipedia describes it as "abuse of the user".
It's such a simple thing that so many vendors get wrong: Just because you try to trick, force or cajole users into doing
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I bet if you asked your typical Apple Music user about this, they wouldn't know what you mean.
Anticompetitive? (Score:1)
Apple: break my heart (Score:2)
2) Please, for the love of god, stop hiding options with every revision . . . give us a console with plists to configure stuff 0% chance
3) When playing music and we say "play " - we don't mean thier songs in alphabetical order AND when you sort album by artist, you go from OLDEST to NEWEST -- we get it, you're using a record-store model, but stop calling it 'music' if you cant get this sim
These aren't the changes Music.app needs (Score:2)
Music.app needs different changes, like not being anything like a webpage. It needs to go back to being a listbox you can search. It takes 10 times as many clicks to find music now than it did twenty years ago. Music.app behaves completely unpredictably now.
There goes one monopoly argument against AAPL (Score:2)
stripping off the iTunes and Music Store format into a user UX app domain eliminates fairplay accusations. Apple can point to user’s choice .vs. Apple sandbox offering.
Smart move on Apple’s part with changing perception around its market influence.
Music.app was a major regression from iTunes (Score:2)
I recently upgraded from Mojave to Monterey, after holding onto my 32-bit apps for as long as I could, and holy hell was the new Apple Music a major regression over the old iTunes:
- Song search filter not shown by default and disappears when you change views, with no way to always show it
- Search is slow as hell: when I type in the name of something to search for, the CPU spins for about a second for every character I type (iTunes had no trouble with this in my library of 62,000 songs)
- The timestamps showi
But can I delete the Music app yet? (Score:2)