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Apple released the first beta of macOS Monterey 12.2 for registered developers on Thursday evening. Since Apple has not published an update description, it is currently still looking for new features - one of which seems to relate to the Apple Music app.
The first beta of macOS Monterey 12.2 appears to be targeting the Apple Music app, among other things. In fact, the company now appears to be converting the application into a full-fledged - native - app. When Apple introduced macOS Catalina in 2019, the well-known iTunes was replaced by the Music app to better reflect the company's strategy on iOS and tvOS. The Music app on macOS had a new name, but largely retained the iTunes backend, which was basically a bunch of web content loaded into an app.
macOS Monterey 12.2 Beta: Apple relies on AppKit
So far, it has been largely the same old framework in a new package. The problem is that although it works, it is still web content and this is noticeable in the performance. Now Apple seems to want to tackle this problem. In fact, it seems as if Cupertino wants to convert Apple Music into a full-fledged - native - app under macOS 12.2. As Luming Yin wrote on Twitter noticed, Apple Music in macOS 12.2 Beta 1 now uses AppKit, macOS's native interface framework. Specifically, Apple Music will now use JET, a technology developed by Apple to turn web content into native apps. While some parts of the Music app were already native, such as the music library, Mac users will now find that searching for new songs in Apple Music loads much faster because the results pages are presented with a native interface rather than a website.
What about Universal Control?
Scrolling between elements has also become smoother. Yin mentioned that the Apple TV app has also been rebuilt with a native backend. Accordingly, the rebuild should not only apply to Apple Music. As for Universal Control, the feature is not yet available. But the current code suggests that Apple is still working on the feature. It remains to be seen whether it will be released during this beta. According to Apple, it should be available in spring 2022. appear: It could finally be released during the new beta phase. (Photo by Unsplash / Dmitry Chernyshov)
