macOS 10.15 will bring standalone Marzipan-built apps for Music, Podcasts, TV & Books

macOS 10.15, the next major update to the desktop operating system powering the Mac, will rock standalone apps for Music, Podcasts and TV, plus a redesigned Books app.

Brazilian iOS developer and 9to5Mac contributor Guilherme Rambo:

I’ve been able to confirm with sources familiar with the development of the next major version of macOS — likely 10.15 — that the system will include not only standalone Music, Podcasts and TV apps, but also a major redesign of the Books app.

This was first reported last week by developer Steve Troughton-Smith who found concrete evidence that he wouldn’t reveal that an iTunes breakup is nigh as Apple has apparently been working on standalone desktop apps for managing music, podcasts and books.

Separate desktop apps for Music and Podcasts would make a bunch of sense, especially viewed through the lens of breaking up the monolithic iTunes app.

Here are at the icons for the new Podcasts and TV apps on macOS 10.15

Apple did overhaul the Books app in iOS 12 and macOS Mojave, but another rewrite is likely needed in order to introduce support for audiobooks and achieve feature parity with iOS.

Guilherme has more on the redesign:

The new Books app will have a sidebar similar to the News app on the Mac, it will also feature a narrower title bar with different tabs for the Library, Book Store and Audiobook Store. On the Library tab, the sidebar will list the user’s Books, Audiobooks, PDFs and other collections, including custom ones.

You had me at Audiobook Store.

As for the new TV app, we already know that it’s coming to the Mac platform this fall, presumably with macOS 10.15, ahead of the company’s new Apple TV+ streaming service.

Some folks say Marzipan-powered News, Home and Voice Memos apps are terrible, but don’t forget these were built using a very early version of the upcoming fully-fledged UIKit for Mac.

The first developer version of Marzipan’s SDK should debut at WWDC 2019 on June 3 and we fully expect early kinks to be worked out before these new APIs are ready for prime time.

The new Music, Podcasts and TV apps will be made using Marzipan, Apple’s new technology designed to facilitate the porting of iPad apps to the Mac without too many code changes. It’s not clear whether the redesigned Apple Books app will also be made using the technology, but given that the redesign came to iOS first and its usage for the other apps, it’s likely that this new Books app will also be using UIKit.

Code-named Project Marzipan, Apple’s new APIs that were originally introduced at last year’s WWDC will let developers create apps that run on iPhone, iPad and Mac.

How do you like Marzipan apps so far and what’s your long term view of these new frameworks? Share your thoughts and observations in the comments below.