Electron (node) can call into C libs in a couple of different ways in order to do things like decrypt the music. I really doubt that work is being done in the javascript layer.
I've not had an issue with Spotify for some time, I generally like the app other than the odd nitpick here and there. I haven't encountered bugs for a long time, not ones that stop me using it.
Apple Music on the other hand... a native app that, being written by Apple themselves, should be the epitome of how to do it in terms of quality and user experience, is terrible! It feels laggy. I just opened it and clicking between sections there's like a noticable tiny lag in the highlight under the list items where spotify feels immediate. AM looks pretty sparse. But far worse than those things, it often breaks and is unusable. "There was a problem accessing your account" restart and it works. When I first signed up to it I had to contact Apple support because the app just wouldn't work. I guess at least they had a support channel where I could chat with someone. The app quality is appalling though.
Apple Music is the perfect representation of what Apple has become in my opinion. iTunes was a hugely influential, useful and well-made software. Apple Music is a poor imitation of its predecessor and somehow manages to be worse in every metric possible: performance, interface, user experience and even feature set.
All that to access a shitty streaming service that is lackluster on so many levels.
Starting by the fact they remove much more of the catalog than Spotify does and they even removed access to tracks I bought on the iTunes Store, which is completely bonkers to me.
After 4 years on Apple Music, I just went back to Spotify, because not only are they significant benefits (don't lose everything if you want to cancel sub and works way better in more platforms) but the app itself is just better. It also starts streaming much faster on any connection, and even though I did like the Apple Music discovery playlist, Spotify is better at this game in many ways.
In the end Apple Music perfectly illustrates the questionnable success of today's Apple stuff because they have a cult following buying anything they do even though they are not particularly features nor price competitive.
By the way, the Spotify app lets you use your mobile as a remote for any running instance on your network, inside the same app, with the same playlist/track saving capabilities. But for some reason, Apple, who control the whole technology stack is stuck with a half assed remote app from iTunes vestige that cannot control Apple Music playlisting (only able to browse and play) and their overloaded (extremely busy full of useless crap irrelevant to the user) mobile app cannot do anything useful.
I really don't understand how people can reason about with today's Apple prices, because they are clearly stuck in another era and sell subpar shitty products...
Actually the unsaid disclaimer is probably "the first time" or "when uncached" because AM loads the screens much faster the second time you click into them (still with the UI lag that I'm complaining about). I would actually say that Spotify screens take just as long to load, but the difference is that Spotify seems to implement a progressive load, so even the first time you click it feels faster - you can start interacting with the most important thing at the top straight away. With AM it delays then shows the whole screen.
I've not had an issue with Spotify for some time, I generally like the app other than the odd nitpick here and there. I haven't encountered bugs for a long time, not ones that stop me using it.
Apple Music on the other hand... a native app that, being written by Apple themselves, should be the epitome of how to do it in terms of quality and user experience, is terrible! It feels laggy. I just opened it and clicking between sections there's like a noticable tiny lag in the highlight under the list items where spotify feels immediate. AM looks pretty sparse. But far worse than those things, it often breaks and is unusable. "There was a problem accessing your account" restart and it works. When I first signed up to it I had to contact Apple support because the app just wouldn't work. I guess at least they had a support channel where I could chat with someone. The app quality is appalling though.