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Comment by websites420 | Hacker News Reader

>Instead of building hardware that can efficiently play FLAC, they created their own format in order to promote harder lock in to their walled garden.

I don't follow how ALAC promotes a harder lock into their walled garden. If you have a file in ALAC (not a streaming instance, an actual file), it can be converted losslessly to FLAC. Moreover, ALAC has been open source for almost 10 years. Android plays it fine, as does linux.

iPhones have supported FLAC natively since 2017. There's apps that play back FLAC files in the App Store.

So, overall, I don't see what's sad about it. Apple Music is a subscription service that's streaming DRM protected music. Whether it's FLAC or ALAC doesn't make a difference to the user.

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Let's say you have two file formats. One is a open standard, the other one is not (but has it's specifications published, that's something at least). Both formats have the same purpose and basically works the same way. One has been around for almost 20 years, the other for around 9 years (but specification not open until 2 years after release).

Instead of going for the one with the open standard, that does the same thing, Apple prefers to invent their own format, that they can change at their own whim and that they now can optimize their hardware for, so they get an advantage no one else can use.

You don't see anything bad in this? Are you really arguing against open standards? I thought we went through this with the internet and the web already, and open standards is something people generally prefer. It just ends up better for everyone, instead of companies inventing their own formats time and time again, especially when a format that suits their needs already exists...

No, I don’t see anything bad about this, because I don’t see how a user misses out.

What lock-in does ALAC afford Apple? If Apple took FLAC and tweaked it a bit to make it work with their streaming better, would you have a similar objection? The outcome is the same.

It might be the case (I’m not sure) that Apple invented ALAC because they thought they could shape the future of lossless audio to their advantage, and get some royalties for the format. But that certainly hasn’t happened, so I’m just really not sure what there is to lament here outside the ideological adherence to open standards.

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