Apple Lossless Audio Codec is now open source (Apache license)

And how is Apple dominating my computer? I have no clue what you mean.

And at last Apple's goal is to deliver easily usable, reliable and sexy hardware and software and they are forerunners in quite a few markets they created on their own. See, that marketing-babble works even for Microsoft and Oracle too.

Google's goal is to get as much diverse data from you as possible and legal. Stop cutting a multi-billion dollar multi-national mega-corp all that slack all the time - especially considering how much flak they were and are getting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Google

And on top of that they were pretty much the only search engine for the web for a long time, so much so that "google" has become synonymous with internet for the average user. At least now there is a bit of competition from wolfram and microsoft and DDG is trying real hard. But google is clearly dominating this market and also the online ads business. Apple can only dream of coming close to this amount of market penetration.

> No I haven't because I made it clear that first and foremost I want _personal control_ over my own computer. I don't see why you don't understand this principle.

Because control of your computer includes control over your data. And you were saying you can allegedly NOT use any proprietary systems because of your work but then it is ok to use completely proprietary services way out of your control? Well look at that, actually it is just your own personal preferences which makes more sense since if you were really legally required, you couldn't use google or any other cloud services.

> Getting the tyrants at Apple

Again, you are mis-using words. Tyranny means they are alone and have all the control and are enforcing it brutally... this is complete, utter bullshit. There are lots of alternatives and on top of that, all this DRM and control for the music was a requirement from the RIAA. They did not understand this new way of selling music online and wanted as much control as possible. And since Apple made that compromise, they were the first ones to provide a legal and usable way of selling music online. And by doing this, they have shown how successful this way of distributing is thus finally they were allowed to drop the DRM. Do you really think Apple cares about controlling whether you distribute your music to 2 or 5 end systems? Then you are even more naive than I have thought.

> It is pretty convenient for them to use (steal?) source code from BSD

Waaaaaait a minute, back up. Drop the fundamentalist brain-wash bullshit-talk. BSD has always been released under the BSD license and there are many, many, MANY implementations and re-uses of their code, both open and closed, private, educational and commercial and not a single one has been "stolen".

It is perfectly legal and encouraged to use the code any way you want and why should Apple go with other sources that ultimately force them to do things hardly any company does with profitable products? Anyone who ever contributed to BSD licensed software is aware of this and it has worked perfectly fine for decades. Nothing was stolen here. It is perfectly alright for a company to choose whichever software and license agreement they see fit. And there is hardly any commercial software released under the "viral" FSF licenses. And Apple has released a lot of components from their OS, again under a BSD style license. Nothing to see here.

> it won't be "good enough" until they adopt a business model that is not based upon dominating other people's computers.

See, here is the point: that is your borderline-religious opinion. Nobody really cares about this. if you don't like their product because it is not as open as you like then don't buy it. And if you don't like the price on a Lexus or Ferrari then don't buy one. Nothing to see here.

You have clearly made up your mind and are not interested in a discussion. You much rather poo-fling the one or two (out-dated) bits you can get a hold of. And it has got nothing to do with how the overwhelming majority of successful software and hardware companies work. Some are very open, some are completely closed. Luckily there are a lot of alternatives for everything. But your zealot-hatred for Apple is just hilarious considering how 5 to 10 years ago hardly ANYONE knew Apple let alone used any of their products and back in those dark ages there was nothing but Microsoft for the average end user. Apple has come a long way on their own and they have single-handedly created markets that did NOT exist before - like legally buying music and tv shows online. Like the iPad and like the iPhone. Yes there were those ridiculous windows ce "smartphones" before but Apple created the market for the modern smartphone and the oh-so-beloved "apps". And google was all too happy to follow, seeing the opportunity for more data and ads.

Any data I feed my mac, I can always export and take with me to any other platform... there is absolutely no DRM on my Mac keeping me from doing whatever I want.

Your demeanor is really cute and very much like the blind fanboys in the huge Linux vs. Windows flamewars back in the day... the 90s called, they want their zealots back.

And I dare you, you show me a single contribution you have ever made to Linux? Or free software? You show me a single instance where you actually looked at all that free software kernel code and helped make sure there wasn't anything fishy going on. Or are you just talking big about free software without ever having contributed hm?

This is pointless here since you make your own product choice and your own personal preferences to be something like a categorical imperative that you want to force on everyone despite the normative power of the factual.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App_Store_(iOS)#Milestones

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AppleAppStoreStatistics.pn...

And just because PG said something doesn't dispute the overwhelming success of the app store and the itunes store. There were just as allegedly "legendary" and allegedly "influential" (seriously, what influence and importance does PG really have outside of the smug cloud of valley startups? None to zero) people who said there will be a maximum of 5 to 6 computers around the world and the internet is completely useless. So, again, this does not an argument or a point make. The numbers prove it wrong. Just because someone says it has no relevance. Useless ad verecundiam right here.

If anything, Apple was incredibly smart about how and where they put the shackles on so most customers will happily accept the platform as it is. Ultimately, most people just care about the fact that it works and Apple continues to deliver on that front.

You take the 256kbps high quality AAC, and you time stretch and repitch it by a few percent (to match it up with the track you're mixing it into) and probably fiddle the equalizer a bit, to "drop the bass" :)

If you do that a few times, you're losing information, even on a lossless digital medium.

If you use even high quality audiocodecs in between, it will sound like crap. And not the kind of super subtle near-impossible to hear difference between lossless and 256kbps AAC crap, but actual crap. I know this from experience myself as well. The sound becomes really flat, hard to describe, but you notice it when you're playing one right next to another track that hasn't been through such a process. It's like you want to turn it up louder but it's already loud enough. Hard to describe, but it's a real problem if you're playing these mixes on high quality speakers in a club--suddenly the sound is not as crisp anymore, and the crowd notices it too.

If you want to make the analogy with JPEG, imagine re-encoding at 95% quality, but with a few percent scaling and a few degrees rotation in between, before saving again as 95% quality JPEG.

You do that twice, with a quality high res digital photograph, and you're going to wind up with a photo that looks pretty much like the original ... until you make a high res print of it (or zoom in on the screen). Edges that were crisp at first have gone fuzzy, and at places you can spot the typical blocking and ringing JPEG artefacts.

You'd probably get away with it, most of the time, too. But not always, and if you're a digital graphics professional, this is your craft, and the mark of a good craftsman is that they put in the work for the little details that you don't really notice, until they're not there, and how you tell you're holding a piece of quality work.

I gotta say, I disagree with the guy below me being downvoted, because when I read this "troll" was the first thing that sprang to my mind as well.

I don't disagree with you on the matter that you can't tell the difference between quality lossy and lossless recordings, btw. As long as they're the end-product and not being used for further processing.

Which is one of the rare scenarios in which is actually does make sense to prefer a vinyl copy over a high quality lossy compressed file, if you can't find the lossless digital version.

No you won't be able to hear the difference in the version you bought, but it will make a difference if you intend to work with the data and transform it into something else, because then it is possible that sounds that were thrown away by the lossy codec because no human "golden ear" could hear them, contexts shift and they come into hearing ranges again. But the data is lost, so there's something missing instead.

With a digital lossless copy, or with vinyl, you know you're also getting the inaudible bits, even if you can't hear them.

And if you're just going to listen to the track, sure, get the quality lossy codec.

But if you're doing remixes, you're going to want the inaudible bits too, because you don't know if you'll need them or not.

Lossy compression is for end products, not half products.

I do not need to google it, becauase i can hear it myself. Like i say, not subtle. I haven't got vinyls/rips of everything, but i can assure you it is not uncommon. Must i provide examples?

Destructive 'loudening' of music is not useful with vinyl music (IE. compressing the waveform 'up' does not make for a louder output, as what happens with the digital loudness wars-- thus is 'pointless'), because there is no 'reference point' (that is, you can't have a waveform offset, because the needle is already moving wherever to meet the waveform), you can only increase/decrease the dynamic range. Because of a greater difference in amplitude, it is easier to cut a record with a larger dynamic range.