by MrSinatra » Mon Jan 13, 2014 11:58 pm
people who use apple stuff typically don't DL 3rd party stuff to replace or add on to iTunes or their iapps, and forget about apple hardware natively supporting FLAC either. for a file to be universal, it needs to conform to environments, not require users to conform to it. last time i tried to make iTunes do flac, (a couple years admittedly) i said 'to hell with this' as the effort it would have required was well beyond worthwhile. is this apples fault? of course! but i deal with the world as it is.
android people otoh are used to 3rd party stuff and most of that supports ALAC, as does a lot of software like winamp, MM, fb2k, cuetools, etc. I would say that on non-apple stereo hardware, FLAC might enjoy some degree of an advantage in that sector of the marketplace, but lots of it also supports ALAC, and overall its a very small piece of the total marketplace, and not likely to remain an advantage since ALAC is now open source and royalty free and being more widely adopted b/c there is no reason not to adopt it.
also, this isn't a question of popularity anyway, its a question of universality, so don't conflate the two. something more popular, which I fully agree FLAC is, is not then necessarily also more universal. again, blame apple for FLACs failure in this regard, but that's the fact.
yes, my argument rests on the fact that FLAC is not supported in any kind of reasonable way in the apple world, and while 10 years ago that would not have mattered much, today it matters a lot. i would be shocked to find out that anyone reading this didn't know at least a few people (probably a LOT of people) who were firmly apple users (either by choice or ignorance) and therefore wouldn't be able to avail themselves of FLACs. however, i doubt they would know anyone else who couldn't avail themselves of ALACs. that's the reality as i see it.
IF apple were to support FLAC, I'd have stayed with FLAC, no question. but its about 99% more likely things adopt ALAC, then apple suddenly adopts FLAC, and so it made sense to make the switch, b/c i needed my files to work for others right now, and again given the open sourcing/royalty free status it now enjoys, i likely won't ever need to switch from ALAC to something else to stay the most universal my lossless can be.
people who use apple stuff typically don't DL 3rd party stuff to replace or add on to iTunes or their iapps, and forget about apple hardware natively supporting FLAC either. for a file to be universal, it needs to conform to environments, not require users to conform to it. last time i tried to make iTunes do flac, (a couple years admittedly) i said 'to hell with this' as the effort it would have required was well beyond worthwhile. is this apples fault? of course! but i deal with the world as it is.
android people otoh are used to 3rd party stuff and most of that supports ALAC, as does a lot of software like winamp, MM, fb2k, cuetools, etc. I would say that on non-apple stereo hardware, FLAC might enjoy some degree of an advantage in that sector of the marketplace, but lots of it also supports ALAC, and overall its a very small piece of the total marketplace, and not likely to remain an advantage since ALAC is now open source and royalty free and being more widely adopted b/c there is no reason not to adopt it.
also, this isn't a question of popularity anyway, its a question of universality, so don't conflate the two. something more popular, which I fully agree FLAC is, is not then necessarily also more universal. again, blame apple for FLACs failure in this regard, but that's the fact.
yes, my argument rests on the fact that FLAC is not supported in any kind of reasonable way in the apple world, and while 10 years ago that would not have mattered much, today it matters a lot. i would be shocked to find out that anyone reading this didn't know at least a few people (probably a LOT of people) who were firmly apple users (either by choice or ignorance) and therefore wouldn't be able to avail themselves of FLACs. however, i doubt they would know anyone else who couldn't avail themselves of ALACs. that's the reality as i see it.
IF apple were to support FLAC, I'd have stayed with FLAC, no question. but its about 99% more likely things adopt ALAC, then apple suddenly adopts FLAC, and so it made sense to make the switch, b/c i needed my files to work for others right now, and again given the open sourcing/royalty free status it now enjoys, i likely won't ever need to switch from ALAC to something else to stay the most universal my lossless can be.