The format is ALAC, it’s not proprietary but an open spec. Secondly Apple has been using AAC since forever which is a successor to mp3 and an MPEG standard.
I've been storing my FLAC files as ALAC for iTunes compatibility for the past decade. Max.app on macOS, while old and creaky looking, does a fine job of transcoding them and maintaining tags.
Oh, if you're using homebrew and you want ffmpeg to support ALAC, you can do that. brew edit ffmpeg; add `depends_on "fdk-aac"` and `--enable-libfdk-aac`, `--enable-nonfree` to the relevant sections, remove the bottle section; then, brew reinstall ffmpeg. There's probably a better way to do this that doesn't trigger a merge conflict each time they update the bottle hashes (resolved easily with brew edit ffmpeg, repeat above), but I'm lazy and ffmpeg doesn't update frequently. I have no idea if ffmpeg can maintain ID3 tags from FLAC->ALAC or not, but if you have need of this knowledge someday, say hi to that future for me!
(And if compilation fails with a specific weird error about corefoundation corevideo coreaudio etc, uninstall and reinstall your macOS command line tools, because they're broken; `sudo rm -rf /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools ; xcode-select --install` will do that.)
I wonder why you wouldn't just use ALAC full time? As mentioned in my other comment any decent piece of software or hardware supports ALAC these days.
Sure, if you don't have any use for iTunes or iOS FLAC is the obvious choice, but if you do use iTunes there's really no need to keep two formats around. Just use ALAC.
>ALAC is an open source format, which has all benefits as other open source format e.g. FLAC.
Technically, it's still not as good. For instance, FLAC includes a checksum of the audio data, whereas ALAC doesn't.
FLAC also compresses a bit better (=smaller file sizes) and decodes a bit faster (=lower CPU/battery usage).
ALAC is open source and you can feel free to contribute to it or "adopt"/use it.Apple has been using ALAC for a long time on difference devices and platform. Moreover, according to Wikipedia, "compared to some other formats, it is not as difficult to decode, making it practical for a limited-power device, such as older iOS devices". "Adoption" is not a reason, from my point of view, ask a company/app abandon an open sourced format to use another one.
Apple created ALAC as a closed source project after FLAC had already been released as Open Source. They subsequently changed ALACs license to Open Source -- presumably to take advantage of further development from the community.
The main benefit of lossless is the ability to convert to other formats, including other lossless formats that might have better longevity. So as long as you can convert it to FLAC once downloaded it is doing its job.
Yes exactly. And likewise with trying to avoid DRM via some sort of loopback device that is now lossless too.
I can't information theoretically argue for this. But I can algebraically argue lossless conversion rather than storage is great, and this seems great for the war against bad IP legal regimes.
Too bad they are probably only doing this because they feel that with streaming's dominance, the IP regime is not at risk.
To increase interoperability with existing libraries for example. The user group that has some kind of Apple device, and thus potentialy ALAC encoded audio is quite large.
Yes. Correct me if I'm wrong but I'd be surprised if any of the subscription streaming audio services let you download unencrypted, unencumbered FLAC/lossless files. That would seem to run counter to the whole concept of a subscription pricing model.
>which raises the question why they are interested in buying Arm to begin with
Softbank needs to liquidate some of its asset due to the genius work of con-man WeWork losing them tens of billions. The original purchase price for ARM was something like 100 - 120 P/E in 2016. And the current earnings are still 100 -120 P/E with no immediate or short term profits growth. The prospect of the company's fundamentals and future growth hasn't changed since 2016.
Who in the right mind would want to buy a company for P/E 100+ with no visible growth factor?
And since no one wants to buy it, Softbank had to find a buyer. Softbank is one of the largest shareholders in Nvidia. And with its current stock price that was a perfect fit.
Of course that is ignoring Nvidia could have said No. I guess Softbank could decide to liquidate its position on Nvidia instead.
I think the outcome should be that Arm should have less control over who has a full license with the ability to add instructions etc.
It is somewhat ironic to me that, it is the software layer made available by gcc and clang that actually makes these billion dollar cpu vendors viable.
> It is somewhat ironic to me that, it is the software layer made available by gcc and clang that actually makes these billion dollar cpu vendors viable.
CPU vendor usually contribute to both GCC and Clang these days.
"Denver's binary translation layer runs in software, at a lower level than the operating system, and stores commonly accessed, already optimized code sequences in a 128 MB cache stored in main memory"
Is a custom core required to support the full standard instruction set? I thought I could license the rights to have my own, say, A53, and then I’d be able to customize it (as long as I don’t call it an A53 core). Is that not the case?
I wouldn't be surprised if their licensing terms require your chip to pass some kind of compliance test for the standard ISA, but probably only the licensees know that. I'm sure you can't use the ARM trademarks if it isn't compatible thought - that's pretty standard.
All GloFO, Sam, and Japanese all use at least in some part something from Taiwanese makers. If for example, the only one maker of particular brand of proprietary resist stripper does go down, I don't know if somebody would even be able to reverse engineer it to know how it works, let alone reproduce it.
They will have to go back few generations in the resist tech to resume production with non TW suppliers.
And like that with many, many other parts of the ecosystem. It's only a tip of the iceberg.
A majority of those cases are new. Just look at germany’s numbers a week ago. Presumably it takes some time for the condition to get worse and eventually lead to death.
You rest your hands above the keboard? I don’t get most of the criticism of the touch bar except if someone miss the function keys. While it’s true that you need to take your eyes of the screen to use it, the same is true when using multiple screens, and it’s what it is, an extra screen.
I didn't know I did it until I used a touchbar MBP, but it turns out a couple of my right hand fingers drift up to the tops of the number keys when making certain chording presses, which is close enough to barely brush the edge of the touchbar. Took me weeks to figure out what was up—I had no idea I was doing it. iTunes kept opening for no reason, or sometimes other things would happen (but usually it was iTunes). I'm not about to re-train my 25 years of touch typing muscle memory to fit a silly single-vendor feature that's probably not gonna survive in anything like its current form anyway—and besides, I can't make it part of my regular workflow if I use an external keyboard any significant amount of time—so instead I set it to always show the same set of stuff (no per-app changing) and then remove almost everything from it, using spacers to make about 2/3 of it permanently blank.
It's the only way to make a new MBP usable for me. I have to all but disable the damn touchbar.
I also have to disable force-touch on the trackpad to be able to execute all but the shortest of click-and-drag operations. Disabling two of the headliner "advanced" UI features of new MBPs are now very early initial setup steps for me. Machine's toss-it-out-the-window frustrating if I don't.
I also have a lot of trouble with the Force Touch trackpad! Everyone else I know seems to have no issue with it, but I'm constantly triggering Force Touch when I don't want to. Add in the fact that Force Touch is pretty useless on the mac (three finger click to define replaces literally my only use case) and it was easy enough to just disable it.
I guess the fact that Apple is ditching 3D Touch on the iPhone might mean the end of Force Touch on the Macbook, too.
I'm on the other end of this spectrum. I don't even click my trackpad, just use the very lightest of feather touches. I think the setting is called "Tap to click," and people that have problems with brushing up against their trackpad should not attempt it.
When I have the laptop in my lap the finger tips of my left hand often are above the keyboard. With function keys this is not much of a problem because you have to apply some pressure but the TouchBar is just too sensitive so I constantly trigger something.
Somewhat off topic, but I found the idea of different prices interesting. It reminds me of industrial diamonds vs natural diamonds. If I have understood things correctly, industrial diamonds have reached a level of quality that is at the same or even higher quality than natural diamonds. However that has still not affected the price of natural diamonds for some reason.
Why? A 100 dollar bill, is a reciept that promises to buy you 100 dollars worth of value. Previously that value was tied to gold, but now it’s a more flexible notion.
