“Apple may have kept details of the lossless encoding format introduced in recent versions of iTunes to itself, but that hasn’t stopped one developer from reverse engineering an encoded file, to compile his own decoder,” Simon Aughton reports for PC Pro. “David Hammerton’s project is at an early stage; it can currently decode only mono and stereo ALAC files although the format allows for up to eight channels. And as yet there is no encoder. However he says that overcoming both hurdles should be fairly trivial.”
“Also in its early stages, is skiTunes, an open source alternative to iTunes. It differs from Apple’s application in that it is written in Cocoa and uses native widgets and will support formats iTunes does not, including OGG and WMA,” Aughton reports. “No working version is available yet, but you can follows its progress at sourceforge.net/projects/skitunes.”
Full article here.
More info about the Apple Lossless encoder here.
” but you can follows its progress at “
At least we speak english good.
This sounds like bad news, but what does it actually mean? Can people now use non-iTunes songs on their iPods?
Can this actually be considered a crack. This is more specifically reverse-engineering a format that little documentation was provided on.
> This sounds like bad news, but what does it actually mean? Can people now use non-iTunes songs on their iPods?
No idiot! That means another application rather than iTunes can play songs encoded in ALAC.
An iPod is not the same as iTunes!!!
Bad news? huh?
Take a look at the sourceforge page….. 1 developer… pre-alpha stage… no screenshots….
I’m sure that Apple must be REALLY concerned about the progress being made.
I’m also in the pre-alpha stage of my project which turns lead into gold… anyone other developers interested in helping me out?
It must be a VERY slow news day, because there just isn’t and news or significance in this story.
How about this news?
Mac Mini in VGA trauma
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=21629
By Wil Harris: Monday 07 March 2005, 09:47
THE MAC MINI is under fire for shipping with what some claim to be a defective DVI > VGA converter.
Numerous filings on Apple’s web support board disclose the problems of irate Mini-buyers, who are finding that their Mac mini looks simply dreadful when connected up to a CRT. Brightness is too low, buyers say, and sometimes the display fails to show up at all.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/themacgenius/
There are only four posts up on it so far, but supposedly the higher-ups at Apple are none too stoked about “Genius-like”, the LiveJournal of someone who works at Genius Bar of one of the Apple Stores. And we can see why: he or she dishes the inside dirt about what it’s like behind the scenes, like being repeatedly told during training that it’s easier to get accepted into Stanford than become a Mac Genius, or how Apple charges $135 to install a new replacement logic board, even though it only takes six minutes, and $600 for a new SuperDrive that’ll set you back $69 from Newegg.
Apple lossless does nothing with with the DRM that iTunes uses. So this “hack” has absolutely no bearing on the iTunes & iPod related issues.
Apple’s lossless is just a convenient way for audiophiles who hate lossy compression for their music and don’t want to encode their CDs or other music in a lossy format when putting it on their Mac or iPod. AFAIK music in Apple lossless format is not available natively from any source. A user must create files in Apple lossless from their own sources.
I believe this has little or no impact on Apple. There are literally hundreds of lossless encoding schemes out there. Apple lossless for music is just convenient for iTunes and iPods. If another individual creates an Apple lossless decoder then they still have to create the music player to work with it on a non Mac machine or create firmware for a player other than the iPod.
Additionally, an encoder would have to be created for encoding on anything other than a Mac — encoding on the Mac already has the free iTunes encoder so what would be the advantage of having yet another encoder on the Mac.
Bottom line: no significant impact ever
The significant impact is that the guy created a decoder for the ALAC encoding scheme, which gives insights into how it works.
If an encoder can be created, this will fully open up the Airport Express devices. Basically the encryption was already cracked on these, but the ALAC format was not quite figured out. The devices take their input in the form of ALAC streams.
Once somebody figures out how to make an ALAC encoder it’s a short step to making other programs support the Airport Express devices.
This has nothing to do with any DRM or the iPod or anything though, other than people can now support the Apple Lossless format for playback in other programs.
This actually helps Apple’s lossless format in the long run. Apple’s lossless format is basically non-existent. I have not found one website which offers legal downloads of concert recordings in Apple’s lossless format, but all of them offer downloads in either FLAC or SHN.
Why Apple chose to go with their own lossless format is beyond me. I still don’t think I’ll ever consider using Apple’s lossless format for recording my cd’s, but with this decoder, the format at least can be read in Linux or Windows.
“the format at least can be read in Linus or Windows”
Since it’s introduction, Apple’s lossless format was always readable in Windows using iTunes.
I agree with you that an encoder/decoder (ie iTunes) for Linux would be a great idea and beneficial to Apple and me as a stockholder.
I wonder why Apple didn’t use MLP (Meridean Lossless Packing)? It is an integral part of DVD-Audio. Was there an RIAA issue in using it (since actual direct digial transmission of DVD-Audio from player to receiver is not allowed for piracy fears)? Or did Apple just not want to pay a licensing fee.
Gosh…
Relax man! algood2 asked a good honest question, no need to insult them. Idiot.
iTunes for Moto phones is written in Java which should be write once run anywhere so iTunes on other devices and platforms (eg Linux) seem likely.
“Apple Lossless” is part of the MPEG-4 spec that includes AAC. This guy is just writing a decoder that allows Apple Lossless music files to be played on Linux.
<“Apple Lossless” is part of the MPEG-4 spec that includes AAC>
where did you get that? see my writeup here as to why it doesn’t look like MPEG4-ALS.
Josh
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=32111
I want my 12% or I’m suing too.
there is an ogg vorbis plugin for itunes already
and a wma plugin due soon
Why would anyone want to play wma files on any device ever
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just thinking about it hurts my ears
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