“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.