Apple has released the Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) into the wild today by making the codec open source and giving it an Apache license. The codec works on all iOS devices and is bit-for-fit identical to the original uncompressed audio file that is being converted.
Apple Lossless is usually stored in M4A containers much like its AAC codec. Apple claims that the Lossless Audio Codec only uses about half of the storage space that would be needed for a raw, uncompressed audio encoding. The codec also works with Apple’s AirPlay technologies, which may be part of the reason that Apple has decided to make the codec open source today.
It’s not the sexiest of news articles, but it is a pretty large move for the company. Developers can now get their hands on the codec source code over at Mac OS forge.
Hopefully we’ll see FaceTime released into the Open Source world as well, considering Apple claimed it would be Open Source during the the keynote where it was announced. We’d be a little more excited about that news, but any time Apple releases stuff to the public (Webkit) we get pretty excited about it.
Image Credit: juanpol
Good thing apple had to ignore all of the open source formats already available and create a proprietary one. Consumers want limited access, for sure! FLAC has been here for years, why not just add support and make a push to use it? *sigh
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