efficiency rates under 128 kps and better handling of frequencies above 16 kHZ are hardly benchmarks of any meaning or audio quality and certainly not a driving force to buy a computer.
Apple’s AAC format doesn’t enjoy the same crushing dominance that MS once had. The majority of the world’s music is still encoded in MP3 format, not AAC.
Exactly. And most people- you know, not SDMB audiophiles- can’t hear the difference between a CD an an MP3 anyway, certainly not on a car radio or a standard pair of earphones.
AAC might be “better” than MP3 on some techno-wank level, but for the “man in the street” it’s both indistinguishable AND yet another example of technology changing and making their expensive electronics less useful than they once were for no real benefit to them.
Ahh, I am reminded of the people who claimed that WYSIWIG was just a passing fad, at least until the day Windows 3.0 came out.
Now that was the subject for a proper platform war!
However, regarding your “man in the street”, he doesn’t own a Zune, he owns an iPod which plays AAC’s just fine. Sorry to hear about your poor purchasing decisions. 
In addition to that - for granny (and, well, for anyone who is not very knowledgeable about the technology) having a lot of choices adds a lot of anxiety, since the customer doesn’t have the ability in that case to evaluate those choices.
As your own link notes, at bitrates above 128kbps, AAC has basically no advantage over MP3. Given that most iTunes AAC downloads and most Amazon MP3 downloads these days are at 256kbps, the fact is that there is no audible difference between the two. Furthermore, in the high-ambient-noise environments where most people listen to their portable music devices (gym, public transit, walking around on the street, etc.), even if there were differences they would be virtually impossible to detect in everyday use.
Hell, if you really think audio quality differences are that noticeable and important, you could use OGG, which is as good as AAC and MP3 (arguably better at high bitrates), or a lossless codec like FLAC. Neither of which are supported by iPods.
iPods can play music in Apple Lossless format.
I have never questioned Apple’s ability to play its own proprietary formats.
Who said I did? Must have been someone putting words in my mouth when I wasn’t looking.
I just think that bitching about a new standard not being a ‘standard’ while Apple is using it to sell more music than everyone else combined is petty.
Do you think AAC is a ‘standard’ mhendo, or is it a mere tool used by Apple to ruin the life of honest and frugal PC users everywhere?
It’s neither, and you’re dishonest for implying that i ever even suggested the latter.
What do you mean by it being a “standard”? Clearly it is a standard, by the definition that any standardized (ie usable) file format is a standard, but to say it is the standard is to suggest that everything else is non-standard, by distinction of being different.
As I see it, there is no way that MP3 has been marginalized to the extent of being nonstandard. At best (worst?), AAC has penetrated the market sufficiently that there isn’t a (single) standard for music file formats anymore. This may have happened - though I find it hard to believe, since I’d never even heard of AAC before this thread. Now, I’m a little out of touch, but I didn’t think I was so out of touch that I’d be unaware of the complete supplantation of MP3.
ETA: regarding the acutal subject of the thread, I’ve never used a Mac. I like PC gaming and write windows programs at work, so there is nowhere I would find one useful.
One reason why Apple might prefer to use something other that MP3 is all of the licensing and patent fights surrounding it. Contrary to what many people think, MP3 is not an “open standard.”
And anybody with a USB port on the car stereo can plug this in for $5 and read their MP-3’s on a micro-SD chip. In effect, my car has an 8 GB hard drive that I keep music and computer files on such as openoffice. I travel with all the music and software I need to work with other computers without a bunch of wires and chargers or expensive ipod players laying around the car. My phone plays the same micro SD chip so I can simply burn 2 chips at the same time and I have music everywhere I go…
Sorry to hear you have to haul around a music player.
And that means what exactly to computer users who can download free MP3 ripping software? The beauty of MP3 is the variety of free or cheap software including loss-less engines.
Probably nothing, but it’ perfectly reasonable for a company not to want to get into a patent and licensing battle, and possibly be forced to pay royalties, when they have a better solution already.
This debate has long since strayed from the OPs question, but while we’re on this topic, Microsoft is one of the WORST offenders in this area - they never met a proprietary standard they didn’t like (WMV / WMA for example).
I think the point is only that this (may) be the reason why Apple chose the format for their own store. It doesn’t mean anything to most end users. And, as pointed out earlier in the thread, it’s not like the mp3 format is incompatible with iTunes. It plays mp3s just fine, and you can also use it to encode to mp3 if you want.
And herein lies another problem with this debate: the assumption among so many Mac owners that any criticism of Apple is a de facto plug for, or defense of, Microsoft.
Despite the fact that i think that Windows has been, at least since the introduction of XP, a solid and stable and usable operating system, i’ve still been very critical of Microsoft on some fronts: stuff like their total and active hostility to open source software; their poor implementation of shit like Windows Genuine Advantage; their “fuck the rest of the world” position on standards such as XML-based documents and browser implementation of CSS; and other annoying crap.
I also believe that many MS products are no more useful than their free, open-source counterparts. On my Windows computers, i don’t use Microsoft’s email program, their web browser, or their media player.
If you’re making direct comparisons, though, the problem with the “Microsoft is worse” argument is that Apple has done enough over the past decade to make very clear, even to the casual observer, that IF they could leverage their market dominance in the way Microsoft does, then they would have no hesitation in doing so. Hell, upthread Squink even gave tacit support to this idea, noting that “Apple’s got a big enough chunk of the music business, that what they say is the standard is the standard.”
If Microsoft has been worse than Apple in terms of leveraging market share to push the little guys around and push particular standards and restrictions on users, it’s only because Apple isn’t as big as Microsoft. Steve Jobs might be, in public, somewhat less fucking crazy than Steve Ballmer, but he’s no less a hard-headed businessman, and neither are the rest of the folks running Apple.
Hell, look at the iPhone. There is no technological reason why it had to be restricted to a single carrier for the first 3+ years of its life, and despite Apple’s marketing blurb about protecting the user experience, there’s no technological necessity for only allowing approved apps on it. All this was done to allow Apple to maintain a level of control over the device after it was purchased. I don’t care very much that they did this, but as corporate behavior it’s really not all that different from Microsoft.
So when the format changes on you, you buy a new car? Yeah, that makes more economic sense than springing for a music player you can take to the gym. Or perhaps you could just buy a new car stereo that’ll recognize AAC’s? That’d only set you back a few hundred.
For corn sakes, go download some software that’ll convert modern formats to mp3’s if you must, or bitch to the car companies about not coming out with firmware updates to keep up with changing times.
Cost of an AAC to MP3 converter: 0 dollars
Cost of losing the point of your argument: Priceless
The only real fanboys in this thread are the ones that insist that macs are only image. Nobody ever sees my mac. I pay extra for it because I like the way it works and I am willing to pay for it. I have had enough bad experience with Windows that I will never ever buy a Microsoft based machine. After all of the crap my wife has had to go through, I am confounded that she still thinks that macs aren’t worth it, but that is her prerogative.
It may take a while for me to get enough video recorded to finalize the CD, but with my wife’s permission, I will definitely come back to this thread to report how it hooks up with my video recorder. My experience with Windows strongly suggests that it will be an incredible pain in the ass.
Um what? USB is the hands down most common interface for computers and free MP3 ripping software will always be there in whatever form desired. If the car stereos all advance to a newer version I’d just convert everything over in one shot.
Why would I want to change from the most popular (and free) software format for music? With an 8 GB chip I have over 6 days of continuous music plugged into my stereo at a fraction of what an ipod costs. There are no wires or chargers involved. Cell phones and USB ports have rendered ipods into the age of 8 tracks. USB ports are now in aftermarket car stereos, home stereos, boom boxes, clock radios, and of course PC computers.
The bottom line is that the ipod techno-niche honeymoon is over.