Yea … no, sorry to say but this one’s on Microsoft. I get it, hurr durr Apple expensive and elitist, but they know where to put up their walled garden and where not to. For example they used to have their own video container .mov but they’re way past forcing something like that onto iPhone users. And even back then, the actual codec they committed themselves to in those days was H.264, a standard that’s open to adoption by anybody. You can easily turn an old .mov into an .mp4 or .mkv without needing to alter the actual content of the file and that content is playable by pretty much every media device built in the last 15+ years.
HEIC isn’t Apple’s thing it’s from the MPEGroup, also easily licensable by anybody. I guess the reason why it wasn’t part of Windows 10 from the beginning is because they both came out in mid 2015. Windows 10 seems to have adopted it for viewing (and later editing) in 2018 but they make you hit a stupid download button in their store to get it so that’s lame.
Yep. Lack of format support is usually to blame on the one who doesn’t support the format. You can absolutely blame Apple for this too though, their apps can’t open e.g. Matroska video or FLAC.
And perplexingly, they don’t support uploading HEIC, their own image format of choice, on the web iCloud Photos. So there’s that too.
(At this point my music library is stored as ALAC because it’s well supported in both Linux and Apple’s OSes. Really wish it wouldn’t have to be that way though. Someone needs to tell them about ffmpeg.)
For example they used to have their own video container .mov
It’s always very very funny every time someone mentions MOV, because while it’s very similar to MP4, it’s actually an open format while MP4 isn’t (!). You actually have to pay for the MP4 standard document while Apple just gives you the MOV documentation.
Also at least taking a screen capture on macOS still gives you a MOV container, actually.
I wouldn’t even know how to hold a local music library on macOS these days. The app that used to be iTunes is now just called Music right? It’s way confusing for me but I also don’t daily drive the OS anymore. I have my stagnant library in Subsonic which in itself is a stagnant product but you know how it is with Spotify these days.
I didn’t know MOV has a more accessible license than MP4 but yea MP4 in itself is hardly what one ever wanted to hold their content in. All I know about MOV is that back in the XP days obviously Windows couldn’t play them out of the box. Not that WMV (lol) was any more desirable. I guess most of my stuff back then was AVI.
I wouldn’t even know how to hold a local music library on macOS these days. The app that used to be iTunes is now just called Music right?
Yeah. I have a local library consisting of some albums I bought, some which aren’t on streaming services, and some other stuff such as game soundtracks + also use Apple Music streaming. They complement each other really well.
I’m really not sure where I originally read it. I did some digging and I found some discussion about FLAC and patent trolls on a few forums, including the Talk page of the Wikipedia article, but I haven’t found anything concrete.
It might be that the patent troll thing was just a rumor!
I think both work since opus is the codec but ogg is the container, but personally I’d probably go with .opus because it’s more descriptive.
Btw Apple’s ALAC and AAC files are typically stored in an mp4 container but with the m4a extension to mark it as intended to be audio only (although it may have a video track, which usually is used for album art).
Yea … no, sorry to say but this one’s on Microsoft. I get it, hurr durr Apple expensive and elitist, but they know where to put up their walled garden and where not to. For example they used to have their own video container .mov but they’re way past forcing something like that onto iPhone users. And even back then, the actual codec they committed themselves to in those days was H.264, a standard that’s open to adoption by anybody. You can easily turn an old .mov into an .mp4 or .mkv without needing to alter the actual content of the file and that content is playable by pretty much every media device built in the last 15+ years.
HEIC isn’t Apple’s thing it’s from the MPEGroup, also easily licensable by anybody. I guess the reason why it wasn’t part of Windows 10 from the beginning is because they both came out in mid 2015. Windows 10 seems to have adopted it for viewing (and later editing) in 2018 but they make you hit a stupid download button in their store to get it so that’s lame.
Yep. Lack of format support is usually to blame on the one who doesn’t support the format. You can absolutely blame Apple for this too though, their apps can’t open e.g. Matroska video or FLAC.
And perplexingly, they don’t support uploading HEIC, their own image format of choice, on the web iCloud Photos. So there’s that too.
(At this point my music library is stored as ALAC because it’s well supported in both Linux and Apple’s OSes. Really wish it wouldn’t have to be that way though. Someone needs to tell them about ffmpeg.)
It’s always very very funny every time someone mentions MOV, because while it’s very similar to MP4, it’s actually an open format while MP4 isn’t (!). You actually have to pay for the MP4 standard document while Apple just gives you the MOV documentation.
Also at least taking a screen capture on macOS still gives you a MOV container, actually.
I wouldn’t even know how to hold a local music library on macOS these days. The app that used to be iTunes is now just called Music right? It’s way confusing for me but I also don’t daily drive the OS anymore. I have my stagnant library in Subsonic which in itself is a stagnant product but you know how it is with Spotify these days.
I didn’t know MOV has a more accessible license than MP4 but yea MP4 in itself is hardly what one ever wanted to hold their content in. All I know about MOV is that back in the XP days obviously Windows couldn’t play them out of the box. Not that WMV (lol) was any more desirable. I guess most of my stuff back then was AVI.
Yeah. I have a local library consisting of some albums I bought, some which aren’t on streaming services, and some other stuff such as game soundtracks + also use Apple Music streaming. They complement each other really well.
Do Apple still sell Music in that app?
They do actually, the iTunes store still exists. I haven’t used it though since while it’s DRM free at this point, it’s not lossless.
Apple made ALAC as an alternative to FLAC due to the dubious licensing around FLAC at the time.
Interesting. I can’t find anything about the FLAC licensing issues. Do you have a link?
(Also, correction — Wikipedia says macOS in general can play FLAC. I guess it’s just the Music app that can’t import them.)
I’m really not sure where I originally read it. I did some digging and I found some discussion about FLAC and patent trolls on a few forums, including the Talk page of the Wikipedia article, but I haven’t found anything concrete.
It might be that the patent troll thing was just a rumor!
Ah, alright. Thanks for looking!
well there ain’t no more licensing issues now are there
Yes they are no longer scared of the licensing enough most modern Apple devices do have at least some FLAC support.
Also ALAC is a free and open source codec which also has wide support.
And with a tool like FFMPEG you can easily convert between the two and they are both lossless so there is no data lost in the conversion.
So really just use whichever you like it really doesn’t matter.
since you seem to be knowledgeable about this, i wanna ask: do you think one should use .opus or .ogg as the file extension for OPUS files?
I think both work since opus is the codec but ogg is the container, but personally I’d probably go with .opus because it’s more descriptive.
Btw Apple’s ALAC and AAC files are typically stored in an mp4 container but with the m4a extension to mark it as intended to be audio only (although it may have a video track, which usually is used for album art).