Wednesday, February 29, 2012

MP5? Apple Less-than-lossless?

A few weeks ago rumours appeared suggesting Apple may be about to release a new music file format, one that would make music sound better. Well, suggestions are that this will see the light of day at an imminent product launch Apple have scheduled. Also, over the weekend I noticed the company behind the maths that made MP3 possible had launched a new way of making sound better on mobile phones.

An idle thought - MP4 is taken for movie files - so maybe this will be MP5? From Apple's perspective a new format, now, will cause a headache for them and their users. Generally better sound means more hard drive space. This won't help Apple directly as they buy in drives and it will put more pressure on the ageing iPod Classic, more than due an upgrade. Bigger files would be a major ouch for iPhone users too.

If I were Apple, why? Well someone is going to do it so it might as well be you. It would head off an interloper gaining traction within iTunes, it would keep the iPod / iPhone / iPad ahead of the game. maybe it would give Apple a toe hold in non IOS areas too. However they'd probably have to re-encode their entire iTunes Music Store library to keep their Music Match function operable and that's no small task.

I think it would be a positive move, one we'd jump on and would be appreciated by our clients. Better sound, what's not to like?

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