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 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).
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.
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.)
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).