Posted by: eddie1
apple os x compatibilty? - 02/07/2006 15:51
does the empeg work with mac os x at all?
and if so, can I use i tunes with it?
ed
and if so, can I use i tunes with it?
ed
apple os x compatibilty?
Posted by: drakino
Re: apple os x compatibilty? - 02/07/2006 17:06
If you hook it up via ethernet to your Mac and use jEmplode then yes it will work on OS X. The limits are that you cannot apply a kernel upgrade to it like Hijack without a serial cable. Once Hijack is installed, it can be upgraded via ethernet using jEmplode.
Also, if you have some sort of Windows emulator or BootCamp, you can use the normal Windows software.
iTunes won't talk directly to the empeg, but you can use iTunes to rip your CDs as long as you tell it to save them as an MP3. iTunes defaults to AAC, something not compatible with the empeg.
Also, if you have some sort of Windows emulator or BootCamp, you can use the normal Windows software.
iTunes won't talk directly to the empeg, but you can use iTunes to rip your CDs as long as you tell it to save them as an MP3. iTunes defaults to AAC, something not compatible with the empeg.
Posted by: tfabris
Re: apple os x compatibilty? - 02/07/2006 17:44
With the growing popularity of iTunes, this deserves to be its own FAQ entry. I'll go do that now.
Posted by: drakino
Re: apple os x compatibilty? - 02/07/2006 18:58
Updated with accurate information on AAC. It is an open standard just like MP3, and is not an Apple proprietary codec.
Posted by: sein
Re: apple os x compatibilty? - 02/07/2006 20:55
As for iTunes compatibility, don't forget to mention Mike's excellent effort in getting mt-daapd running on the Empeg. Details are here. If you are going to mention iTunes support in the FAQ, then this should really go in too.
Basically what it does is make the music on your Empeg appear magically as an iTunes Shared Music Library on computers which are on the same network as it.
Getting this working is not really for novices. It requires a kernel with multicast support, you need to transfer some files over, extract them on the commandline, edit config.ini, etc. It also makes your drive writable while it creates its file index which can cause potential problems, and it is not too fast.
But it does work!
Basically what it does is make the music on your Empeg appear magically as an iTunes Shared Music Library on computers which are on the same network as it.
Getting this working is not really for novices. It requires a kernel with multicast support, you need to transfer some files over, extract them on the commandline, edit config.ini, etc. It also makes your drive writable while it creates its file index which can cause potential problems, and it is not too fast.
But it does work!
Posted by: tfabris
Re: apple os x compatibilty? - 02/07/2006 21:16
Okay. Updated to include the mt-daapd information. Also, re-edited Tom's text to simplify it and make it clear that AAC is still an apple-championed format. 
Posted by: drakino
Re: apple os x compatibilty? - 02/07/2006 22:05
The wording "apple championed" still seems off there. Sure, Apple uses it, but so do a ton of other companies, including a lot of media cell phones. Panasonic has a decent lineup of AAC players, as well as Samsung, Roku, Sanyo, and even some Creative products. A big kicker is that even the Microsoft XBox 360 plays AAC. Lastly it's an ISO and MPEG standard the same as MP3 is.
Posted by: tfabris
Re: apple os x compatibilty? - 03/07/2006 01:05
The only time I've ever seen anyone playing an AAC file is on an ipod. The only time I've ever seen someone create an AAC file is with iTunes. I know there are other compatible products (I read the wiki).
My point is that the FAQ entry is about iTunes and whoever's reading it should know that iTunes and AAC files are compatible mostly with Apple products and little else, and they should be encouraged to switch their iTunes to MP3 if they want the most compatibility with other players.
My point is that the FAQ entry is about iTunes and whoever's reading it should know that iTunes and AAC files are compatible mostly with Apple products and little else, and they should be encouraged to switch their iTunes to MP3 if they want the most compatibility with other players.
Posted by: drakino
Re: apple os x compatibilty? - 03/07/2006 08:17
Quote:
My point is that the FAQ entry is about iTunes and whoever's reading it should know that iTunes and AAC files are compatible mostly with Apple products and little else, and they should be encouraged to switch their iTunes to MP3 if they want the most compatibility with other players.
I'm fine with conveying that point in an accurate way. Sadly Rio and others seemed disinterested in remaining on a more standardized path for future products, and WMA adoption seems to be higher then ever. One day I will want to move my music to a better format then MP3, and quite honestly I don't want it to be a Microsoft controlled format. The sooner more people realize AAC is just an MPEG/ISO format like MP3 the sooner it might be more widely adopted. Calling it an Apple format, or Apple supported format just triggers the incorrect thought of it being an iPod only thing.
I'll drop this now. It's just a pet peeve of mine that so many people incorrectly associate AAC only with Apple.
Posted by: peter
Re: apple os x compatibilty? - 03/07/2006 08:34
Quote:
I'm fine with conveying that point in an accurate way. Sadly Rio and others seemed disinterested in remaining on a more standardized path for future products, and WMA adoption seems to be higher then ever.
AAC is standardized, but still patent-encumbered. Insofar as "Rio" were able to push people anywhere (as opposed to responding to market demands), we pushed them towards the open and unencumbered standards of Vorbis and FLAC.
Peter
Posted by: rob
Re: apple os x compatibilty? - 04/07/2006 09:11
Quote:
I'll drop this now. It's just a pet peeve of mine that so many people incorrectly associate AAC only with Apple.
I think it's a pretty fair association! AAC has been around for years but got nowhere as a consumer format until Apple adopted it. I recall Dolby at the 2000 MP3 summit trying to persuade me that we should put AAC on the empeg to benefit from superior audio performance at low bitrates. We didn't do so because nobody was using AAC then, outside of some fringe (mostly pro or self contained) applications.
Apple wanted to adopt a format without the piracy image of MP3, and of course they could not adopt a Microsoft format. AAC was the obvious choice. Even now, with millions of iPod users encoding in AAC (without realising it, probably), you could proably count on the fingers of one hand the number of other mainstream products that support it.
Rob
Posted by: altman
Re: apple os x compatibilty? - 04/07/2006 15:51
Given that every music-playing Nokia supports AAC (many of them AAC+), I could well believe that as far as consumer devices go, Nokia ship more AAC players than Apple do.
Ok, so nobody *uses* the AAC playback on these phones, they just load their MP3s onto the phone, but they are supported...
Hugo
Ok, so nobody *uses* the AAC playback on these phones, they just load their MP3s onto the phone, but they are supported...
Hugo
Posted by: drakino
Re: apple os x compatibilty? - 04/07/2006 17:39
Quote:
AAC has been around for years but got nowhere as a consumer format until Apple adopted it. ... We didn't do so because nobody was using AAC then
Chicken and the egg problem as usual. Consumers have relatively little influence towards getting a newer format adopted. It is in the hands of hardware manufacturers and software designers. Had AAC been added to the empeg back then, more people would have had the choice to move to it as a format. The empeg was built and designed when relatively few people even knew what an MP3 was. As it, and other devices appeared on the market, consumer awareness rose, and people did start to encode their music to it. The hardware pushed the awareness in this case. For new formats, someone has to decide to stand up and lead the way at some point.
I can see the counterpoint for avoiding early adoption though. Throwing both MP3 and AAC into the mix back then could have led to confusion, and also incompatibility issues with one or the other if people tried to move their library to a different platform. MP3 was for a short time a solid single standard for encoding music. Now we sit at a point where many millions of people encode to WMA, or AAC, or a smaller set to OGG, and no single hardware player supports all 4 formats.
To me, it is a shame a format like MP3Pro never took off. Having backwards compatibility with existing MP3 players, but additional quality when using the new format seems to be the way to go to drive a replacement format, instead of a complete standalone format.
Posted by: rob
Re: apple os x compatibilty? - 05/07/2006 13:24
Quote:
Chicken and the egg problem as usual. Consumers have relatively little influence towards getting a newer format adopted. It is in the hands of hardware manufacturers and software designers. Had AAC been added to the empeg back then, more people would have had the choice to move to it as a format.
They could have tried not charging so much money for it. Not that AAC has ever been significantly more expensive than similar proprietary formats (unless your app is considered "pro" in which case it's absurdly expensive), but back then there was no reason to spend any money on yet another decoder that nobody was using. It did make sense to spend some money on WMA because M$ had herded so many WMP users in that direction (but even then we resisted until Rio bought the license on the back of a much larger deal).
Rob
Posted by: rob
Re: apple os x compatibilty? - 05/07/2006 13:28
Quote:
Given that every music-playing Nokia supports AAC (many of them AAC+), I could well believe that as far as consumer devices go, Nokia ship more AAC players than Apple do.
OK, true, but doesn't change the gist of what I'm saying.
It's not a dig at Apple - they had to find an alternative to MP3 (more for political than technical reasons I would say) and Dolby did a good job with AAC. They deserved to make some money from it. Kudos to Apple for at least adopting an MPEG standard and not inventing yet another pointless music format.
Rob
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: apple os x compatibilty? - 05/07/2006 13:52
They could just have easily adopted ogg vorbis. Of course, then they would have had to pay to do their own legal on patent issues, but they wouldn't have to pay per-unit, as they're probably doing now.
Posted by: altman
Re: apple os x compatibilty? - 05/07/2006 14:17
Not sure OGG was in a finished state at the time of the first iPod? Then again, I can't even remember if the first iPod was AAC + MP3 or just MP3... I know Fairplay was added by a sw upgrade.
Also, saying OGG is free is an interesting tack. From what I've read, it uses plenty of patented techniques - it's just that any player that has an MP3 license has paid the fees to be able to use these patents. If a big volume OGG-only player came along, I can believe the patent holders would try to extract their cut. It's open & free, but to say it doesn't build on any of the work carried out by all the other people working on perceptual audio coders isn't really true.
Hugo
Also, saying OGG is free is an interesting tack. From what I've read, it uses plenty of patented techniques - it's just that any player that has an MP3 license has paid the fees to be able to use these patents. If a big volume OGG-only player came along, I can believe the patent holders would try to extract their cut. It's open & free, but to say it doesn't build on any of the work carried out by all the other people working on perceptual audio coders isn't really true.
Hugo
Posted by: peter
Re: apple os x compatibilty? - 05/07/2006 15:32
Quote:
Kudos to Apple for at least adopting an MPEG standard and not inventing yet another pointless music format.
Kudos which they then rather lost by promulgating that absurd proprietary Apple Lossless not-quite-FLAC thing instead of proper FLAC.
IMO, and this is just my opinion, there's no point in lossy formats other than MP3. I agree that WMA, ACC and Vorbis are more advanced, but the advantages that gives (half the file-size for the same quality is the usual handwave, but they're not quite that good in practice) just aren't worth bothering with. There isn't really room for a "third way" alongside MP3 and FLAC.
Peter
Posted by: peter
Re: apple os x compatibilty? - 05/07/2006 15:45
Quote:
Also, saying OGG is free is an interesting tack. From what I've read, it uses plenty of patented techniques - it's just that any player that has an MP3 license has paid the fees to be able to use these patents.
...for MP3. I doubt that the usual MP3 licenses allow for the use of the patented techniques to encode or decode other file formats.
Peter
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: apple os x compatibilty? - 05/07/2006 16:28
Their stance is still that it is unencumbered by patents. Whether or not that is true is only discoverable via legal action.
There is an official forum thread on the subject.
I believe that the first iPod (I own one) was MP3-only. But that doesn't really negate the argument, since, as you point out, new formats (or new format) were added later.
There is an official forum thread on the subject.
I believe that the first iPod (I own one) was MP3-only. But that doesn't really negate the argument, since, as you point out, new formats (or new format) were added later.
Posted by: altman
Re: apple os x compatibilty? - 06/07/2006 06:45
ISTR the wording refers to allowing the device to use the patented techiques - but doesn't specify for what, exactly. I guess at that point they're getting the money out of the manufacturer and hence they don't really care anymore
Hugo
Hugo