iTunes

[WillPlay4Food]

Well the real reason i wanted to know this was i have had a very bad run of luck with my last 3 ipods and whanted to try something different are there other mp3 players that work with a mac.

With a Mac? Probably. With iTunes? Nope. You could still use iTunes to rip CDs, but any music bought from iTMS will currently only play on an iPod. You could always burn to a CD then re-rip into mp3 format to get the music to play on a different player but you will lose some audio fidelity.

 

[WillPlay4Food]

I have ripped a bunch of BMI CD's into my computer. Are you not supposed to be able to?

For a certain period of time last year, Sony/BMI put software on their CDs that installed rootkits on Windows machines. They stopped pressing CDs after public outcry and lawsuits started by people like Eliot Spitzer, the Attorney General of NY. The CDs have been recalled and re-released without any copy protection, but if you bought copies last year they would still have the rootkit software on it.

 

[Drake Kennedy]

Well the real reason i wanted to know this was i have had a very bad run of luck with my last 3 ipods and whanted to try something different are there other mp3 players that work with a mac.

Have you bought your music from the iTunes music store? I don't think you've mentioned that yet. That's very important, because if you haven't, then it's pretty simple to get the AAC to other formats, and we've explained how above. If not...then it's also simple, and with just a little loss of audio quality.

 

[Komakino]

Get a qoolqee i

Even plays OGG files

 

[Komakino]

AAC is a licensable format administered by the MPEG-LA group. Like MP3, someone does own the patent to the CODEC. Almost all audio, video and still image formats are covered by patents. That's the way it is, otherwise, what's the incentive to come up with newer and better ways of doing stuff.

Ogg Vorbis and FLAC are patent-free and open-specification. Ogg files are better quality and smaller in size than MP3s and FLACs are replacement for uncompressed audio (like WAV). Ogg Theora is a patent-free video codec.

The incentive, oh windows (or indeed apple) user, is to BENEFIT the world, not to make money. It's a Linux/BSD concept that we're very fond of. Software for software's sake and improvement for its own sake, not to make money.