3 ms·
It is an industry standard, in the sense that there are published standards for it and it was developed by an industry consortium, but in practice it never got
by Analemma_ 2y ago
It is an industry standard, in the sense that there are published standards for it and it was developed by an industry consortium, but in practice it never got traction outside Apple and they are essentially the only one who uses it. This happens sometimes: FireWire was an IEEE standard too but Apple and Sony were pretty much the only users. I don’t think it’s too misleading to refer to it as a de facto Apple-only technology.
- Scaevolus 2y agoWhat? AAC is one of the most common codecs used for streaming audio on the internet, Opus being the other common one. It's not exclusive to Apple at all.
- skyyler 2y ago>in practice it never got traction outside Apple and they are essentially the only one who uses it Are you thinking of ALAC? What you're saying is true, if you're talking about ALAC. ALAC is Apple's lossless codec. AAC is a lossy codec and is unrelated to ALAC. AAC is an industry standard. It's in the Nintendo DSi and 3DS handhelds. Heck, according to wikipedia, the Nokia S40 series of phones supports it.
- atoav 2y agoYou are aware that 99% of the video mp4 containers you ever watched use AAC for the audio stream? Maybe Apple is one of the few who use AAC for audio-only purposes, but as a technology AACs predominant use is in video (as a percentage of marketshare). And because literally everything can play MP4s, as such they can also play AAC.