Why a problem with AAC? It's open, royalty-free, and has better sound quality than MP3. Quoting from DaringFireball:
"MP3 is ubiquitous, yes, but it is not a free standard. The rights to MP3 in most countries, including the U.S., are held by Thomson Consumer Electronics, and companies must pay them licensing fees for any hardware or software product that plays or encodes MP3 audio. Audio playback in hardware costs $0.75 per unit, for example; encoding costs $1.25 per unit.
AAC is not “unique” to Apple. It’s not even controlled or invented by Apple, or any other single company. It is an ISO standard that was invented by engineers at Dolby, working with companies like Fraunhofer, Sony, AT&T, and Nokia. Licensing is controlled by Via. For up to 400,000 units per year, AAC playback costs $1.00 per unit; for more than 400,000 units per year, the price drops to $0.74 per unit.
In terms of licensing costs, patents, and openness, AAC is very much comparable to MP3. MP3 does have the advantage of near-ubiquitous support in consumer electronics and software; AAC has the advantage of slightly better audio quality at the same encoding bitrate. Additionally, MP3 requires a royalty fee of 2 percent for “electronic music distribution”, AAC requires no royalty fee for distribution."
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Why a problem with AAC? It's open, royalty-free, and has better sound quality than MP3. Quoting from DaringFireball:
"MP3 is ubiquitous, yes, but it is not a free standard. The rights to MP3 in most countries, including the U.S., are held by Thomson Consumer Electronics, and companies must pay them licensing fees for any hardware or software product that plays or encodes MP3 audio. Audio playback in hardware costs $0.75 per unit, for example; encoding costs $1.25 per unit.
AAC is not “unique” to Apple. It’s not even controlled or invented by Apple, or any other single company. It is an ISO standard that was invented by engineers at Dolby, working with companies like Fraunhofer, Sony, AT&T, and Nokia. Licensing is controlled by Via. For up to 400,000 units per year, AAC playback costs $1.00 per unit; for more than 400,000 units per year, the price drops to $0.74 per unit.
In terms of licensing costs, patents, and openness, AAC is very much comparable to MP3. MP3 does have the advantage of near-ubiquitous support in consumer electronics and software; AAC has the advantage of slightly better audio quality at the same encoding bitrate. Additionally, MP3 requires a royalty fee of 2 percent for “electronic music distribution”, AAC requires no royalty fee for distribution."