Customer lawsuit brought against Apple over iTMS music format

One angry individual is bringing a class action suit against Apple, accusing the company of price gouging, suppression of competition, and denial of consumer choice. The complaint is that tracks purchased from the iTunes Music Store won't play on non-Apple players – without first converting them to MP3 format.

But here's the thing: AAC is not a proprietary format, designed to shut other portable music manufacturers out of the iTMS. It's part of the core of the MPEG-4 standard format developed by the MPEG group. Why use it? Because it offers much higher quality sound without increasing file size. Overall, expert listeners have a hard time distinguishing between AAC and uncompressed audio. If it's an open format that happens to kick MP3's arse, why *wouldn't* you use it? Note that conversely, the WMA format favored by Microsoft is completely proprietary, which would give them the ability to easily lock down tracks whereas Apple has no such right to lock down an open format.

One could rather ask the makers of non-iPod players why they don't offer support for the AAC format. MP3 compression technology is over a decade old. It's time to move on.