flac dev - Sep 2004 - process for petitioning for more flac hardware support

i was wondering how one would go about approaching hardware manufacturers to 
support flac.

i get the sense that in the case of phatnoise, one of their devs already 
knew about flac and took the initiative (although if this isn't the case, 
please correct me).

but how would you go about asking say, apple, to add flac support to the 
ipod? the ipod can already play a number of formats, including wav files & 
the firmware is upgradeable. there's already a 10gig model and since toshiba
announced a 20gig version of the drive the ipod uses, i'd guess there's
a
20gig ipod soon for this world--which would be insanely great for a portable 
flac collection.

as flac is free and open source, and there aren't fp issues like with ogg, 
i'd think flac would be an easy sell to a hardware mfr....

-eddie

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--- E S <es0123@hotmail.com> wrote:
> i was wondering how one would go about approaching hardware
> manufacturers to 
> support flac.
> 
> i get the sense that in the case of phatnoise, one of their devs
> already 
> knew about flac and took the initiative (although if this isn't the
> case, 
> please correct me).
> 
> but how would you go about asking say, apple, to add flac support to
> the 
> ipod? the ipod can already play a number of formats, including wav
> files & 
> the firmware is upgradeable. there's already a 10gig model and since
> toshiba 
> announced a 20gig version of the drive the ipod uses, i'd guess
> there's a 
> 20gig ipod soon for this world--which would be insanely great for a
> portable 
> flac collection.
> 
> as flac is free and open source, and there aren't fp issues like with
> ogg, 
> i'd think flac would be an easy sell to a hardware mfr....
I think most companies balk for marketing reasons.  They
have to bear the support costs so they want to make sure
the demand justifies it.  Since FLAC is nowhere near as
popular as MP3 it's not even on big companies' radar.

The other way in is to petition to open up the hardware.
A lot of these players say 'upgradeable firmware' but it's
not worth a damn if the programming info is proprietary.
I'm sure Apple is getting pressure to open up the iPod all
the time, all you can really do is add to the volume.

Josh



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