Windows 10 and Apple Lossless
It would seem pretty certain that Apple will ensure that there will be a version of iTunes compatible with Windows 10 around the time that Windows 10 is officially released. So one way to play Apple Lossless files in Windows 10 will be via iTunes, however a lot of people would like to use Windows Media Player and hence Windows Media Center to play these files also. This is currently possible with Windows 8.1 and earlier by installing a DirectShow filter. (Along with a few other steps admittedly.)
The purpose of this post is to discuss what new options there might be. For those unaware of the history of Windows Media Player and music/video formats, originally Microsoft used a software library called DirectShow to do this, when Windows 7 was launched they added support for a new standard called Media Foundation with this being the 'preferred' approach. At the same time Microsoft added as standard a Media Foundation codec which could play AAC files but not Apple Lossless files. Fortunately as Windows Media Player in Windows 7 and 8/8.1 still supports DirectShow codecs aka. filters one could still install a DirectShow filter to play Apple Lossless files. The new information that has been fairly widely discussed is that Microsoft are going to add new Media Foundation codecs as standard in Windows 10 to support FLAC for music files, and MKV for video files. (FLAC is roughly equivalent to Apple Lossless.)
What has not been widely discussed is whether Microsoft are also going to add support as standard for Apple Lossless in Windows 10. In theory this should be as easy for them as FLAC since Apple Lossless is also free and open-source like FLAC. I certainly would very much like them to do this as I have all my music library in Apple Lossless and currently shared between iTunes and WMP and Windows Media Center. If Microsoft add this support as standard then I will no longer have to go through the steps I have previously used to add support for Apple Lossless. (As an aside I was the person who led the original effort that resulted in being able to play Apple Lossless in Windows Media Player via a DirectShow filter and was the very first person in the world to play a music file this way, the actual coding was mainly down to Milenko Mitrovic.)
I have now found the following article which whilst written in Chinese on a Taiwanese website does seem via the powers of Google Translate to strongly suggest that Microsoft have shown uncommon good sense and also added Apple Lossless support to Windows 10.
I would be interested to hear from either someone who natively understands Chinese and can confirm Google's translation, or someone who has tried playing an Apple Lossless file in Windows 10.
Assuming this is true then this alone may justify to me my upgrading to Windows 10 which even though a free upgrade would otherwise have been of little interest.
