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Apple's Present: iTunes Supports Ogg Files 192

Posted by timothy from the yummy dept.
curious.corn writes "I may be a fool (and a happy Christmas Mac OS X newbie ;-) but it seems that this morning's software update brought a really cool cadeau to Mac OS X. How 'bout Ogg file integration in iTunes? Yesterday evening I could only play them in QuickTime (after downloading a component somewhere) this morning I updated iTunes and am enjoying my old Linux playlists. Buon Natale a tutti voi Edo."
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Apple's Present: iTunes Supports Ogg Files More

Apple's Present: iTunes Supports Ogg Files

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  • Ehhhhh... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 25, 2002 @03:22PM (#4957726)
    So, like, um, i clicked, and the computer was like, beep, and then it was like, playing my .oggs!

    --Ellen Feiss

  • Nope, no iTunes (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 25, 2002 @03:22PM (#4957733)
    it's that codec you downloaded. It also hooked itself into iTunes. Apple has made it clear they won't support Ogg, at least in the forseeable future.

  • Nothing New Really (Score:2, Interesting)

    by techathead ( 201626 )
    I think I could already do this with the same component. It just plays them as quicktime files. The downer is that they still have to be ripped to mp3 to goto the iPod. Now the real Christmas present would be if Apple would release an OGG iPod update. That would be really cool.
    Tommy

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday December 25, 2002 @03:25PM (#4957739)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Apple does it's best to get users to switch.
    Since Many Linux users also have a commercial OS: So Ogg supoort will certainly convince Linux users to get OS X instead of Windows as their commercial system.

  • Cool! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Now when will they add support for WMV files?
  • i seem to remember seeing a friend play ogg files from itunes before. but, i don't ever recall them working on the ipod. i couldn't see any mention of this on the apple website.

    answers on a postcard please...

  • The link (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    See freshmeat [freshmeat.net]. This isn't from Apple, though ...

  • I know... (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by craenor ( 623901 )
    This is somewhat offtopic, but this reminds me of my irritating RealOne player problem. I can't get the auto update to run through our firewall. This means I can't get the codec I need to watch about 30% of the South Park episodes on my harddrive. It's starting to tick me off...
  • ...but this is hardly anything revolutionary. Sure, OGG is a nice format, and it is supposedly patent free. Until somebody actually discovers that they have a patent for something that it is using, that is. :)

    The big issue is always a question of "does it work today"? And today, there are free software to decode and encode both mp3 and ogg files, and that means that they are equivalent from that standpoint. A small number of people will preferr ogg out of purely moral reasons, but for the vast majority this only means that there is yet another file format out of loads of fileformats that is supported by Apple. Which is nice, but on the whole rather uninteresting.

    Apple did hardly implement this to make a point. They probably implemented it because it was easy. :) And 99.99% of Mac and Linux user won't ever notice. :)

  • /. editors do a cursory check before your publish (Score:3, Informative)

    by ellem ( 147712 ) <ellem52@gmai l . c om> on Wednesday December 25, 2002 @03:38PM (#4957781) Homepage Journal
    this guy is on crack. iTunes already did Ogg. There is no update.

    (And my new damn iPod won't charge!)
  • How did you update iTunes when there is no update available? Please post a direct link to the update file.

    What happens when you remove the .ogg codec for Quicktime? Does the iTunes .ogg suport disappear?

    Do your iTunes visualizations respond to the .ogg files?

    Please, we need more info.

    • There are no details; it's bs.

      See my original post [slashdot.org] for more details. Basically, he installed the Quicktime plugin for .ogg, ran soft. update. Now, software updateoutside of the US (He's in Rome, check his user-profile) hawks the iTunes 3.0.1 update as a new one every time the update program is run. So, when he installed it and ran iTunes, iTunes now had .ogg support (Because it uses Quicktime for playback). Pity it's not real.

  • Sorry folks... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Squidgee ( 565373 ) on Wednesday December 25, 2002 @03:42PM (#4957797)
    But it seems he's wrong. I just ran Software Update on my iBook, and there is no iTunes update. There is an iPod update, but it doesn't add anything to iTunes; just allows the 'pod to keep track of its battery better, plus some other minor tweaks.

    But don't fret! You can run .ogg files in iTunes; in fact, I'm doing so right now! While it may not have been posted on Christmas, and it may not be from Apple, consider it a christmas present anyways. Here [macosxhints.com] it is. Merry Christmas! =)

  • Cadeau? Gift. Buon Natale...? Good NATO to you? (Score:4, Funny)

    by jerryasher ( 151512 ) on Wednesday December 25, 2002 @03:43PM (#4957799)
    So I couldn't this one out. And googling [google.com] didn't help much either.

    The babelfish [altavista.com] tells me that cadeau means gift in french. But it couldn't translate "Buon Natale a tutti voi Edo" into English. Translating from Italian, and the fish tells me it means: "Good NATO them to all you Edo", which evidently is a suggestion that we bring the Japanese into NATO. Which is interesting, as just yesterday I heard a report that with the North Korean situation and everything, the Japanese are once again considering their needs for their own defense.

    But what does that have to do with Ogg?
  • Do you think it is a slow news day when a story about some guy installing a codec in os x to get ogg working makes it to the front page of slashdot?

    and o yeah in Soviet Russia .ogg plays you
  • Is a nice simple mp3 to ogg converter for windows.

    Anyone got any ideas?

    • What I need is a nice simple mp3 to ogg converter for windows

      Converting from 1 compression format to another compression format is always a bad idea since usually they compress differently, and what happens is that you're taking the already degraded sound and degrading it further. That said, if you insist on converting your entire 20 GB MP3 library over to ogg, Audacity should work quite nicely (although you have to do that one file at a time).

    • Please don't do that!

      But if you must, here's a tool [downloadatoz.com]

      • Just to elaborate, .mp3 and .ogg are both lossy formats, so you'd lose quite a bit of sound quality. To see a graphical illustration, save an image as .jpg, then convert to .gif, then back to .jpg and note the differences between the two .jpgs.
    • I've seen this question raised a number of times. Why do you want to do this? As stated in other posts, you can't increase the quality by doing this (It's the "you can't get blood from a rock" principle). Is it because you prefer a certain player that doesn't support MP3?

      Personally I had the opposite problem. I enjoy using MPG321 as a jukebox, and had 90% mp3s in my collection, 10% ogg. Naturally I wanted a single interface to the whole collection, so I hacked mpg321 to play (and randomize) ogg as well as MP3. Finding (or hacking) a player that treats both formats equally gives you the advantages the conversion you propose without the quality loss.
  • Ok, I am confused, what is OGG? Silly question, I realize.
    • .ogg or better know as Ogg Vorbis is a format for media files. Think of a .ogg as an mp3 but half the file size, better sound quality, and the format can't be copy written. Everyone wins!
      • Brilliant! Is there a p2p prog that is made for sharing OGG, or what is a good way to begin finding them? Thanks for the help! (Doesnt something like this mess up plans of Pallidum, and other various ways of ensuring copyright compliance?)
        • Is there a p2p prog that is made for sharing OGG

          Most programs can find .ogg files, but WinMX [winmx.com] now has a specific search for .ogg files.

          There aren't nearly as many as there are .mp3 files, but they're starting to catch on.

          Doesnt something like this mess up plans of Pallidum

          Nope, not at all.

    • Re:What? (Score:2, Informative)

      by cioxx ( 456323 )
      Ogg Vorbis is a new audio compression format. It is roughly comparable to other formats used to store and play digital music, such as MP3, VQF, AAC, and other digital audio formats. It is different from these other formats because it is completely free, open, and unpatented.

      Ogg Vorbis has been designed to completely replace all proprietary, patented audio formats. That means that you can encode all your music or audio content in Vorbis and never look back.

      click for more... [vorbis.com]
    • .ogg is the extension for ogg-vorbis media files. IIRC, this is set of standards for audio and video files.
      Right now, only the compressed audio files exist. .ogg music files offer slightly better quality than .mp3's and don't have the liscencing issues that the mp3 format has (the content may have liscence issues, but the format doesn't). The drawbacks of the music format is that it isn't widely supported and is more computationally expensive.
  • Is this real or not real? I am a windows user with a mac Ipod (I don't have the cash to trade up) and I want to be able to use .ogg so badly on my ipod. If this is infact true than I would bet that very soon there is going to be a firmware update for the Ipod supporting the .ogg format. This means 4000 songs in my pocket (on the 10gb model) which makes me a very happy panda.

    If this isn't true than may I sugest firebombing whomever posted this story?
  • Time to download "Rock and Roll Volume 2" to celebrate!

  • What Really Happened (Score:5, Informative)

    by nichrome ( 556185 ) on Wednesday December 25, 2002 @03:58PM (#4957840) Homepage
    There is no iTunes update that adds OGG support. This is why the original reporter things there is: 1. He installed an open source OGG component for QuickTime. iTunes uses QuickTime for playback. 2. He installed the iTunes 3.0.1 update, which keeps reappearing in the Software Update panel on non-U.S. localizations. 3. He thought the new (=old) iTunes update added OGG support when it was actually the QT component that did it; and the iTunes update didn't actually do anything, since it is an old update that the update server is pushing as a new one.
  • Though it was a week before I installed Linux on my iBook.

    Unlike winshit however, OS X and 9 still have places on my hard disk. For Warcraft 3 and Quake 3 respectively.

  • Merry Christmas (Score:5, Insightful)

    by iomud ( 241310 ) on Wednesday December 25, 2002 @04:11PM (#4957877) Homepage Journal
    Lets all thank timothy for posting something he thought was cool but had no earthly idea if it was true or not. Come on, not even a url? At least correct the headline or something. Weaksauce.

  • one potential upside of this non-story (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mattbland ( 260913 ) on Wednesday December 25, 2002 @04:11PM (#4957878)
    is that someone at apple might just read this and see that there is a demand for ogg support and release an update.

    if you want ogg support for the ipod say so here, why you want it, if you'd be prepared to pay for it and what advantages it could give to apple (such as royalty free codecs, etc.)

    apple are currently touting an mpeg based quicktime to the world and dog, for which they need to pay a royalty per copy. so stand up and be counted. if you really want it, should it from the rooftops (or alternatively, type it on your keyboard and click on submit).

    • someone at apple might just read this and see that there is a demand for ogg support and release an update

      Dude, if Apple were making their decisions based on Slashdot articles, we'd all be running OS X for free on PC's bought from Wal-Mart. With Natalie Portman. In Soviet Russia. Profit!

      Seriously, from Apple's perspective, demand for Ogg is so close to zero as to be irrelevant. Apple is pushing MP3 today, with iTunes and iPod, and AAC [apple.com] tomorrow. And if the rumors are to be believed, Apple has some really interesting things in store for on-line music delivery in the AAC format.
      • Also, if Apple based their decisions on what people really wanted, we'd have had OS X on x86 a long time ago. *sigh*

        I'd _love_ OS X for AMD's Hammer platform, but I'm not gonna hold my breath, even though I look devastating in blue. :)

        The timing is unfortunate for Apple - no way in hell could they get their developer base to switch to a new hardware platform when most still haven't switched to OS X! :( Maybe someday...
        • Also, if Apple based their decisions on what people really wanted, we'd have had OS X on x86 a long time ago.

          Do you want Apple to continuing to innovate and improve OS X, or do you want them to do out of business?

          I'll go out on a limb here and say that unless a NeXT- or Be-like catastrophe overcomes them, Apple will never release an operating system for generic PC-style computers. If they do, it's all over but the shouting, and there won't even be much shouting.
          • I didn't say "for generic PC-style computers", I said "OS X on x86", which is different. They can go the Apple-hardware-only route with x86 if they wanted to. They'd have to, since they're a hardware company.
            • You also said "what people really want." I don't think anybody wants Apple to build Macs with Intel processors in 'em. They either want Apple to build Macs with binary-compatible Power4 processors in 'em (kind of happening soon), or they want Apple to release OS X for generic hardware (will never happen, probably).

              Moving the Mac to an Intel CPU would be a bad thing for everybody. Bad for ISV's because they'd have to port, or at least rebuild and re-optimize, their apps, and bad for users because they'd be waiting on the ISV's.

  • quick way for slashdot fame.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Wednesday December 25, 2002 @04:12PM (#4957883) Homepage Journal
    1. open up submit story.

    2. mention macs, mentioning that you're a new convert is a good way of doing this.

    3. mention ogg.

    4. mention 'new update', don't bother to mention WHERE you did get this 'update' or what you were smoking.

    5. PRO.. err. dunno, slash fame. put some pron on your journal, maybe somebody reads it.

    slashdot xmas math: ogg + mac + update - sense = INTRESTING.
    • And you call this fame? I mean, even a nobel wouldn't clean this mess ;-)

      About point 4... the updater is a core component of the osx desktop
      • ah well, but the ogg support didn't really come from apple with the update.

        what the orig. poster did was install 3rd party support for it, then press yes to the update. and then posting to slashdot that HEY I GOT OGG SUPPORT WITH UPDATE FROM APPLE.

        kinda like i would install a turbocharger on my car, take it for tire change, and then start saying i got turbocharger when i took my car to have it's tires changed.

        just a coincidence, most of really stupid irc users are from italy too. ciao tutti can i have xbox emulator PLSSSS PLSS CIAO TUTTI BUIVENNE

    • Re:quick way for slashdot fame.. (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      4. mention 'new update', don't bother to mention WHERE you did get this 'update' or what you were smoking.

      IN OSX, software updates find YOU.

      No, really, they do. The little software update service pops up and asks you if you want to install the update.

      (psst... if you don't know anything about OSX, maybe you shouldn't be posting here... just a thought)
      • ah, well, but it was mentioned on other replys that the ogg support didn't actually come from apple, hinting at a 3rd party plugin. i don't think itunes finds 3rd party plugins from shady corners of the cyber world any more than media player automatically finds the newest 3rd party codecs.

        btw. create an account, it's not that hard, and you would know if i replied.
    • 6. ???

      7. Profit!

  • Silly Penguin... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Migelikor1 ( 308578 ) on Wednesday December 25, 2002 @04:20PM (#4957916) Homepage
    This article is a bit mistaken. The most recent software update offered by Apple is the the OS X 10.2.3 Update on 2002-12-19. This is information directly from the Apple website.

    What the poster discovered is that iTunes uses quicktime to decode MP3s. That's no secret. iTunes can actually play back anything that quicktime can read, so .mpg, .mov, .wav, even .avi and .ogg files with the proper codec will play back in iTunes if they are added to a playlist. I have a couple movie trailers thrown into my playlist...they play back just like audio only tracks. This post is the case of someone feeling clever for discovering a feature in his software.

    What would be news is if the iPod's more hardware based decoding gained support for more formats. That is the one that Apple has announced no development for.
  • Although it sounds like this acticle as actually bunk, if iPod supported ogg, they'd pick me up as a customer pretty damn fast.

    • What benefit would using ogg instead of mp3 get you? I suppose that you rip your cd's in that format (downloads are still mostly mp3, aren't they). Are the file-sizes smaller? Does it sound better? Is the encoding faster?

      I know that mp3 is not frei*, but you probably will still be able encode and decode them in years to come. I don't know what ogg has to offer over mp3 that would justify supporting two, basically interchangeable formats, on one player. I know that the ipod does wav and aiff, but those have been around and popular for a long time.

      *frei=german for free as in speech, the opposite of being locked up. My suggestion for expressing the free as in speech concept in one single word. Merry Christmas.

  • Is it just me? I seem to have observed several instances of "science via analogy" lately on various apple-friendly weblogs. Although a relative newcomer (owning current Mac hardware for the past three years) to the apple community, I consider myself a member nonetheless. I am amazed at the number of times I have seen circular logic employed by other Mac people to make a point, which is so obviously contradicted by the facts.

    It's kinda like the witch scene in The Holy Grail...she weighs more than a duck...so therefore...............A WITCH! A WITCH! A WITCH! A WITCH!

  • Visualizations (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Burgr ( 75448 )
    This works, it's true. If the file isn't an mp3 or an AIFF or some other format that it recognizes itself, it falls through and relies on Quicktime to play the file. It's a bit of a hack.. There are of course a couple caveats. First, understand that you can't encode into OGG format from iTunes. Secondly, the sound data isn't analyzed and passed onto the visual plugins, so your visuals won't work in Quicktime mode. You probably don't care about that though...
  • ...and it sounds better than itunes to boot. ogg files work just fine in audion out of the box and visualizations actually work.

    couple that with the fact that you can create a playlist with folders and you've got yourself an itunes killer.

    www.panic.com/audion
  • Sorry folks as someone cleverly put it... I'm on crack (or should I say christmas food overdose ;-)
    I'm quite ashamed of myself, apparently Macs induce an automatic mental regression in whoever uses them. So, here's how it goes: this morning the updater boasts a new download for iTunes (3.0.1) and having done the 10.2.3 just yesterday I expected it to be a new one (it isn't, after two shots it's still there the darn thing... a bug) Then I proceeded to my heap of *.ogg files taken from my linux box hoping for some way to batch process them back to mp3 and the thing worked! Ha, bitten by the old temporal sequentialityvs. caulaity brain hack, I've made a glorious fool of myself before the /. hordes!
    Actually I did post an email begging to trash the post but nobody did anything about it (after all it's cristmas... peaople do have a family ;-)...

    Bye, bye... karma
  • Finding the Quicktime plug-in and using it for playback doesn't seem like much support for Ogg.

    Ogg support would mean out-of-the-box import and export support in Ogg format. And that is still missing from iTunes as far as I can tell.

  • How about no? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Emmettfish ( 573105 ) on Wednesday December 25, 2002 @08:46PM (#4958701) Homepage
    This story is incorrect as much as a first-person interpretation of events can be construed as 'incorrect.'

    Apple does not support the Ogg Vorbis format in iTunes. There is a QuickTime component available that will enable you to play Vorbis files in iTunes, but due to it being a QuickTime hack (as opposed to format support within the application itself), certain things do not work as expected, and OS X will not properly associate Ogg Vorbis files as 'iTunes-compatible.'

    So, there's the straight dope. I'm sorry if people are confused and irritated about this; We didn't submit this story.

    If you do need help playing Vorbis files, please drop in on #vorbis on irc.xiph.org; Our crack team of off-topic ranters and audio illuminati are standing by 24/7, even during this busy holiday season. :)

    As a side note, we're hacking like crazy this week! Want to help out? Stop by the IRC server and join #xiphtech for a quick run-down. Thanks!

    Emmett Plant [mailto]
    CEO, Xiph.org Foundation [xiph.org]

  • The reason being - as someone stated earlier - who knows about this thing really being patent free - sorta like the whole .gif thing with IBM/Unisys........im not saying its not - but who knows and apple probably isnt willing to do all the legal work just to find out that it could be held accountable for something so they just wasted money having their lawyers do the leg work not only that - it is probably not what apple wants - another buzz word for "normal people" not to understand. I do wonder where the ogg quicktime componet came from tho'

  • If you want Apple to support Ogg Vorbis, ask 'em! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dwheeler ( 321049 ) on Thursday December 26, 2002 @12:58AM (#4959382) Homepage Journal
    If you want Apple to support Ogg Vorbis, complaining about it on Slashdot seems mostly pointless. Instead, send a message to Apple!

    A quick look at their contact page at http://www.apple.com/contact [apple.com] suggests a few possibilities, such as their Apple.com feedback page [apple.com] or sending email to their Quicktime Feedback address, quicktime@apple.com [mailto]. Or both. Perhaps there's a better way, hopefully someone here will post it.

    Whining would be worthless. Polite letters asking Apple to please support Ogg Vorbis across their product line (especially product A, B, and C) would probably be read. If you currently use their product (and would pay for an upgrade that supported Ogg Vorbis), or have decided to NOT buy one of their products because it doesn't support Ogg Vorbis, say so - that will be more likely to get their attention.

    I've already let Apple know. If you want Apple to support Ogg Vorbis, you should too.

  • ogg quicktime link... (Score:2, Informative)

    by skia ( 100784 )
    Don't know if it's what the poster was originally talking about, but this [sourceforge.net] went past the pages of freshmeat's [freshmeat.net] new OS X section [freshmeat.net] mentioned on /. a few days ago.

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