When will Apple Lossless Music be Available from the iTunes Store?

Question

I have recently rediscovered the wonders of uncompressed music. I bought my first CD player in 1984. The best vinyl records were better then than the best CDs, and still are, but the average CD was a lot better than the average vinyl. The CD average has probably gotten better since then. At some point, I imported the CDs I listened to into my Mac, initially as 128K AAC, and later as 256K AAC, and thought I was still getting good quality. A couple of months ago, I bought an external USB DAC (NuForce Icon µDAC) and some better-than-the-usual-computer-speakers powered monitors (M-Audio AV40). And I reimported my CDs in Apple Lossless format. Oh! Sweet new music!
The difference between 256K AAC and Apple Lossless is subtle, but through good equipment it's still very noticeable. I have lots of music I bought from the iTunes Store over the years, in 128K and 256K AAC. Some of those I've replaced with CD rips, but I don't have all those CDs. I sure would like to be able to upgrade to Apple Lossless through the iTunes Store. I'd be happy to pay the HDTracks.com prices of $12/album or $1.49/track for the privilege, but it isn't available. The best Apple will sell me is 256K AAC. So now I'm getting all my new music from HDTracks.com, who have wonderful recordings, but a small selection, or as CDs from Amazon.
Apple, when are you going to step up to the plate for the audiophiles in your market and sell us Apple Lossless (or FLAC) music? I realize that we aren't nearly as big a market as the teeny-bopper iPod users out there, but we ARE a market, and I for one would happily return to the iTunes Store if I could buy full-resolution music there.

Answer 1

Wonderful question, would be nice if Apple was not so hush-hush about new developments, but alas, that is what they must do to stay on top of the game. I cannot wait for the day when I will open iTunes and see the phrase, "All Downloads now in Full CD Quality Apple Lossless!" Woohoo, what a momentus occasion that will be. Fortunately, we can hope that they will allow upgrades to Apple Lossless just like they did for iTunes Plus (and why wouldn't they, it's a money maker).
I too have only been purchasing cds mostly from amazon to rip in Lossless, and just came across an album of interest to me that is unfortunately only available through iTunes and Amazon. The hard copies of Steve Jablonsky's Transformers Score are only found in highly marked-up quantities on amazon and ebay, so i am left to bite the bullet and purchase the adequate 256kbps AAC version from the iTunes store. At least I don't have to buy Amazon's MP3 coded versions(typed with a smirk).
With the capacity of most iPods ranging between 8 and 160 GBs, I think it is safe to assume that storage space is not really an issue anymore. Let us cross our fingers for Apple Lossless soon(or use those fingers to raise typed awareness).