Exactlywhile it sounds simple, just up the playback to 192/24 lossless, the implications are staggering. File size, price of headphones ($500+ although some would say much more than that), battery life, more expensive DACs, not to mention what music distributors will think they can get away with charging, given the extortion already employed for lossy mp4s.
I'd be very interested in seeing how this is going to be achieved, given the state of Apple's technology. Takes the wind out of Pono's sails (sales?), when a separate player may in fact be a better ideaiPod rises from its grave, with high bit-rate lossless!
All too little too late in audio terms, for Apple. What could have been a gradual increase in quality, setting audio standards for other manufacturers to follow, has now turned into a marketing checklist imperative (screw Neil Young ✔︎).
For years Apple just let iPod die with NO innovation whatsoever. Stereo is last century. We should be listening to at least 5.1 surround, 192/24 uncompressed (turn of the century Blu-ray standard). And iPods could have had a slow increase in quality and reduction in compression, but Apple dropped iPod development in favour of bringing the same last-century capabilities to iPhone.
Same can be said for iPhone/iPod capacities. Given customers' propensity for photos and video, Apple still sells 8, 16, 32 and maybe 64GB devices, when we should have at least 128, 256 and 500GB models by now.
As for USB 3, don't hold your breath. If you've ever tried to transfer GBs of data to an iDevice, just go and get a beverage. iDevice flash is slower than mud. All part of Apple's let-them-eat-cake and pocket the profits policy.
It's the downside of letting designers and parts buyers run the company. Much better than having accountants run the company, but actual engineers don't get a word in. And Apple's media puppets parrot 'it's not about specs'. It IS if you want to have technological evolution. Otherwise it's a usability revolution, which is fine, but leaves a bad taste in the customer's mouths (will iPhone have an 8MP camera again this year??), and an engineering nightmare when a genius like Schiller (who took 2 years to realise customers wanted bigger screens) wants a marketing checklist point.
Apple is a very diverse company now, and running it like a laser focussed start-up is looking less and less relevant every year. There's no attention to lines of hardware, there's no attention to lines of software (iWork, Pro Apps, etc.), just increasingly annoyed customers, because Apple's single track approach is falling apart under the weight of its own diversity. iOS 7 shipped with the re-spring error for 64bit hardware, and it took nearly a year to fix it. It comes from having only one person, with a one track mind, in charge of everything. Genius mind, but incapable of parallel processing.
Quality just ain't what it used to be at Apple, and if Jobs had realised he needed an engineering management hand guiding this diversity, Cook may not have so many executives and staff to replace right now, because they would feel they had much bigger challenges to prosecute, not just the ulcers from not having enough bodies to do everything at once and bleeding everyone to death, just to get product out the door, years behind customer expectations.
All is not lost, though. Expectations are one thing, but reasonable quality mp3s are all most customers want and they don't even understand the improvement mp4s bring, much less Lossless, and have no concept of 192/24 (which is a professional standard and quite lost on iPhone).
I'm looking forward to how this ill-conceived marketing checklist point gets implemented. Don't get me wrong, I'm a musician and I'd love to have even 48/24 lossless in my 500GB iPhone, might get me interested in listening to music on it, but I don't see the wider public wanting the costs that come along with that.
There's a problem with buying parts years ahead of when you need them. Everything you make will be years behind the technological curve. Apple is clever and can to some extent compensate in software, but supply-chain Cook is no technological manager.
Pity Woz never took to management. We need parallel (engineering) processors in Apple's management mix.
Apple has many diverse products these days, all interdependent and necessary for everything to move forwardiWork is vital to the success of Mac, iPhone, iPad. Pro Apps are vital to Mac Pro and Apple's position as a leader in the Pro industry. It's one thing to have a plan, but unless every part of the whole moves forward, every year, Apple sabotages its success (not financial), but technological, which translates into Customer Satisfaction, Apple's most prized goal of all.
but until anyone can provide evidence that any human can hear the difference between 16/44.1 and HD audio, there's no point. The science is here: 
