Windows 10 to include native free FLAC playback support

This September saw the announcement of Microsoft’s next big version of Windows, Windows 10. It is set to be the biggest redesign of the OS to come along in years and it promises a whole lot more than the just design changes. This next iteration is set to be such a formidable step forward for Microsoft technology, that it actually manages to skip a version number and needless to say drove up a huge hype. What Microsoft 10 is set to accomplish is hopefully unify the OS experience as well as, to a large extent, functionality across different hardware platforms.

Now another exciting piece of inside news has been posted from Gabriel Aul from the Windows development team via his Twitter account. Apparently Windows 10 will feature native free support for FLAC audio playback, a much requested addition. The screenshot clearly shows Windows Media Player with a playlist full of lossless audio.

For those unfamiliar FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec and is an audio encoding format. The lossless part represent the fact that it does not compress the audio and thus delivers the full playback quality. There are other similar technologies, but FLAC remains the most widely spread and well documented non-proprietary alternative.

The RT shell, which was met with very conflicting responses, will no longer be isolated from the rest of the OSand applications developed for the new Metro UI, will be available under plain desktop environment. On the flip side, the same set of technologies will be used to create a mobile ecosystem of apps for various portable devices, also running Windows 10. This uniformity is definitely not a new concept, but it appears it might finally catch on, or at least has the potential to, with Microsoft’s vast and diverse user base.

Another key step for Microsoft was the early announcement of the new OS, which is very untypical for the Software giant. The release date of Windows 10 is not set yet and appears to still be it the not so near future, but this seems to all be part of a new and exciting user involvement program. On September 30, at the San Francisco announcement event, Microsoft also launched the Windows 10 insider program which is an exciting new way to gather user and most importantly developer insider feedback long before the final release date.

Source | Via