I'd like to avoid having to convert it all the time (e.g. MacOS' music player doesn't seem to support that? But gonna have to check it). And the sizes are just enormous.
But yeah, as storage space & bandwidth are less and less an issue, if FLAC is fully supported across the board, the scale should be tipped. My worry comes from we not quite being there yet.
There’s a handy app called XLD (X Lossless Decoder) that will convert from FLAC to ALAC (and probably back) in a couple clicks if you need it. Lossless means I don’t really need to care whether my music is in an equivalent format, but I will admit it’s a bit silly.
Music.app not supporting FLAC is kinda weird, because the rest of the OS has been able to handle it for a while now. Quicklook (spacebar preview), Quicktime Player, etc all handle it fine, but Music doesn’t despite using the same decoding and playback facilities.
There are plenty of desktop music players on Mac that support flac, audacious, Cog, colibri, vox, Plexamp come to mind and there are others including commercial offerings. That is not the issue. People that wish to use the Apple official music ecosystem are SOL.
On the second point, ALAC works just as well as FLAC in that regard.
While I am personally not happy with any of the offerings on MacOS, alternatives don’t help those interested in wanting to use Apple Music with any lossless archive other than ALAC.
If you must support Apple Music there is ALAC. I’m not sure of any major use case that would support FLAC but not ALAC, ie consumer AVRs support both, but would be interested to know of counterexamples.
But yeah, as storage space & bandwidth are less and less an issue, if FLAC is fully supported across the board, the scale should be tipped. My worry comes from we not quite being there yet.