I disagree on this. Sure, partly it is marketing (trust me, i’m totally no apple fanboy, i don’t even have an ipod or any other product from apple) but the fact that you can upload in 2496 for encoding really makes a difference.
Have you ever tried converting to mp3 with a 2496 and a 1644 file to mp3? Have you listened to the difference and did you also do a null test? you should…
Also the fact that ISP’s/clipping not shown in the wav/aif master will cause clipping after the conversion and there is no standard guideline saying, if you peak at -0.5db you wont have clipping after the conversion. This totally depends on the music, sometimes -0.1 will be enough while with some other music -1.0 will still clip after conversion. Clipping in lossy audio will give really bad artifacts and so you simply want to know what is going on, hence the apple tools, or I hope, and if i understand PG’s response, WL will have the option soon and that would be GREAT!