Originally Posted by robb
They are closing apple stores left and right. I do imagine there is only one, but do check apple.com.
closing??? they are opening more and more stores all the time. unfortunately, that has taken a toll on the non-apple owned stores that sell apple products, and some of those have closed.
As for ripping new songs, the default setting is to rip to an apple-specific format, but that is easily set to rip to mp3.
aac (.m4a) is not an apple specific format - its part of the mpeg 4 standard. it is not as prevalent as mp3 because it is relatively new. many non-apple devices play aac, including some cellphones for ringtones.
music from the itunes music store are standard aac files with fairplay drm (.m4p). apple (foolishly) won't license it so that it can become the defacto drm standard. for protected aac, one needs itunes (mac or pc) or an ipod.