Sorry Clyde but I don’t believe your statement is true…
The apps I’ve been mentioning thus far are “Switch” by NCH software and “Sample Manager” & “WaveEditor” by AudioFile Engineering. Neither company has any connection to Apple Inc that I’m aware of and in the case of AudioFile Engineering they are very small developer. So my point is valid and remains, these companies are offering AAC encoding for under $80.00 along with all of their other features.
I understand you may not need to encode AAC files. Heck, you may not even use a Mac or care about this common audio file format for your work at all. And while that is fine for you, Wavelab is promoted as being a pro audio application that is cross platform. And In this day and age, Mac support requires many professionals to make AAC files for their clients. For example the mobile video game industry and iOS developers (iPhone and iPad) prefer audio files in the AAC or CAF file format. And then of course the music industry has iTunes which is based on AAC as well. So, the Mac platform uses AAC files as a very common format and the fact that Steinberg is ignoring it is only to their (and ours as a user base) detriment. It just doesn’t make Steinberg look like its really committed to Wavelab as a cross platform application if it is ignoring such a fundamental file format.
And as for me, even if a feature isn’t one I need directly for my current work, I can understand it being good for the app and user base as a whole because I want the tools I use to be successful and profitable for the company that makes them so that I can keep getting updates and improvements. I want Wavelab to be a success on the Mac because I waited so long for it to come to the Mac. But if it isn’t going to support one of the most common audio file formats then my concern is Steinberg isn’t really committed to Wavelab on the Mac. Which means they are wasting both their time, energy and money as well as mine.
Finally, since Bias was mentioned in this thread too, lets go ahead and look at it. Peak is Wavelab’s most direct competition on the Mac platform and Peak has been the most widely used audio editor on the Mac for years. It has a similar feature set to WL7 including editing, batch processing, cd burning and while Wavelab and Peak cost the same $499.00, Peak includes AAC encoding. So my point is if Steinberg wants Wavelab to grow its market share (which I’m guessing is the whole reason it was coded for the Mac in the first place) then they need to include basic functionality like supporting common file formats.