Lossless is good and an easy step, other than the additional storage and transmission bandwidth requirements. But lossless is not new. Even a decade ago iRiver was making digital players that would play flac.
But that doesn't help if the original files have already been compressed in the mixing process. From what I read, while this is being promoted as a "new" player with a better format, it really isn't.
What I think they hope this will do is allow them to release music as close to it sounds to the mastering process as possible, before tracks are compressed in subsequent steps.
This may be is an attempt to roll back the clock. They see there are a decent number of people willing to splurge on vinyl (which has physical limitations on how compressed the music can be) and they want to tap in on that market by trying to convince those consumers that they can have both the fidelity of vinyl and the convenience of digital. The player, while it sounds like a good player with good components, is simply a vehicle to promote the Pono music store.
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