eac vs itunes ripping

Sounds like belt-and-suspenders to me. Apple Lossless is exactly that--lossless. I think John Atkinson at Stereophile confirmed that a while back (and I bet he used EAC to do it).

EAC's mythic status can easily be explained. Some years ago, it really was just about the only way to make sure you were getting a bit-perfect copy. So naturally it was widely touted at the time as "the best."

But EAC wasn't doing anything impossible or, for that matter, proprietary. And pretty soon, bit-perfect copies became run-of-the-mill. But thanks to the Wayback Machine, there are still all those old posts on the Web declaring EAC to be "the best," and impressionable consumers believe them.