I am not sure about Apple lossless, but what has been posted about FLAC is accurate, it is a truly lossless format.
However, major factors to consider:
First, the CD Drive you are ripping with and the mirror of the CD you are ripping from matter. In the PC world the program to use is EAC (exact audio copy) not sure if there is a MAC version of this, you can configure it to focus on quality copies and it logs the master volume level and how effective the rip was, IE what percentage of the bits were accurately captured. Some CD Drives cannot get to 100% so make sure you are using a quality drive to do your rips. Any scratches to the mirror, including small imperfections can affect the data transfer.
Second is media, what you are burning to is important, audio CDs buffer differently than data CDs and therefore what is good for one is not guaranteed to be good for the other.
Finally, to insure a true bit perfect copy you will need to make sure your ripped format preserves sample levels, DB adjustment levels and a CUE file to preserve gaps between tracks.
However, major factors to consider:
First, the CD Drive you are ripping with and the mirror of the CD you are ripping from matter. In the PC world the program to use is EAC (exact audio copy) not sure if there is a MAC version of this, you can configure it to focus on quality copies and it logs the master volume level and how effective the rip was, IE what percentage of the bits were accurately captured. Some CD Drives cannot get to 100% so make sure you are using a quality drive to do your rips. Any scratches to the mirror, including small imperfections can affect the data transfer.
Second is media, what you are burning to is important, audio CDs buffer differently than data CDs and therefore what is good for one is not guaranteed to be good for the other.
Finally, to insure a true bit perfect copy you will need to make sure your ripped format preserves sample levels, DB adjustment levels and a CUE file to preserve gaps between tracks.