It appears that the improvements in 7.3 discussed in bug 571 did not include Apple Lossless support.  I do note the comment to bug 571, to the effect that there are licensing issues with AAC.  AFAIK, a patent license is indeed required to distribute an AAC codec.  However, Apple Lossless is a very different animal.  The Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lossless) has this to say:

"The open source library libavcodec now incorporates both a decoder and an encoder for Apple Lossless format which means that media players based on that library, including VLC media player and MPlayer, are able to play Apple Lossless files."

So although it's also wrapped in an MP4 container just like AAC, there would appear to be no similar intellectual property issues for Apple Lossless.  Since there's already open source code out there to provide Apple Lossless support, adding Apple Lossless FWD/RWD would appear to be a Small Matter Of Programming. :-)  Many Mac users would thank you.