15 years late!
My 10 year old ipod still plays ALAC lossless files no probs. i guess if you really needed flac support this might be somewhat worthwhile but for 1200, i dont see it.
I already bit the bullet to be in the apple ecosystem so my entire music collection is in apple lossless...easy to convert from flac to alac these days...handles 24-bit no problem and plays nice wherever i want to listen (home server, car, phone, etc). Alac isn't perfect, but close enough and was the most practical for my setup/life