Convert flac or Apple Lossless (ALAC) or other solution for LMS -> AppleUniverse?

Hi

I have my lossless music as flac but I am also a member of the Apple Universe (iPhone, iPad, Macbook Pro) and I am facing the usua problem: to get my music into iTunes, I need to convert it from flac to an apple format.

I could convert my flac to ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec), but I do not particularly like the idea.

As others are surely facing the same situation situation - my Questions:

How did others solve it? Did you convert all flac to ALAC?
Maintain an copy of the flac files in an apple compatible lossy format (AAC, mp3, ?) as for an iPhone / iPod, lossless is not really required?
Other ideas?

I now Vortexnox has a script to maintain an mp3 copy of the music library - but I do not use Vortexbox and would prefer AAC.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Rainer