iPod Hi-Fi Introduced

[dicklacara]

Thanks for supporting us, we really do want to please you.
(P.S. Everything I said is on my behalf, not Apple's, although Apple wants to please you, too.)

Ah... but, we have to support you (Apple)... that's the way we get what we need (whether we want it or not).

Seriously, I have been interacting with Apple since 1978 & they do care & try to deliver the best (and succeed, mas o menos)!

Dick

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication!

 

[jrussell6]

yeah... dicklacara

hey, your definatly right about what you said, in terms of politics and logistics,,, and i'm definatly a dreamer,.i was thinking however that if the product worked as a rack system, with different levels of sophistication, (Swappable) where someone could order a center without some of my "wishlitst" items, say they didn't need a stereo or gameing ability,,,, or instead wanted a vacume based dac... and about the money,, i'm not suggesting it be cheap,, maybe an economy line starts at 1000,, but my g5 set me back 7 g, and my receiver cost me a little over 2 g's and i do know how easy it would be to just put some a/v in/out on the back of a g5. i've seen "hi-fi" stereo systems that cost more than the house they reside in. and there are a slew of products out there with the specific demographic of 45 year old rich males, i'm not 45,,, but i guess what i'm saying is that i'ld rather spend 5-10 grand on an amazing system instead of 5 grand on components,, or maybe you keep component design, but figure out how to effectively and seemlessly connect them,, i've been trying to get myself to justify buying klipsch reference's and there aragon stage 1+ 400 watt per channel amp,,, a total package in the 15 g price range,, and i can say this,, i'ld have those speakers for the rest of my life, even if at some point i laughed at them compared to what will be out,, i could use em in my bathroom, (i wonder if you could actually see sound pressure waves rumbleing though shower fog) i'm thinking italian job ("I"m gonna buy a stereo so loud it will blow the clothing off of women")

i will admit i have thought the boombox would be great for my model making studio. where constant foam dust prevents me from useing my mdr-sa3000 phones

and i'm going to share something amazing,, if you have a razr phone, and a black ipod nano,,, and glue the back of the nano to the battery door on the razr,, and bondo the edges, paint the edges,, you have a freekin sweet nanorazr,,, it might work even better with a slvr l7 but i haven't gotten my hands on one yet.


oh, and dfararaa if the radio tuner uses the dock bay on your ipod,, and the boombox does too,, how to use the radio with the boombox.

 

[Azmordean]

To all the people saying the sound quality sucks, well, some preliminary reviews/first looks from places like cnet suggest that the sound quality is very good. I think I'd buy this thing if I had an iPod.

Another use I see for it is, since it has an audio in jack, a sort of portable computer speaker setup. Obviously, normally when I travel headphones are fine, but if I'm going to my mom's for a week or two or something, it would be nice to have a good quality external speaker setup i could throw in the car to use with my laptop .

 

[dicklacara]

To all the people saying the sound quality sucks, well, some preliminary reviews/first looks from places like cnet suggest that the sound quality is very good. I think I'd buy this thing if I had an iPod.

Another use I see for it is, since it has an audio in jack, a sort of portable computer speaker setup. Obviously, normally when I travel headphones are fine, but if I'm going to my mom's for a week or two or something, it would be nice to have a good quality external speaker setup i could throw in the car to use with my laptop .

Yeah!

You can plug it into a stereo, a computer (Mac mini), or even an AirPort Express (oh, yeah, an iPod, too).

So, this is a very good portable speaker system that can get audio input from damn near anything but cowfarts.

Dick

 

[dontmatter]

hmm. At first I was thinking I'd say that it's kinda silly to call this negative, as it's not a bad update, where they can sabatoge sales, but a new introduction, of a product that's got to be profitable. Product might not be great, but it's done no harm (don't imagine it was huge R&D) and it could do a good bit of good.

But now I think... this could be a really good move. I don't know how it sounds, but I'm betting... about like 350 bucks from someone else, or maybe 300 or 250. Which is to say-yeah, I know it's not going to sound like a 1000 dollar system, but then again, it doesn't cost a grand. And I know it's not as simple or portable as a $200 system, but... I bet it sounds better.

Which is all to say, they're in a nice relatively unoccupied middle ground. Given that more and more audio is digital these days, and more and more people have it, it makes a lot of sense to design something that works with that. Remote control, direct integration, charging... these things matter. Also, if your music is digital, you'd only notice the lossyness on high end speakers anyway.

And on the other side- it sounds better, and gives you a better musical experience, than the ipod speakers out there, which are designed more to treat the ipod as a convience or novelty device, than your main music source.

These days, the ipod is the main medium for music. This just might have hit the sweet spot in an ipod centric system.

 

[edgarj]

ipodiophiles

It's not like any audiophiles would ever use an iPod as a source.... especially for 128K material. Its totall for kids and kitchens. At the very least, they should have offered modular L/R speakers and some digital enhancement for $350. By far the worst Apple offering in many years,

 

[macidiot]

Yeah!

You can plug it into a stereo, a computer (Mac mini), or even an AirPort Express (oh, yeah, an iPod, too).

So, this is a very good portable speaker system that can get audio input from damn near anything but cowfarts.

Dick

So does it have speaker wire inputs? I didn't see them and can't find any reference to them. Cause you'd need those to hook up to a real stereo.

 

[Demon]

disappointing

forget apple!
99 USD iPod cases?
Mac Mini price increase?!?
boom box that does nothing else for 350 USD??!

they crazy i say... or perhaps it's us? the almighty credit card wielding consumers.

 

[Evangelion]

if this is at all true, and all of our assumptions are wrong... WOW!

i wonder what the stereophile people will say about it

So it sounds better than 20 year old B&O (and IMO, B&O has always been more focused on design than absolute sound-quality) and bunch of Boses (which are crap). I'm not convinced.

 

[janstett]

All Bose stuff is overpriced for what it is. None of it really falls into the catagory of 'real' hifi. B&O is closer, but if you put looks first, that's exactly what you get. I'm keeping my Naim set up, listening to CDs (remember those?), and loving music, real music. MP3, AAC and the rest are fine for the iPod, but real music is uncompressed and uncompromised.

Well if you're going to be a snob, CD's 44.1 kHz sampling rate doesn't adequately represent the full spectrum and worse the CDs are often compressed(in dynamic range)/equalized to sound "good". You should be listening to DVD-Audio and SACD -- up to 192 kHz, 24-bit sampling, and 6 channels. Too bad the formats are dying -- many blame the popularity of devices like the iPod and downloadable 128kbps iTunes songs.

 

[janstett]

Was Bill Gates involved in designing this stuff?

$100 for a leather ipod case LOLOLOL what was apple thinking, were all morons and will buy any piece of crap they throw at us.
I guess they must...

Maybe it's a reality check to make sure we're paying attention... If we just buy anything, then they don't have to work very hard.

Kind of like this line of questioning:

- Do you love your wife?
- Are you kind to animals?
- Are you a hard worker?
- Do you want to do the right thing?
- Do you like torturing puppies?

 

[justcook]

I don't get it... no audiophile would give this ugly box a second look. I have a great audio system already. Are college students gonna go for this, cuz I'm not sure who this will appeal to? Not me, apparently. Swing and miss.

 

[sishaw]

It's not like any audiophiles would ever use an iPod as a source....

Not true. You can get extremely good sound from an iPod by encoding CDs at high bitrates or lossless. I have read a very favorable review of an iPod using 320 kbps encoding in Stereophile, and they tend to be VERY critical. I don't know if an audiophile would use an iPod per se for a home source, but a number of high-end audiophile systems are starting to use hard-drive based sources. McIntosh has one, for example, the MS300.

The point being, Steve Jobs made the point about using the hi-fi to play encoded CDs, which can definitely be encoded at audiophile rates.

I truly think that the hundreds of people here who claim that the hi-fi doesn't sound good without having heard it, are, to be charitable, not using the logical part of their brain, because you can't judge sound without critical listening.

The announcement wasn't what they wanted, so they're throwing a hissy fit. Must have been a handful at their birthdays, too.

 

[theluckyone]

Engadget Podcast

OK guys, I listened to Steve's presentation on Engadget.
1) "We'd like to make some medium-level announcements today"

2) He said the Hi-Fi would complete with some of the more compact systems (like the Bose wave radio) -- couldn't be that hard to make it sound better for less.

3) This is what has me excited: It has the often overlooked components of audiophile quality, i.e. most people think louder is better and that's it. He's saying that even though this is a small system, they focused on things like soundstage, separating the instruments and limiting distortion. Sounds great! Like decent computer speakers on steroids. And if they've done a good job, putting it in a single unit gets rid of the speaker placement issue. You could tell he was in love with his new product...he's been testing them in his house for months....he did say he would replace his home stereo, but I'm 99% sure he was PLAYING.

4) On the case -- he did say it was very high-end for them, but that you can spend $1k on a case if you really wanted to. I'm not rushing out to get them, but I know a lot of fashionistas who will... If you want iPod case sticker shock, look up Louis Vuitton..

 

[Counter]

Worst looking Apple product ever made.

 

[yac_moda]

OK guys, I listened to Steve's presentation on Engadget.
1) "We'd like to make some medium-level announcements today"

2) He said the Hi-Fi would complete with some of the more compact systems (like the Bose wave radio) -- couldn't be that hard to make it sound better for less.

3) This is what has me excited: It has the often overlooked components of audiophile quality, i.e. most people think louder is better and that's it. He's saying that even though this is a small system, they focused on things like soundstage, separating the instruments and limiting distortion. Sounds great! Like decent computer speakers on steroids. And if they've done a good job, putting it in a single unit gets rid of the speaker placement issue. You could tell he was in love with his new product...he's been testing them in his house for months....he did say he would replace his home stereo, but I'm 99% sure he was PLAYING.

4) On the case -- he did say it was very high-end for them, but that you can spend $1k on a case if you really wanted to. I'm not rushing out to get them, but I know a lot of fashionistas who will... If you want iPod case sticker shock, look up Louis Vuitton..

If you go to the Apple store page for the iFi placement instructions are right there !!!

Let me explain to you how CEOs talk ...

If a CEO bring something UP like its a side issue, he is lying about it and the opposite is the truth.

I think they shipped the iFi now as it was because iBoom is about to ship and it costs $90 and other product have just become available that are less then half the cost and have better sound, so they just gave up and chose to ship it anyway.

AND the requirement to use it lock people on iTMS makes it totally suck in general and only a good product in a vacuum that's the way it goes.

I also think Jobs is now HANDS OFF Apple as far as micromanaging the design because he WAY too busy with Disney so Ivan is probably in-charge and SCREWING UP !!!

Jobs of course is the KING of micromanagement and no it is not AlWAYS BAD, not if you know how to do it.

Most people 99.9% do the wrong thing when they finally get that BIG promotion, they become very timid in with their work, they took risks to the place where they could get that big job and then they suddenly play it safe and their work starts to SUCK BIG TIME !

This seems to be what's going on, of course the iMinis look really good but there are MANY people involved with that design.


That is what makes Jobs different from everyone else, when he was going to colege he TOTALLY ran out of money for quite a while, that made him FEARLESS !!!

And as a manager would get people to produce good work by pitting two teams against each other in a competition, if you don't do this engineers will just play it save and lie, lie, lie to get by !!!

It is very easy to setup teams and small groups to create internal competition, but most managers are sooooo dumb they don't even know how to do this, most managers only understand how to kiss booty and they actually think that gets things done as well -- it doesn't get anything done its just lazy and stupid !!!

 

[yac_moda]

That remote plugs into the iPod dock connector, so it really won't integrate with the iPod Breadbox very well.

So wouldn't you be able to remove the iPod and plug in the remote to the iFi, viola Radio !!!

 

[iMeowbot]

So wouldn't you be able to remove the iPod and plug in the remote to the iFi, viola Radio !!!

No, because both the radio remote and Hi Fi have male dock connectors. It simply won't fit. Another problem is that the iPod is needed to supply a user interface for both the remote and (optionally) the Hi Fi.

 

[yac_moda]

No, because both the radio remote and Hi Fi have male dock connectors. It simply won't fit. Another problem is that the iPod is needed to supply a user interface for both the remote and (optionally) the Hi Fi.

Then the radio DOES NOT connect to iPod though the dock and you can still plug in the iPod with radio, make up your mind !!!

 

[dcv]

I had a play with the iPod hifi earlier on this evening and I was quite impressed by the sound quality. I've got the Altec Lansing iM7 so I went along to the Apple Store to see how the new one compares.

Don't want to repeat myself, so if anyone's interested I posted some comments in the other iPod hifi thread... here. Overall I'd say the new hifi beats the other offerings for sound, but the design is crap!

 

[iMeowbot]

Then the radio DOES NOT connect to iPod though the dock and you can still plug in the iPod with radio, make up your mind !!!

I re-read what I wrote, and I don't see any problem with it. Let's try again:

- The remote can plug into an iPod OR:
- The Hi Fi can plug into an iPod.

BUT:

- The remote cannot plug into the Hi Fi.

That's because the bottom of the iPod has a hole in it, and the other two devices have metal protrusions. The metal protrusion goes into the iPod hole. A metal protrusion won't fit into another metal protrusion.

Because there is only one hole in the bottom of the iPod, only one accessory at a time can be plugged into it. Dock, remote, Hi Fi: pick one.


Finally: there is a line-in port on the back of the Hi Fi. You could always pick up a Walkman radio and plug that into the back if you really want this feature.

 

[Bitman]

One iPod HiFi owners review

One iPod HiFi owners review:

http://www.yourmaclife.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1282

 

[bloomfeld]

Great!!
I look forward to your report.
It would have been sweet with some extras... wifi and FM,
but Im still conserdering buying one....

Today the HiFi arrived. Unpackaging was, as always, fun. There is already coverage about that part available in the net, so I will skip to my personal sound experience. I have to confess that I'm pro-biased, since I have looked for a small ipod sound solution some time, without considering toyish minispeakers or bose's "ipod only" solution.

Compared to harman kardon's sound sticks, which I were listening to before, apple's boombox focuses on the middles, while the sound sticks do accentuate the trebles. To this I have to accomodate, especially when listening to vocal music. Its warm "all-in-one-sound" slightly reminds me of an antique tubular radio (roehrenradio), even if that may sound somewhat euphemistic to the audiophile crowd. There is no receptable hiss when listening to quiet music, which I experienced listening to my 299 euro 5.1 logitech speakers.

I'm pleased with its relative heaviness and unobtrusive design, giving it some "style credibility", not feeling cheap. It definetly will not replace my stereo, but as a speaker for small rooms it produces comfortable sound, looks good (ymmv) and cleans up my sidedesk. And it has a line in for other input sources, making it a future companion for streaming music or cranking up the dvd player.

 

[Evan_11]

One iPod HiFi owners review:

http://www.yourmaclife.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1282

Here comes the tide of people who just the other day called the Hi-Fi a POS will start claiming how beautiful and awesome it is.

But that picture from the review and the wife's comment about liking it shows exactly what the Hi-Fi is about. It won't replace an audiophile's stereo like Steve said (and we all know he was kidding, right?) but those who previously were buying the Bose SoundDock will seriously consider the Hi-Fi. I own a IM7 which I think is a better value at $199 but would rather have the more understated Hi-Fi. It also probably sounds better because of the single drivers mated with a single subwoofer.

 

[revjay]

"...When the Going Gets Rough, Just Shop With Somebody Tough..." - BNL

...they crazy i say... or perhaps it's us? the almighty credit card wielding consumers.

Looking at your signature, you seem to be doing a good job of that all on your own.

"It's Never Enough...Until You've Got All Your Stuff..." - BNL