Yes of course. people won't buy it if they dont want it. how about responding to the main idea of my post which is that, while obviously no one is being forced to buy anything, apple has been skimping on tech and maxing out on price and letting their industrial design do most of the talking these days...
they are specifically making a point of getting as much money as possible for things that are just silly. remember when an ipod used to come with a dock and all included? now they charge you $40 to buy a separate charger and about as much for a dock? im sorry but that is a plain rip off! and it just feels arrogant. again, obviously no one holds a gun to your head to buy it but it just makes a point of trying to take advantage of people. you are entitled to your opinion, i just see Apple going down a line I dont particularly think is respectful of its fans.
What most Mac people do is play their music through their COMPUTER to attached speakers or via AirportExpress to attached speakers. And there are lots of good less-expensive speakers out there for this.
Yeah, sure some folks use their iPods for home music, but iPods are portable and people buying speakers for them likely want something portable. Heck, I have a set of iPod speakers - but they are small and for on-the-road use.
Not most Mac people ... some Mac people. Some Mac people and some iPod users like to have a speaker dock for their iPods. Apple and their retalers sold TONS of these over the holidays, so there is more than a "niche" markert for them. Portability? Who wants to tote speakers around with them? Not me ... I bought a RoadTrip and I have some headphones ... what other kinda portability do you want?
Quote:
Originally posted by umijin
No-no-no - you miss the point. Apple has to do something DIFFERENT or BETTER in order to make this product worthwhile. They haven't. This thing doesn't really have anything very "Apple" about it - other than the price.
And given the bitrate of most digital music, even the best speaker won't do jack for your iPod Audio output.
Why? Why does Apple HAVE to put a bunch of extra crap like LCDs, antenna, tuners, etc on the Hi-Fi? And because you want it isn't a reason. Look at who they're competing against in high end home docking stations ... Bose, Kensington, JBL ... like it or not, Apple is in the game of making money. All the extra stuff you want adds to BOM, which cuts into their bottom line if they want to keep it at a reasonable price for the consumer.
Again, the Nano tubes were Apple's foray into an area with strong 3rd party solutions ... you could say the same for those, but who the hell cares? Its Apple making the money instead of iSkin.
Saying Apple has to revolutionize the industry with each new product they introduce or its not worthwhile is dumb. It's like you're saying, "Well, Apple didn't make it better than everything else on the market so it's crap and APPLE IS DOOMED!!!"
Hi-Fi is not relative. It stands for high-fidelity. Once you define high-fidelity, something is either Hi-Fi or it is not.
Hi-Fi is, however, subjective (subtly different to "relative"). I might define Hi-Fi differently to how you define it, but to me it is (amongst other things) at least 50 Hz - 20 KHz with speakers that are more than one metre apart (to give a decent stereo image).
No, it is relative.
Take 4 audio systems, one costing $1,000, one costing $10,000, one costing $100,000, and one costing $1,000,000.
Systems at all of those levels exist.
Which one is the hi fidelity one?
When some people listen to chamber music, a hi fidelity system needs little bass. Bass is one of the highest cost items in speaker systems. But if you don't need it, your system can cost far less.
What if you listen in a large room? You need a system that isn't higher fidelity, but that needs to play at a higher volume. That can cost a great deal.
What about a personal system. It doesn't have to fill the room. That can cost much less.
There are hi fidelity manufacturers that specialize in all of these systems. They are all hi-fi.
Many mini monitors fail at having useful bass. But they are definitely hi-fi. They are expected to be used with a separate sub and amplifier.
Does having two subs classify as being hi-fi, but having just one, with the channels mixed, not?
I went to a meeting last month. The fellow has a good system. Special modified Gallo's. But he also has 7 watt per channel dual mono single ended tube amps. He has also covered all the walls of the room with seemingly random pieces of maple. When you sit in "the chair", small ensemble music sounds really very good. But a massed orchestral work sounds totally congested. Is his system hi-fi? You bet it is! It works for what he listens to.
20KHz is a joke in the industry. Little is recorded with much at that frequency. Almost no adult hears much of it anyway, and few speakers can reproduce a true clean 20KHz tone. It certainly isn't the mark of hi-fi.
The quality of what is being reproduced is. A good quality system reproducing 53 to 16KHz is better than a poorer quality system straining to produce a wider range, poorly.
Don't be so condescending. You've just forgotten about the DAC, which is just as important. Where's the DAC in this thing? the iPod or the box?
And Apple lossless.. Wouldn't that defeat the point of this thing? you put a 1 gig nano on there, with lossless that's less than 2 albums
.. or is it assumed that we all have 60 gig ipods now?
That's not condescending. It was a piece of information correcting a lack of knowledge. Or what seemed to be a lack.
Many people find 128K bit encoding to be fine even with good systems. Or, they can encode at higher rates without going lossless. Won't work for iTunes songs, of course.
The DAC is in the iPod.
If you choose to use this with a 1Gig iPod, that's your choice. You aren't being forced to.
It also works with any other stereo input; Cd, FM, satellite, etc. Even an Lp from your pre-amp out.
I can design a Power Amp for about £20, and another that costs £400 (parts costs). Most people wouldn't be able to hear the difference between them, but the £400 one would have significantly higher/better measurable performance.
Again, you're missing the point. The engineering is not the cost of the product. It's the cost of the engineering.
Two guys design that $400 amp. One designs a good amp, one designs a bad amp.
The cost of the engineering is the same. The results are not.
Again, it's hard to see why this is being taken to mean what it doesn't.
The RESULTS of bad engineering are well known.
The costs of the engineering are what my friend (Bob Carver) was talking about, not the costs of the errors made by bad engineers.
Good engineering might have resulted in less loss for the city. but those engineers might have charged the same amount as those who, unfortunately, did do the engineering.
Why does Apple always see the need to overprice things by $50-100? i like the concept but they really could have pushed the tech and at least offered a model with integrated airport . so now, if you want to put one in every room, you have to spend $350 plus another $130 on the airport?
and the sleek look is nice but seems to lose out on the simple functionality they really should have worked in...like some kind of LED readout showing volume level. an lcd screen would have been nice but i guess not imperitive. whereas in the past apple made you feel like you were getting the latest in innovation at a modest increase in price over the competition, now i just start feeling like the are gouging people because they can...and for products that give up certain functionality that really should be there. i love apple as much as the next but does anyone agree?
How do you know it's overpriced? More expensive than cheaper models doesn't make it overpriced. It makes it more expensive than those that are cheaper.
But it's also less expensive than other units. Especially those from Europe. One German manufacturer makes a small model for the iPods that costs around $3,800.
Sorry for all of these posts in a row, but I was away for most of the evening. These threads today are expanding quickly, and I like to read every post.
Yes of course. people won't buy it if they dont want it. how about responding to the main idea of my post which is that, while obviously no one is being forced to buy anything, apple has been skimping on tech and maxing out on price and letting their industrial design do most of the talking these days...
they are specifically making a point of getting as much money as possible for things that are just silly. remember when an ipod used to come with a dock and all included? now they charge you $40 to buy a separate charger and about as much for a dock? im sorry but that is a plain rip off! and it just feels arrogant. again, obviously no one holds a gun to your head to buy it but it just makes a point of trying to take advantage of people. you are entitled to your opinion, i just see Apple going down a line I dont particularly think is respectful of its fans.
This is a pretty simple design, from the industrial standpoint. What is not so simple is the design, that is, parts and manufacturing, that went into making it work well.
The iPod is a CE product.
Apple now is mindful about the competition. Price has become a selling point. Remember that Creative, last June, I think it was, blamed Apple's lower selling prices as being responsible for its 250 million dollar loss?
If most people don't need an accessory, why charge everyone for it? Then Apple would add $40 to the selling price, and you would complain that it's too expensive. Well, thes parts cost money. They are never given away for free. It just seems that way because they may come with the product.
It's like an slr body. It doesn't come with the lens. If it did, it would cost more. What if many people didn't want the lens that was bundled with it?
It's cheaper for Apple not to have to have two SKU's, one with, and one without, because they can never be certain how many people want either.
As for computers, a couple of years ago, when people were complaining about prices, I sufggested that Apple could go to standard PC cases, and cut a good chunk from the price.
That didn't go over too well!
If we want custom cases, custom mobo's to go in those cases, then we have to expect to pay for it.
Surely I'm missing something. Is there some simple way to stream everything on my iMac to my hifi when they're on separate floors?
I would recommend a Roku soundbridge over a squeezebox. Here's why:
Uses iTunes sharing on the Mac, not proprietary software.
Can decode AAC natively, the squeezebox software would transcode AAC to mp3 (ick) before streaming it.
It's cheaper.
The one drawback is that it only supports 802.11b with WEP. If that concerns you, the best thing to do is get an 802.11g to ethernet bridge. These are getting very inexpensive now, so you could still get a soundbridge + 802.11g bridge for less than a sqeezebox.
As far as Fairplay goes, the only way to stream that is by using AirTunes. But as you say, AirTunes has no display or remote control. It also streams everything in AppleLossless, using up unnecessary banwidth if your music is in AAC or mp3.
Assuming that you have iTunes 6 installed, you could revert to a previous version, create a new account, and use JHymn to remove the DRM. I have two partitions on my Mac, one with OS X + iTunes 6, and another smaller one with OS X + iTunes 4 (this wasn't done just so I could use JHymn, it's just a nice side-effect).
Now, I don't think that this is a bad product. It's just insulting to call it "Hi Fi".
This from a company who says that 128k is as good as CD...I think any audiophiles once emplyeed at apple have been replaced by 12 year old girls who dance for the shaddow ads
Is anyone else here frustrated that we have thousands of songs on our computers, but only limited ways to use them elsewhere? I don't want to buy an expensive new box to listen to my iPod (with its limited-cycle battery) when I already have a super iPod (my iMac) and a really nice, bazillion dollar boombox (my home theater system, with its Bose surround sound system, etc.). Why should I replicate what I've already got, and in an inferior form? (All due respect to the new boombox. I'm sure it sounds great.)
Step 1: BREATHE
Step 2: Buy a RCA->Minipin cable and an iPOD dock(the dock gives line level out, the jack on the iPod is headphone level.)
Step 3: connect to your sound system and enjoy.
Step 4 (opitonal) get a long run of cable with mini stereo connectors or a airtunes express or whatever they call them, and split the line that is going to your ipod and patch the iMac in, or use optical from Airtunes station.
Don't look at the specs. They mean *absolutely nothing*. They only way to really judge sound quality is to listen for yourself. All this talk of top end frequency response and whatever is really useless.
I'm sitting next to bookshelf speakers that have, oh, a 7" woofer maybe, and a nice tweeter. I'm sure the specs on it aren't great. But the things sound absolutely amazing--I've even used them in a recording studio, accompanied by a sub--and a pair retails for around $1500.
You don't judge a book by it's cover, or a horse by the size of it's turds, right?
A previous poster (props to whomever) noted that most iPod accessories are cheaper, Apple is at the same time avoiding competition with the iPod accessory ecosystem *and* moving into a probably higher-margin point in the accessories market. Smart move!
For my generation music is a social experience. We want to share our music. We want to take our music with us. We have different needs.
I have a decent stereo system that I have used with my iPod for a couple of years. I lug it around the house, bring it to bonfires, and take it to camp. I connect up my iPod, or those of my friends with a stereo input or a FM transmitter. It works fine. The big problem for me is, it's not wireless. I have to plug it into a wall, which means my music becomes less like a social experience and more like background noise.
For my demographic, the iPod Hi-Fi is a perfect product. I don't want CDs, I don't want a tuner, and I don't want a bulky multipart system with a mess of wires. The only improvement I would make to the iPod Hi-Fi would be intigrated AirTunes.
And let's remember, we haven't heard it yet. I have a history of being pleasently surprised by Apple products.
Spot On.
You old guys out there that want to leave this thing on a shelf across the room and complain you can't see it don't live like the target audience for this product - we don't have huge rooms to see across. We are also not so lazy.
Hi-Fi? My generation could care less how you define it. As long as it sounds as good as the iPod at 256kbs is capable of reproducing, PERFECT. I don't care how good it plays back CDs. I haven't bought a CD since 1999 and I finished converting the rest of mine to mp3 by 2000.
Those of you who complain that the iPod would fall out when you carry it are, IMHO, morons. The iPod goes in your pocket or you hand or your bag when you walk. We have been carrying the iPod around for a few years now and nobody complained that we didn't have a box with a carrying handle and docking station to keep it in...
The 80's are over. A long time ago. Walking around with this thing playing is not the idea. Taking it to social gatherings along with you iPod is the idea.
I wish I could afford am multi-room B&O HI-FI system, but even if I could, I couldn't bring it with me to the beach, to my friend's house, to the backyard, an certainly not to a party.
This is a great product. The fact that it has a name on the side of it that I know I can trust - APPLE! makes it a sure bet for my $$$
Oh, and although it would mean one less wire and adapter to have the AEX integrated, it would mean I have to spend more money on this thing. And it also means that Apple kills its business model. Sell the NEW and BASIC model to the early adopters and those who don't care. Rejuvenate the product line later on with AEX to convert the wait and see people and upsell existing owners who just resell the other one on eBay.
Hi-Fi? My generation could care less how you define it.
Couldn't care less.
This is a direct reference to one of my posts. I did explicitly say that I don't think this is a bad product, because I knew someone would come along and misinterpret what I was saying. Shame you missed it.
Quote:
Originally posted by lhvide
As long as it sounds as good as the iPod at 256kbs is capable of reproducing, PERFECT.
I agree. But I don't think that makes it HiFi. I'm just frustrated by Apple's ridiculous marketing Hyberbole. Did you know Steve Jobs said in his speech "I'm an audiophile, and I'm getting rid of my Hi Fi for one of these"? What a load of shit.
Comments
they are specifically making a point of getting as much money as possible for things that are just silly. remember when an ipod used to come with a dock and all included? now they charge you $40 to buy a separate charger and about as much for a dock? im sorry but that is a plain rip off! and it just feels arrogant. again, obviously no one holds a gun to your head to buy it but it just makes a point of trying to take advantage of people. you are entitled to your opinion, i just see Apple going down a line I dont particularly think is respectful of its fans.
Originally posted by umijin
What most Mac people do is play their music through their COMPUTER to attached speakers or via AirportExpress to attached speakers. And there are lots of good less-expensive speakers out there for this.
Yeah, sure some folks use their iPods for home music, but iPods are portable and people buying speakers for them likely want something portable. Heck, I have a set of iPod speakers - but they are small and for on-the-road use.
Not most Mac people ... some Mac people. Some Mac people and some iPod users like to have a speaker dock for their iPods. Apple and their retalers sold TONS of these over the holidays, so there is more than a "niche" markert for them. Portability? Who wants to tote speakers around with them? Not me ... I bought a RoadTrip and I have some headphones ... what other kinda portability do you want?
Originally posted by umijin
No-no-no - you miss the point. Apple has to do something DIFFERENT or BETTER in order to make this product worthwhile. They haven't. This thing doesn't really have anything very "Apple" about it - other than the price.
And given the bitrate of most digital music, even the best speaker won't do jack for your iPod Audio output.
Why? Why does Apple HAVE to put a bunch of extra crap like LCDs, antenna, tuners, etc on the Hi-Fi? And because you want it isn't a reason. Look at who they're competing against in high end home docking stations ... Bose, Kensington, JBL ... like it or not, Apple is in the game of making money. All the extra stuff you want adds to BOM, which cuts into their bottom line if they want to keep it at a reasonable price for the consumer.
Again, the Nano tubes were Apple's foray into an area with strong 3rd party solutions ... you could say the same for those, but who the hell cares? Its Apple making the money instead of iSkin.
Saying Apple has to revolutionize the industry with each new product they introduce or its not worthwhile is dumb. It's like you're saying, "Well, Apple didn't make it better than everything else on the market so it's crap and APPLE IS DOOMED!!!"
Originally posted by Mr. H
Hi-Fi is not relative. It stands for high-fidelity. Once you define high-fidelity, something is either Hi-Fi or it is not.
Hi-Fi is, however, subjective (subtly different to "relative"). I might define Hi-Fi differently to how you define it, but to me it is (amongst other things) at least 50 Hz - 20 KHz with speakers that are more than one metre apart (to give a decent stereo image).
No, it is relative.
Take 4 audio systems, one costing $1,000, one costing $10,000, one costing $100,000, and one costing $1,000,000.
Systems at all of those levels exist.
Which one is the hi fidelity one?
When some people listen to chamber music, a hi fidelity system needs little bass. Bass is one of the highest cost items in speaker systems. But if you don't need it, your system can cost far less.
What if you listen in a large room? You need a system that isn't higher fidelity, but that needs to play at a higher volume. That can cost a great deal.
What about a personal system. It doesn't have to fill the room. That can cost much less.
There are hi fidelity manufacturers that specialize in all of these systems. They are all hi-fi.
Many mini monitors fail at having useful bass. But they are definitely hi-fi. They are expected to be used with a separate sub and amplifier.
Does having two subs classify as being hi-fi, but having just one, with the channels mixed, not?
I went to a meeting last month. The fellow has a good system. Special modified Gallo's. But he also has 7 watt per channel dual mono single ended tube amps. He has also covered all the walls of the room with seemingly random pieces of maple. When you sit in "the chair", small ensemble music sounds really very good. But a massed orchestral work sounds totally congested. Is his system hi-fi? You bet it is! It works for what he listens to.
20KHz is a joke in the industry. Little is recorded with much at that frequency. Almost no adult hears much of it anyway, and few speakers can reproduce a true clean 20KHz tone. It certainly isn't the mark of hi-fi.
The quality of what is being reproduced is. A good quality system reproducing 53 to 16KHz is better than a poorer quality system straining to produce a wider range, poorly.
Originally posted by slughead
Don't be so condescending. You've just forgotten about the DAC, which is just as important. Where's the DAC in this thing? the iPod or the box?
And Apple lossless.. Wouldn't that defeat the point of this thing? you put a 1 gig nano on there, with lossless that's less than 2 albums
.. or is it assumed that we all have 60 gig ipods now?
That's not condescending. It was a piece of information correcting a lack of knowledge. Or what seemed to be a lack.
Many people find 128K bit encoding to be fine even with good systems. Or, they can encode at higher rates without going lossless. Won't work for iTunes songs, of course.
The DAC is in the iPod.
If you choose to use this with a 1Gig iPod, that's your choice. You aren't being forced to.
It also works with any other stereo input; Cd, FM, satellite, etc. Even an Lp from your pre-amp out.
Originally posted by JeffDM
I doubt that. Bad engineering can cost more than good engineering. Good engineering can cost more than bad engineering.
That's not the point being made.
The point is that while it might cost more one way or the other, it doesn't have to.
A good engineer could earn the same amount as a bad engineer. but that's not really the point either.
In the total cost of a product, engineering is often the least of that cost. I'm not talking about software here, of course.
When I designed a product for my company, my costs, even though I was a partner, paled against the rest of the cost of getting the product to market.
In that sense, engineering costs are the same, whether they are good or bad.
Originally posted by Mr. H
I second that.
I like to think that I am a good engineer.
I can design a Power Amp for about £20, and another that costs £400 (parts costs). Most people wouldn't be able to hear the difference between them, but the £400 one would have significantly higher/better measurable performance.
Again, you're missing the point. The engineering is not the cost of the product. It's the cost of the engineering.
Two guys design that $400 amp. One designs a good amp, one designs a bad amp.
The cost of the engineering is the same. The results are not.
Originally posted by MacGregor
Yeah, just ask the citizens of New Orleans.
Again, it's hard to see why this is being taken to mean what it doesn't.
The RESULTS of bad engineering are well known.
The costs of the engineering are what my friend (Bob Carver) was talking about, not the costs of the errors made by bad engineers.
Good engineering might have resulted in less loss for the city. but those engineers might have charged the same amount as those who, unfortunately, did do the engineering.
Originally posted by vinney57
What's happening? Is the sky falling in? Am I going mad? I find I am agreeing with everything Melgross says these days.
Reason comes through in the end.
Originally posted by umijin
Actually I already DO - with my JBL Creatures ;-P
See, you don't need the iPodHiFi to do this. And I can already control (sort of) iTunes with my Apple Remote via my Computer.
And yeah, I concede that 17lbs is too big to use as a boom box.
You're right. 17 pounds is heavy. But I quess you don't live in New York. Some of the boomboxes make this look very dainty indeed.
Originally posted by macfly
Why does Apple always see the need to overprice things by $50-100? i like the concept but they really could have pushed the tech and at least offered a model with integrated airport . so now, if you want to put one in every room, you have to spend $350 plus another $130 on the airport?
and the sleek look is nice but seems to lose out on the simple functionality they really should have worked in...like some kind of LED readout showing volume level. an lcd screen would have been nice but i guess not imperitive. whereas in the past apple made you feel like you were getting the latest in innovation at a modest increase in price over the competition, now i just start feeling like the are gouging people because they can...and for products that give up certain functionality that really should be there. i love apple as much as the next but does anyone agree?
How do you know it's overpriced? More expensive than cheaper models doesn't make it overpriced. It makes it more expensive than those that are cheaper.
But it's also less expensive than other units. Especially those from Europe. One German manufacturer makes a small model for the iPods that costs around $3,800.
Originally posted by macfly
Yes of course. people won't buy it if they dont want it. how about responding to the main idea of my post which is that, while obviously no one is being forced to buy anything, apple has been skimping on tech and maxing out on price and letting their industrial design do most of the talking these days...
they are specifically making a point of getting as much money as possible for things that are just silly. remember when an ipod used to come with a dock and all included? now they charge you $40 to buy a separate charger and about as much for a dock? im sorry but that is a plain rip off! and it just feels arrogant. again, obviously no one holds a gun to your head to buy it but it just makes a point of trying to take advantage of people. you are entitled to your opinion, i just see Apple going down a line I dont particularly think is respectful of its fans.
This is a pretty simple design, from the industrial standpoint. What is not so simple is the design, that is, parts and manufacturing, that went into making it work well.
The iPod is a CE product.
Apple now is mindful about the competition. Price has become a selling point. Remember that Creative, last June, I think it was, blamed Apple's lower selling prices as being responsible for its 250 million dollar loss?
If most people don't need an accessory, why charge everyone for it? Then Apple would add $40 to the selling price, and you would complain that it's too expensive. Well, thes parts cost money. They are never given away for free. It just seems that way because they may come with the product.
It's like an slr body. It doesn't come with the lens. If it did, it would cost more. What if many people didn't want the lens that was bundled with it?
It's cheaper for Apple not to have to have two SKU's, one with, and one without, because they can never be certain how many people want either.
As for computers, a couple of years ago, when people were complaining about prices, I sufggested that Apple could go to standard PC cases, and cut a good chunk from the price.
That didn't go over too well!
If we want custom cases, custom mobo's to go in those cases, then we have to expect to pay for it.
Tubes baby!
Originally posted by ghager
Surely I'm missing something. Is there some simple way to stream everything on my iMac to my hifi when they're on separate floors?
I would recommend a Roku soundbridge over a squeezebox. Here's why:
Uses iTunes sharing on the Mac, not proprietary software.
Can decode AAC natively, the squeezebox software would transcode AAC to mp3 (ick) before streaming it.
It's cheaper.
The one drawback is that it only supports 802.11b with WEP. If that concerns you, the best thing to do is get an 802.11g to ethernet bridge. These are getting very inexpensive now, so you could still get a soundbridge + 802.11g bridge for less than a sqeezebox.
As far as Fairplay goes, the only way to stream that is by using AirTunes. But as you say, AirTunes has no display or remote control. It also streams everything in AppleLossless, using up unnecessary banwidth if your music is in AAC or mp3.
Assuming that you have iTunes 6 installed, you could revert to a previous version, create a new account, and use JHymn to remove the DRM. I have two partitions on my Mac, one with OS X + iTunes 6, and another smaller one with OS X + iTunes 4 (this wasn't done just so I could use JHymn, it's just a nice side-effect).
Originally posted by Mr. H
Now, I don't think that this is a bad product. It's just insulting to call it "Hi Fi".
This from a company who says that 128k is as good as CD...I think any audiophiles once emplyeed at apple have been replaced by 12 year old girls who dance for the shaddow ads
Originally posted by ghager
Is anyone else here frustrated that we have thousands of songs on our computers, but only limited ways to use them elsewhere? I don't want to buy an expensive new box to listen to my iPod (with its limited-cycle battery) when I already have a super iPod (my iMac) and a really nice, bazillion dollar boombox (my home theater system, with its Bose surround sound system, etc.). Why should I replicate what I've already got, and in an inferior form? (All due respect to the new boombox. I'm sure it sounds great.)
Step 1: BREATHE
Step 2: Buy a RCA->Minipin cable and an iPOD dock(the dock gives line level out, the jack on the iPod is headphone level.)
Step 3: connect to your sound system and enjoy.
Step 4 (opitonal) get a long run of cable with mini stereo connectors or a airtunes express or whatever they call them, and split the line that is going to your ipod and patch the iMac in, or use optical from Airtunes station.
Don't look at the specs. They mean *absolutely nothing*. They only way to really judge sound quality is to listen for yourself. All this talk of top end frequency response and whatever is really useless.
I'm sitting next to bookshelf speakers that have, oh, a 7" woofer maybe, and a nice tweeter. I'm sure the specs on it aren't great. But the things sound absolutely amazing--I've even used them in a recording studio, accompanied by a sub--and a pair retails for around $1500.
You don't judge a book by it's cover, or a horse by the size of it's turds, right?
A previous poster (props to whomever) noted that most iPod accessories are cheaper, Apple is at the same time avoiding competition with the iPod accessory ecosystem *and* moving into a probably higher-margin point in the accessories market. Smart move!
Originally posted by maverick18x
For my generation music is a social experience. We want to share our music. We want to take our music with us. We have different needs.
I have a decent stereo system that I have used with my iPod for a couple of years. I lug it around the house, bring it to bonfires, and take it to camp. I connect up my iPod, or those of my friends with a stereo input or a FM transmitter. It works fine. The big problem for me is, it's not wireless. I have to plug it into a wall, which means my music becomes less like a social experience and more like background noise.
For my demographic, the iPod Hi-Fi is a perfect product. I don't want CDs, I don't want a tuner, and I don't want a bulky multipart system with a mess of wires. The only improvement I would make to the iPod Hi-Fi would be intigrated AirTunes.
And let's remember, we haven't heard it yet. I have a history of being pleasently surprised by Apple products.
Spot On.
You old guys out there that want to leave this thing on a shelf across the room and complain you can't see it don't live like the target audience for this product - we don't have huge rooms to see across. We are also not so lazy.
Hi-Fi? My generation could care less how you define it. As long as it sounds as good as the iPod at 256kbs is capable of reproducing, PERFECT. I don't care how good it plays back CDs. I haven't bought a CD since 1999 and I finished converting the rest of mine to mp3 by 2000.
Those of you who complain that the iPod would fall out when you carry it are, IMHO, morons. The iPod goes in your pocket or you hand or your bag when you walk. We have been carrying the iPod around for a few years now and nobody complained that we didn't have a box with a carrying handle and docking station to keep it in...
The 80's are over. A long time ago. Walking around with this thing playing is not the idea. Taking it to social gatherings along with you iPod is the idea.
I wish I could afford am multi-room B&O HI-FI system, but even if I could, I couldn't bring it with me to the beach, to my friend's house, to the backyard, an certainly not to a party.
This is a great product. The fact that it has a name on the side of it that I know I can trust - APPLE! makes it a sure bet for my $$$
Oh, and although it would mean one less wire and adapter to have the AEX integrated, it would mean I have to spend more money on this thing. And it also means that Apple kills its business model. Sell the NEW and BASIC model to the early adopters and those who don't care. Rejuvenate the product line later on with AEX to convert the wait and see people and upsell existing owners who just resell the other one on eBay.
Originally posted by lhvide
Hi-Fi? My generation could care less how you define it.
Couldn't care less.
This is a direct reference to one of my posts. I did explicitly say that I don't think this is a bad product, because I knew someone would come along and misinterpret what I was saying. Shame you missed it.
Originally posted by lhvide
As long as it sounds as good as the iPod at 256kbs is capable of reproducing, PERFECT.
I agree. But I don't think that makes it HiFi. I'm just frustrated by Apple's ridiculous marketing Hyberbole. Did you know Steve Jobs said in his speech "I'm an audiophile, and I'm getting rid of my Hi Fi for one of these"? What a load of shit.