Boom boom
by Volker Weber
Looks like the perfect thing to have for a small party. But why is it missing Wi-Fi? This would be neat as a remote speaker for iTunes. And you could use the dock to sync with a remote computer ...
Comments
That thing looks like it could come from a production set of a scifi movie. ^_^
Now imagine how the iPod smoothly moves down into the system as soon as it is plugged in... :)
Wie sich die Postings gleichen ;-) Immerhin ist uns nicht die gleiche Headline eingefallen. War aber knapp...
Let's wait for the first listening reviews to come in... Looking at the compact design of it, I simply can't imagine this thing delivers "room-filling stereo imaging", as they claim on their website. But I'd gladly be proven wrong.
And yes, the box really looks very sci-fi. Which is great I guess. They even used storm trooper plastic:-)
Sounds like Ghetto Blaster technology:
>Powerful and efficient Class D internal amplifiers
>
> * Internal universal power supply
> * Seamless, quiet switching between AC and DC power
> * DC mode using just six D-cell batteries(1)
>
>Custom-designed drivers
>
> * Two 80-mm wide-range
> * One 130-mm woofer
"Hi-Fi" requires usually something different. Will probably sound like the Bose stuff. Me, too, would gladly be proven wrong.
Looks underwhelming to me. Although the leather case was the stranger product of their announcement. Who's going to pay that much money for a relatively simple leather case?
Hmm. The digital music format held on an iPod (some would say, any digital music format) can't really attain or deliver 'hi-fi' anyway - people who really enjoy music are sticking for as long as possible with the good ol' 12 inch floppy disk format, and a decent disk drive to play it on!
The whole presentation was a serious disappointment in my eyes. The products presented are just far from real innovation. This "Hi-Fi"-thing really gives the impression of being just some sort of stylish ghetto blaster, while offering no serious advantages over the numerous existing dockings. Pricing it at $349 and thereby putting it on second place right after for the Bose system which sells for $379 (I think) was not a good decision. Unless of course, it really offers mind-blowing spatial sound as Apple claims. But I still like the design...
As for the leather case: I don't know who's supposed to buy this either. Mac Mini's getting a $100 price increase while switching to a crappy integrated Intel GMA950 GPU, which is on the market for a year already and doesn't know OpenGL beyond 1.4. Apple's pricing policy seems to go into a terribly wrong direction these days.
Maybe I should change my mind and go for a MacBook Pro instead of waiting any longer for the iBook-successors.
No mention of power/power consumption in the tech specs makes me wonder. Ghetto blaster marketing is usually based on Watt ;-)
Yes, I was trying to find a watt number anywhere in the specifications too. Actually I think it's a good sign they don't give that number. What we want is crisp sound, not "boom", right?
