The iPod Hi-Fi (what an ironic name) is Apple's shot across Bose's bow. The arrogance of the press conference was quite amazing. Does anyone really believe that Jobs is going to dump whatever high-end system he owns for this? Apple is getting very dangerous as they get bigger and bigger. Ian

As an aside, a friend of mine bought the Klipsch iFi system, and it is the single best desktop system I've heard for the money. It does everything this does, and it actually has tweeters. LOL This CAN'T sound good. ;-)

It takes either balls of steel or absolute lack of real audio knowledge to put an "audiophile" label on that thing. Sure, we don't buy Stevie's claim - but many others will. Besides, Apple's target market is often the usual demographic that is more concerned with style and looks than with high fidelity as a goal.. Plus let's see: No headphone input? "Bass Boost" EQ? Hoo boy, I'm so getting one of these... :P Sometimes I wish Apple just stayed making computers only.

Well to be fair, does anybody know what system Jobs was using before? Maybe this really is better... though as likely as not, Jobs is just being a salesman. If this really does sound good I could see it being tempting for the dormroom crowd with their iPods, but $350 sounds a little stiff for that, without a whole lot of advantages over just a good set of self-powered speakers. I'll keep shopping for a good, cheap USB DAC to attach to my Powerbook I guess. msykes

"From pumping bass to bright treble, iPod Hi-Fi delivers natural, room-filling sound. Close your eyes and you’d think you were listening to a huge stack of speakers." So Apple marketing is learning a lot from Bose :-)

I remember reading somewhere recently that Jobs has/had some megawatt Krell system. Makes sense. He doesn't strike me as a SET kinda guy. I think Apple's big mistake is not making a boom box, it's holding a press event to unveil a boom box. A simple press release would have sufficed. The 30th anniversary of Apple is coming in April, so I would expect to see some legitimately interesting products being released then.

Fact is, Apple has just hamstrung their partners who have been releasing boom-like-boxes for the iPod almost since its inception. But let's call a spade a spade and take a look at this thing: It's a fairly plain, fairly ugly box with no outwardly redeeming qualities nor any video output (in case you wanted to look at your oh-so-Low-Def iPod videos on something larger than the iPod's screen). For $349.99 you get ... nothing special at all. If this is Apple firing a shot across Bose's bow, Amar and the gang must be having one helluva laugh right about now. For a company that has always prided itself on form factor and features, Apple has really dropped the ball on this product. My prediction: utter market failure. Look for v2.0, and then for the product to be discontinued. There is no shortage of companies trying to play in this space, but there is a shortage of companies producing anything worth listening to.

digging through our archives of reviews, we can across the "HiPod" review we wrote. After the review both of us were so enthousiastic about the capabilities of the combination, we purchased the lot. Not a real el-cheapo, but so satisfying! Here's the link: www.6moons.com/audioreviews/hipod/hipod.html Marja Vanderloo & Henk Boot Rotterdam/Netherlands