I am not an Apple fanboy. Really. It has been 8 months since I sent some money to the Infinite Loop. Not counting the “Ride of the Walkyers”. That one euro was an excusable exception: Imagine a middle class car car with it’s hatch open driving through a middle european middle class neighborhood, having two kids on a sled in tow blasting this song. I could not resist to put this mental image into reality. I thought this was the best way to introduce Anton and Ella to Wagner.
So today the HiFi got delivered. A couple of days ahead of schedule. “Apple Deutschland” starts to have decent service. Amazing, not how it used to be.
It’s smaller than I thought. I am a fanboy. A Dieter Rahms fanboy, ever since I saw the first brAun stereo. Logically I like the looks of the thing. The way the iPod is put in on the top I am not crazy about. It comes with lots of plastic inserts to accomodate all those different iPods Apple came out with.
Overall it sounds ok. It is very loud. From what I read I expected it to be really loud, and that is not the case.
The first song on the shuffle playlist was a piano piece by Satie. Tragically this was a very dissapointing performance for the debutant: Mid to high tones are simple not clear. Hearing a couple of more Piano pieces by now I think that the ‘Hi-Fi’ is an orwellian title. If Jobs really wants to give up his stereo for a Hifi then this can only have one of three reasons:
– he spend less than 349 US$ on the one that get’s replaced
– he has the Koolaid coming out his ears
– he tested every 1,000th iPod Apple sold personally and on full volume.
The Hi-Fi is not going back. We needed a decent looking noise maker. And it will work for that. I just had expected better sound from it.
With a fresh set of D batteries it can make for some noise open air noise. I hope somebody comes with a concept to place 50 or so in a public park: “Concerto for 50 iPod HiFis in Central Park”.
They just should not have called it ‘Hi-Fi’. My twenty five year old stereo sounds MUCH better. But that was not 349. Worked for it for months to able to afford it.