Style over content

iPod HiFi

This is the STUPIDEST idea I have ever seen. iPods are not Hi Fidelity by their very nature - they play MP3s, a crippled audio format desigfned to mask out frequencies that most people can't really discern in order to save disk space and make audio portable. But the point is that on tiny little ear-buds that is ok, becuase their dynamic range and sound recreation is pretty, well, shit.

If you plug even a semi pro pair of headphones into an iPod you'll start to hear it's limitations. Not to mention the fact that it will drain power and fall over because the internal headphone amp is 32ohm rated, and most pro cans are at least 64ohms. (Ohms is a measure of resistance, the unit has to work harder to drive the sound through, but the benefits are a greater dynamic range and faithful recreation of sound).

So you might try pluggin loudspeakers into an iPod, or running it through another amp and out through a HiFi. You'll soon hear the sound quality embarrased by decent kit. So now we have the monstrosity above. They calim it is reinventing HiFi. That's a marketing claim and totally unfounded, I bet ShinyShiny will come in their iPod white panties at the sight of it, but I think it's ugly. A rack of speakers is so 1980. And then, and this is the crux, WHY IS THE iPOD DOCK ON THE TOP OF THE UNIT?

Seriously - how the hell are you gonna put that on a bookshelf? Or under the TV? How are you going to arrange you life around the most amazing stupid design idea in the history of everything? Donald Norman would have a fit.Did no-one in the design room suggest that maybe it'd be really easy to snap off? That it actually won't fit in an Ikea home becuase even if you got it into a useful space you would still need manouevering space above it to plug the fiddly white brick in?

Stupid Stupid Stupid! and so design-over-content I cannot even fathom what they are going to come up with next. iPoid HiFi is an oxymoron and a design nightmare.