Return of the Zeppelin

The success of the iPod and portable music players in general has meant that many have abandoned the idea of what we’d would consider a typical stereo or HiFi setup,  however almost every speaker dock I’ve every taken to time to listen to is a compromise of size and sound quality.  Some are frankly rubbish.

Wandering through my local John Lewis yesterday I clapped my eyes on a Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin for the first time and I had to stop and take a closer gander.  It’s a stunner.  It’s bigger than you might think too and a not insubstantial 16Ibs in weight.  And the sound is as you’d expect from B&W…

There is only one small issue though and that’s the price.  A credit card frightening £399.  But you know what…an object like this speaks to the heart as much as the head and is for me at least sums up what Donald Norman called Emotional Design. 

Shouldn’t all the things we live with be as much about the head as the heart?