OK, my two cents.
It's a portable player.
It plays WAV, Apple Lossless and FLAC
It takes external media
It uses high quality components
Ergonomics lost to audio engineering decisions
Digital out would be nice in version 2.0
Not sure it's a $400 device, but I'd like to try one.
Since Apple seems have left the pure player space, there's hopefully room for a new unit.
Will hype allow it to sell better than engineering specs? time will tell.