I still have a working HiFi in my home gym. It’s a solid piece of engineering, especially for its time. I don’t know why people love to hate it so much.
I feel like sentiment toward the iPod HiFi is less "hate" and more "why does this exist". It was a perfectly solid piece of hardware, but Apple tried to enter a market that was already saturated (iPod docks) with a far more expensive product that didn't offer any significant advantages.