Howdy Gents
I figured that I would chime in since Tom was kind enough to send me a prototype Amplifire to check out and I know that my Buds Danny and Curt had some questions. (I followed them from Facebook, since I rarely stop by these days lol )
So far I am really blown away. As far as modelers go, I've never had any problems getting high gain, but I have always struggled with getting mid gained tones on a lot of modelers that are convincing and you can get it with this right out of the gate.
The are currently enough models in the Amplifire to satisfy just about any Genre of music and the tweakability is pretty amazing. You have parametric eq's to work with, a great sounding chorus, delay and reverb, graphic eq's , boost , fuzz and distortion pedals and everything can be routed pre and post and it really does make a difference in sound as to where you route the effects and it's all in a freaking pedal format where you can assign any effect, detail to a particular on/off switch. The layout is EXTREMELY easy to use, which is another reason why I love this thing. Tom shipped it to me with no instructions and I was cruising on the thing in 5 minutes

Another bonus for me is that it comes with a working PC editor right out of the gate! You wont have to wait months before someone puts an editor together lol.
Curt had mentioned something about why is this different then a POD, so I'll tell you my findings. I mentioned this to Curt Already in a PM on facebook but I figured that I would cross-Post.
It's not like the POD in that the sounds aren't compressed or Phony/processed sounding and you can load in your own IR's. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles yet, but it's wide open for expansion. There is a plexi and a Brown Model in the unit that I think that you would dig. It sounds and feels great. I have been using it for practicing tunes. The POD's still feel plastic to me and the tone even on the HD is muddy and compressed. The amplifire has a more open sounding vibe to it plus it has pre and post EQ's, so you can really make it sound like anything you want provided you know what Frequencies you like. It is on par with the top modelers in my Humble opinion and It's going to be $599. I'm still testing it out.
That's what I said to Curt and figured that Id relay it.
One thing to note on the Marshall type models and I have no idea how they did this but the Models Capture the artifacts or squeals that marshalls dp when pushed. It's really uncanny to me.
All and all, I think a lot of people will love this thing and I urge you to try it. It is a great piece of gear that can be used many ways (ive used it through a power amp and guitar speaker cab, Through a CLR Full range system, through the loop of a Marshall DSl and through my PC speakers at home) It is an amazing grab and go rig or recording device/ multi tool.
Hope this helps!! If anyone has any questions feel free to ask.
Cheers!
Ralph