Apple Site Redesign

At long last, the journey has come to an end. The Apple web site has been redesigned, and it's quite slick. The UI is very much inline with the flat, smooth look of Leopard. I can't post a screenshot easily right now, so just take a look.

Update: It has been pointed out to me that the search in the toolbar is actually a live search, and a nicely rendered one as well (thanks, Mike).
Design Element
Apple Site Redesign
Posted Jun 11, 2007 — 16 comments below




 

Jesper — Jun 11, 07 4298

I really like almost everything about it. (The Leopard site is a bit big.)

It's got just the right amount of interactivity to it (like the showcases on the top of the product sections). And not a year too soon, they threw out the .Mac and QuickTime tabs and inserted a Mac tab. Finally.

lone — Jun 11, 07 4300

I. Want. iPhone. Specs. And. JavaScript. Extensions. Now.
Or how can I be ready at launch?

:)

ndimiduk — Jun 11, 07 4301

Why, oh why does it look so much like Vista? Is this really what Leopard will look like? *face-palm*

ndimiduk — Jun 11, 07 4302

Sorry, I was being serious. That wasn't intended to be troll-bait.

Scott Stevenson — Jun 11, 07 4303 Scotty the Leopard

Why, oh why does it look so much like Vista?
I'm not sure what you mean by this.

ndimiduk — Jun 11, 07 4304

I'm not sure what you mean by this.
I don't know what they call it, but the interface of the redesigned apple.com looks very much like the bubbly-gray that is the default interface of vista home premium. That is my observation and opinion. Feel free to disagree.

My question, then: is this redesigned apple.com based on The Look (tm) which will ship in 10.5?

Scott Stevenson — Jun 11, 07 4305 Scotty the Leopard

I don't know what they call it, but the interface of the redesigned apple.com looks very much like the bubbly-gray that is the default interface of vista home premium
I'm really try to understand what you're saying, but I'm just not seeing it. Perhaps you have some specific examples? Certainly Aqua predates Vista by years, so maybe that's what you mean?

is this redesigned apple.com based on The Look (tm) which will ship in 10.5
Leopard screenshots are up on Apple.com, so see what you think.

ndimiduk — Jun 11, 07 4306

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

I've not looked very carefully at the Leopard screen-shots yet, so I'll refrain from commenting in that direction. All I'm saying is both my wife and myself found the redesigned UI on the apple.com website, specifically the nav bar across the top, to look rather similar to vista.

I hope that clarifies; please don't loose sleep over this observation if it doesn't jump out at you.

Tim Buchheim — Jun 11, 07 4309

The nav bar across the top is based on the grey gradient used in the latest iTunes (which will be applied to all windows in Leopard). It doesn't remind me of Vista at all. Vista tends to use black (taskbar, sidebar) or blue (window titlebars, toolbars, etc.).

David — Jun 11, 07 4310

Unified indeed. I like it. It could be seen as boring, but it also clearly distances itself from the ad-hoc MySpace-inspired mess that is Vista.

Check out Safari's new Find feature. It's like Firefox's, but Done Right: great highlighting, subtle yet useful animations, intuitive. If we see this sort of thing in Leopard's Mail.app, I'll be happy.

Except for its icon, Time Machine still looks awful.

Apple seem to be marketing "Desktop" as the "Finder" now, with both terms seemingly interchangeable. I'd be very happy with losing "Finder" altogether. Or just losing the application altogether.

Scott Stevenson — Jun 11, 07 4311 Scotty the Leopard

Apple seem to be marketing "Desktop" as the "Finder" now, with both terms seemingly interchangeable
Why do you say that? The Leopard page calls them out separately.

David — Jun 11, 07 4312

Why do you say that? The Leopard page calls them out separately.

I should have been clearer. Yes, Apple (sort of) distinguishes between Desktop and Finder in terms of providing their own pages and movies, but to the average Mac user, these features look as though they are relating to the same thing.

Which, they are, looking at it from a users's pov, not a development team's pov. The Dock and the Desktop metaphor and launching and searching for apps are absolutely attached to the Finder workings.

Preferred: get rid of "Finder". Just have a "Desktop".

Semi-related:

While we are at it, Leopard really needs to fix the ongoing problems with downloading and installing apps. There are huge numbers of Mac users for whom Disk Images and/or zip files are voodoo. As developers it's easy to forget, unless you do customer support, just how baffling these issues are to the average user.

Possible solution: display a Dashboard-style prompt "You are attempting to download an application. Install it in your Applications folder and launch the application?" (Adjust for grammar.)

Possible solution #2: a common Framework, ala Sparkle, for the copying of an app on a locked volume, to the Applications folder, and subsequent launching of the installed app.

Scott Stevenson — Jun 12, 07 4316 Scotty the Leopard

@David: There are huge numbers of Mac users for whom Disk Images and/or zip files are voodoo

I agree. There actually is a spec of some sort for disk images that, when downloaded, turn into just an application and remove the archive. The theory is that it's then reasonably clear that the single application icon sitting on the desktop can be dragged to the Applications folder.

Personally, I don't like this approach because I want the archive to stay around. Something along the lines of what you suggest may be good.

Kenneth — Jun 12, 07 4320

Some apps (eg. Quicksilver) already check if they're running from a disk image, and then prompt the user to install themselves.

Manton Reece — Jun 13, 07 4335

David, Apple did try to rename the Finder to Desktop once. It was back in one of the weird preview releases before Mac OS X Beta, I think.

Gelay — Apr 21, 08 5757

I always look at the apple website for inspiration.




 

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