Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple.com gets a redesign

apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 92 posts

Re: Apple.com gets a redesign

#41

Post by Stormbringer »

dmcg wrote: post #6
zaatar wrote: post #2

... and it doesn't work quite right on the iPad. There is a hovering menu bar which is fully blank. I'm surprised they didn't test the site on the iPad before pushing it live. [Edit] Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/DxTKY.png

Same here - that is quite a fail.

Apple's website has a long history of being superficially pretty, but seriously lacking when it comes to any form of professional usability.

To wit, it is typical of over-designed sites in that it is fragile when people use it at different resolutions, on different browsers or in different countries (e.g. when the iPhone came out, or rather didn't come out different international versions of the page had rendering issues because the big chunk of space for the iPhone wasn't there, and all of a sudden all the pretty little lines didn't line up.

Then there's the way they were so fond of grey-on-grey text - who's idea of usability is that? Put your hands up so you can be slapped. Repeat after me: "contrast is good, m'kay?".

Re: Apple.com gets a redesign

#42

Post by Stormbringer »

spitfire wrote: post #18
nfg wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could be a sign of a shift to a darker tone in OSX Lion as as been rumoured in the past.

Darker tone? OSX is going to go all futuristic-holocaust on us? "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe...."

Well, they are back from the dead and much more powerful this time, so it must be a sequel.

Re: Apple.com gets a redesign

#43

Post by _delirium »

Silhouette wrote: post #5

I'm not sure I'm a fan of this new layout. The old one tended to have plenty of whitespace to give it a clean, open feel. This more boxy one looks pretty cramped in my browser (Firefox). I think they have a few issues with content/navigation as well. Certainly they could do with someone more internationally aware checking the wording, because to those of us who don't use the bizarre US date order, "Coming Februrary 1…

"February 10" isn't that U.S.-specific. When writing out dates numerically, the mm/dd/yy is very American, but when writing out the month in words, there's not a lot of international consistency between whether people from various countries write "February 10" versus "10th February" or "10 February" or even "10. February" when writing in English. Here in Denmark it seems to be pretty evenly split (when writing English). This University of Copenhagen page uses both on the same page!: http://www.math.ku.dk/english/

"February 10" to mean February 2010 is pretty uncommon in most countries though, isn't it? Maybe February '10, but not February 10.

Re: Apple.com gets a redesign

#44

Post by [deleted] »

ugh wrote: post #40
acqq wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent is right: the boxes are more prominent, the old design looked much "cleaner" and lighter. Compare the US page http://www.apple.com/ipod/ with the AT page http://www.apple.com/at/ipod/ This picture shows the US page details (above) vs the AT page details (under): http://i55.tinypic.com/2wpnv61.png (Please refer to the picture if the AT site changes to the new design before you read this.)

I don’t think that’s really the old design you are looking at. Maybe a caching issue on your side. Archive.org has sporadic and broken coverage of apple.com but here is how the iPod page looked in September 2010: http://web.archive.org/web/20080613084354/www.apple.com/itun... It has a different general layout and is much more cluttered. Product pages are, as I said, unchanged: http://web.archive.org/web/2008050319360…

[deleted]

Re: Apple.com gets a redesign

#45

Post by ugh »

pudquick wrote: post #31
cookiecaper wrote: post #25

Someone have a before and after? Maybe I just don't spend enough time on apple.com, but this looks the same to me, except maybe a different color on the menu bar.

There are some page transition effects that are new as well. Not sure what browser you need to be using to see them, but I'm using Safari. When I load the "Mac" section, the icons for the various models of Mac sort of spring outwards to fill the scroll area. Clicking on any of the other categories on that page (like Applications, Accessories, etc. result in a offloading of old icons + reloading of the new category ic…

Product pages (MacBook Pro, iPod touch, iPhone, …) look unchanged, category pages (Mac, iPod) are seriously de-cluttered.

Re: Apple.com gets a redesign

#46

Post by jasonkester »

spicyj wrote: post #35
jasonkester wrote: post #33

Looks like they simply stripped all the navigation off the existing design. (at least that's what I see in the latest Chrome). As such, unless I want to read about whatever that big picture is talking about, or one of those 4 irrelevant things on the bottom (such as learning about iPhone4 on Verizon), there's nothing I can do there. They've essentially removed the rest of their site from the internet. If, for instanc…

Must be a caching problem. This is what I see: http://cl.ly/0W2X1v0L1Y020F1A3U21

Must be. After enough SHIFT+F5'ing, I can see the nav on the homepage. And if I do a hard refresh on every page I go to, I eventually get the nav there too.

Apple really should know how to version their .js and .css to avoid this. It's Website 101 to increment the version number on your style sheet when you launch a new version of your site.

We all do it for our sites. Why do you suppose Apple don't do it for their own?

Re: Apple.com gets a redesign

#47

Post by mickeyben »

pudquick wrote: post #31
cookiecaper wrote: post #25

Someone have a before and after? Maybe I just don't spend enough time on apple.com, but this looks the same to me, except maybe a different color on the menu bar.

There are some page transition effects that are new as well. Not sure what browser you need to be using to see them, but I'm using Safari. When I load the "Mac" section, the icons for the various models of Mac sort of spring outwards to fill the scroll area. Clicking on any of the other categories on that page (like Applications, Accessories, etc. result in a offloading of old icons + reloading of the new category ic…

There's also a nice transition when using the search

http://littlebigdetails.com/post/2939190835

Re: Apple.com gets a redesign

#48

Post by pieter »

hugh3 wrote: post #19
spitfire wrote: post #4

I don't like it. The light grey worked and seemed very Apple. This dark black seems a little too serious and the menubar seems somehow incomplete. I'm sure they'll still sell millions of whatever they're selling though. and I'll still buy their stuff.

I'm not seeing any dark black -- am I not getting the same thing everyone else is getting? Honestly if there's a difference from the old version I don't see it myself.

See the Macbook Air page for instance: http://www.apple.com/macbookair/

Though that's the only page so far I've found with a dark black background. I'm not sure why it's black, all the other Macbook Air pages have a light background.

Re: Apple.com gets a redesign

#49

Post by ugh »

pieter wrote: post #48
hugh3 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not seeing any dark black -- am I not getting the same thing everyone else is getting? Honestly if there's a difference from the old version I don't see it myself.

See the Macbook Air page for instance: http://www.apple.com/macbookair/ Though that's the only page so far I've found with a dark black background. I'm not sure why it's black, all the other Macbook Air pages have a light background.

This is the old and unchanged MacBook Air page. Apple heavily customizes product pages – no two look alike. That has always been the case and is definitely nothing new. I think that the Final Cut Studio page was entirely black in the past, maybe even the Mac Pro page.

Here is a screenshot from 2007: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pxlronin/542462785/

Also from 2007: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaymeydad/541257980/

Re: Apple.com gets a redesign

#50

Post by Yaggo »

mryall wrote: post #36

They're certainly getting full use out of the CSS animation support in Safari. Check out the Mac and iPod sections, and the animations when you move between the different groups of products. They've replaced the old horizontal scrolling display with some bouncy back and forth.

I noticed the same. The animation is so smooth that it must be done in CSS. Nice to see Apple eating its own dog food. (And delicious food it is.)
Post reply on HN