My Mac Pro review and reflections still haven’t been published, but Apple just released their new site today (along with the WWDC Leopard keynote).
Here are my thoughts on the new site:
The nav bar is pretty nice. I think Apple is in a bit of an identity crisis right now, going between the old aqua and the newer metallic iTunes 7 styles. They both rock but there’s a bit of inconsistency across the stuff. The site was also pretty old, the content was changing and the individual pages got more advanced, but the whole navigation never changed. The new one definitely looks nice…
They would have benefited from the use of sprites, the hover lags a tiny bit and the active takes a long time to load. They should also have done a blur() to take out that gross outline, which pretty much ruins that inset effect when you click on a button. I think the design could use a little bit of work, especially in how it integrates with the rest of the esite. For example, at the store: the top is metallic and then the rest of the site is solid and roudned. Everything is nice but it doesn’t match. Also the nav could use a little work, especially on the dark backgrounds. The glossy Apple logo looks great, but on dark pages (like the homepage rightnow), the bottom part looks fuzzy. That’s because they used the same exact menu on dark and light, but they should’ve made the bottom brighter or taken out the line for the shadow since that acts as a gradient here..
I like how Apple is embracing black and white, and many of their pages are becoming dark rather than the plain old white page. Right now the whole homepage is black, and I’m glad Apple is one of the first large companies to embrace dark sites. I personally think they’re great if done right (compared to many other people who think they’re always unprofessional, etc.).
They’ve also got a loadof nifty javascript stuff going on, at the suport section. Apple has always been the king of design and I’m glad to see all this new web material by them.
Leopard also looks pretty cool, I’m really looking forward to getting it. I expect we’ll be seeing a new version of Vista coming up with some similar features, now that Microsoft’s R&D team (codename Apple) has come up with some stuff. Maybe in 5 more years?
I’ve got a bunch of pictures of my Mac Pro (they’re on flickr actually) that I’ll post up soon, along with my review.
Comments
This place isn't ALL about me — just mostly.
tito
3 years, 2 months ago
you have a gift for detail. you ever freelance on getafreelancer.com?
Glenn Wolsey
3 years, 2 months ago
Looking forward to the Mac Pro review!
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