Apple @ Thirty and Apple.com Redesign?
Today Apple is celebrating 30 years of business in the computer, music player, software, and soon to be phone business. Apple’s success in the past few years may have been unexpected, but it has turned Apple into a new company. Apple knows that it is hard to compete with a juggernaut like Microsoft, but they do have one side that Microsoft doesn’t, design.
Compare the iPod (5.5) and the Zune, both have pretty comparable features, but the one thing that makes the iPod more of a selling point is design. The Zune, it looks like it was designed by Starbucks. The brown and green color scheme is very relaxed and classy, but who wants to carry something that looks like a square turd in their pocket? No thanks, I’ll take an (small, sleek, simple) iPod any day.
Now there is one side of Apple that hasn’t seen a new redesign in years, Apple.com. The site at the current moment is in need of a full redesign (except the Downloads and Support pages, which have be given a refresh). I would like to see the site redesign based on their iPhoto application, black gray, and white; super sleek, very Apple. With the new redesign, we should see some new web technology included in the new site, Ajax anyone? Apple.com at the current moment is a little sluggish and occasionally unresponsive to link clicks and a little speed update wouldn’t hurt.
When would we see this new redesign? I would say during the WWDC conference in the coming weeks. The only problem with releasing the new site during WWDC is that traffic to Apple.com will be be substantially higher and if there was a bug in the site Apple.com could go down. Maybe we will see it at the release of Leopard instead. Mockup of a new Apple.com after the break.
An article from Digg shows a mockup of a new redesign (picture from http://www.desudesu.com/FI/designtest.html:
