Apple updates retail store webpage with iOS 7-inspired design

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 35
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by mstone View Post

     

    It's not that good either.

     

    My main complaint for today anyway, is that 4pt light grey type on a white background is not really very legible. I'm talking about the phone bottom menu, and yes it is 4pt Helvetica Neue LT Std 35 Thin. I measured it and then compared it in Illustrator. We have a rule of thumb in typography, to be legible, type should not be less than 6pt. I routinely have to squeeze stuff in and go as small as 5.5 but that is pushing it. In the case of this menu, they might as well not put any type because most people will need to simply memorize what each icon represents.

     

    Poor UI design in my opinion.

     

    PS, I know the screen real estate is small, and I would give them a break if they had made the text darker for more contrast.


     

    These are the little tweaks here and there that could get fixed. I was saying I doubt you're going to see another major overhaul of the UI. 

     

    I think your font thing depends on what your background looks like. Mine is perfectly clear and easy to read, even with the smaller/thinner font size. However, that doesn't mean it can't be fixed to be more easy on the eyes when a specific background is used in further updates down the road. 

  • Reply 22 of 35
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SudoNym View Post

     

     

    The differences are stark.  Jony is a genius.


     

    Apparently you didn't look anywhere else on that portion of the site. And I doubt Jony Ive has anything to do with the website itself. 

  • Reply 23 of 35
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by macxpress View Post

     
     

    Apparently you didn't look anywhere else on that portion of the site. And I doubt Jony Ive has anything to do with the website itself. 


    His vision permeates every nook and cranny of everything that Apple does.  He is a genius.

  • Reply 24 of 35
    macxpress wrote: »
    Apparently you didn't look anywhere else on that portion of the site. And I doubt Jony Ive has anything to do with the website itself. 

    It's a parodist troll.
  • Reply 25 of 35
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by SudoNym View Post

     

    His vision permeates every nook and cranny of everything that Apple does.  He is a genius.


     

    If you don't like the products Apple is putting out then move on and go elsewhere. Why make smartass comments and complain here? It won't get you anywhere. Its not going to change anything at Apple. 

  • Reply 26 of 35
    It's a really subtle change but it looks nice. I do prefer the translucent bars on iOS 7 and on the new site.
  • Reply 27 of 35
    razorpitrazorpit Posts: 1,796member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Bergermeister View Post

     

    Could this change have waited a while so they could fix the security problem in OSX?

     

    Sure, different department.  But I am sure a lot of people are thinking this.


     

     

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by PhilBoogie View Post





    Indeed, different dept. I wouldn't want to have any security fixes coming from a web designer. Besides, how long have we had this SSL/TLS bug? All the time no one knew about it it wasn't a problem, now it is as we all read about it.

     

    Perception plays a big role in this industry.  The SSL issue was made known last week and patch was immediately issued to fix iOS devices.  Here we are four days after a huge gaping hole in their implementation of SSL was made known to the world and what are the front page stories?  A Disney Movie "app store" and an update to the store interface.  It does make you wonder what their priorities are.

     

    I could care less 10.9.2 is right around the corner, why not just fix it now?

  • Reply 28 of 35
    malaxmalax Posts: 1,598member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by razorpit View Post

     

     

     

     

    Perception plays a big role in this industry.  The SSL issue was made known last week and patch was immediately issued to fix iOS devices.  Here we are four days after a huge gaping hole in their implementation of SSL was made known to the world and what are the front page stories?  A Disney Movie "app store" and an update to the store interface.  It does make you wonder what their priorities are.

     

    I could care less 10.9.2 is right around the corner, why not just fix it now?


     

     

    And... it's fixed. You can breathe again.  Obviously 10.9.2 was more than "around the corner."  It was just about to go out when this bug was discovered.  So they had to back up a few steps and combine them (and test them).  Four days in the overall scheme of things is entirely reasonable.

     

    And I'd be willing to bet good money that no one wasted a second saying "should this trivial change to the retail site that we've been working on for a little while be rescheduled because of a newly discovered OS X bug?"  If they did that level of coordination, I really would worry about their priorities.

  • Reply 29 of 35

    I hate iOS7 - we've all gone along with the gradual reduction from the luscious rich colours and textures of the original OSX to the flat, grey 'serious' 'businesslike' finish of later iterations and now the minimalist aesthetic has ousted the last vestiges of 'decadent ornamentation' from iOS and even the Apple Store.

    It may well appeal to purist graphic designers but I don't think the direction that the interface has taken is towards creating a friendly and intuitive interface - example - setting the time with iOS 6 was absolutely intuitive because of the skeuomorphic shaded 'rollers' that invited rolling - this has been replaced by numbers that have subtly altered weights and a slight skewing of angle - if you're familiar with iOS then you know that you can 'roll' them but if not you'll be left guessing.

    Somebody on this thread has said if you don't like it just don't buy Apple but it's not that simple, you can love Apple but still be critical when you're not happy with their decisions!

  • Reply 30 of 35
    razorpitrazorpit Posts: 1,796member
    malax wrote: »

    And... it's fixed. You can breathe again.  Obviously 10.9.2 was more than "around the corner."  It was just about to go out when this bug was discovered.  So they had to back up a few steps and combine them (and test them).  Four days in the overall scheme of things is entirely reasonable.

    And I'd be willing to bet good money that no one wasted a second saying "should this trivial change to the retail site that we've been working on for a little while be rescheduled because of a newly discovered OS X bug?"  If they did that level of coordination, I really would worry about their priorities.

    I've been there and done that with my identity stolen, it's not fun to have to go through the mess and clean it all up. When the fix was a s simple as it was it should have been released ASAP just like it was for iOS. Now that the fix is available you can go back to looking at the pretty pictures in the store...
  • Reply 31 of 35
    I just hope that OS X does not get the iOS7 facelift. I detest the blandness and colour selection of the redesigned interface. Clearly, Jony Ive is missing the brutal feedback on his designs that Steve provided..."Jony, that design is Sh#t". How they could throw out the rich icons and app layouts that took years to finely tune is beyond me. Change just for the sake of change is not something apple ever bought into. I think he is a great hardware designer but maybe he lacks the ability to be objective about his own design.
    Having used iOS7 now since its release, I thought it would grow on me, but comparing the two designs (I still have it on my old iPhone4) I hate iOS7 more than ever. Icons aside, the app look and functionality of Calendar, Reminders, Clock/Timer, etc,is just hideous. And whoever selected white on pale lime green for icons and iMessage text boxes needs to be tar and feathered.
    We already got taste of that design in Mavericks with the crappy calendar makeover and other "Flat" design tweaks.

    So, please, please, please do not revamp OS X (Yosemite?, Tahoe?) to look like iOS7. It stinks Jony!
  • Reply 32 of 35
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,309moderator
    I just hope that OS X does not get the iOS7 facelift. I detest the blandness and colour selection of the redesigned interface. Clearly, Jony Ive is missing the brutal feedback on his designs that Steve provided..."Jony, that design is Sh#t". How they could throw out the rich icons and app layouts that took years to finely tune is beyond me. Change just for the sake of change is not something apple ever bought into. I think he is a great hardware designer but maybe he lacks the ability to be objective about his own design.
    Having used iOS7 now since its release, I thought it would grow on me, but comparing the two designs (I still have it on my old iPhone4) I hate iOS7 more than ever. Icons aside, the app look and functionality of Calendar, Reminders, Clock/Timer, etc,is just hideous. And whoever selected white on pale lime green for icons and iMessage text boxes needs to be tar and feathered.
    We already got taste of that design in Mavericks with the crappy calendar makeover and other "Flat" design tweaks.

    So, please, please, please do not revamp OS X (Yosemite?, Tahoe?) to look like iOS7. It stinks Jony!

    Jony Ive was made head of software design but he will have collaborated with his design team on it. Despite being artists (with uniqueness being one the traits - iconic design is typically unique), designers tend to come together on a consensus in a few aspects like use of pantone colors or standard typefaces (Helvetica Neue):

    http://venturebeat.com/2013/10/15/the-meaning-behind-ios-7s-kaleidoscope-of-colors/

    These are arrived at for usability. When it comes to a user interface, it is to be used by a lot of people so the color and typeface standards are best to follow the consensus. You don't always realise it but most advertising you see follows these standards too. Because there's more freedom with digital, not everyone follows them online or in devices but it's because they don't put much importance on it. Apple has been replacing the fonts in a few apps with more modern versions:

    http://gizmodo.com/5930274/this-is-apples-new-favorite-typeface

    When you see text side by side, you can tell the differences in legibility. You might notice Google changed their search style recently to remove the underline and I think they changed the colors to be more vibrant. People are accustomed to underlined text meaning a link but nowadays, it doesn't really matter and it adds unnecessary clutter.

    The change to the color palette and icons in iOS is not something everyone will appreciate but it makes things more timeless. If you look at the candy scrollbars from early OS X, they stand out as unique and colorful but over time, they become tiresome to look at because they constantly attract your attention and stop rewarding you when they succeed in getting it. The more modern scrollbar is deferential and doesn't draw you away from your content so you don't have any expectations of it.

    Icons are supposed to be unique (pretty much by definition) so I think it's ok for them to have more flair and identity and I'd say a number of iOS 7 icons could do with being reworked. Removing the gloss however was fine. This was something placed automatically on top of other people's icons.

    No amount of analysis of Apple's choices can placate statements such as 'I don't like it' because people have their own tastes and if something is not immediately better then they'll resist it. This is worse when people have been accustomed to something for so long. Apple overhauled the UI moving from OS 9 to OS X and changed what people were accustomed to for more than a decade. OS X was clearly nicer though. The same situation is here now where people have been using OS X for more than a decade.

    It doesn't necessarily need changing but people will get used to whatever changes they make. If they switched the system font to Avenir, it would be jarring at first to see different spacing on the menu fonts but after you use it for months, you won't even think about it. When it comes to icons, are we really all that attached to the smiley Finder face or the cluttered Mission Control icon? Launchpad is cool but the glossy silver back doesn't add much to it. You also notice that OS X icons don't follow the same rounded square style. Is it better that they don't? I wouldn't say so.

    A small thing is they also do the alignment with the bubble when you hover over icons in the Dock in a way that isn't very good. They vertically center the text according to the x-height but words more often make use of the ascender line rather than descender so it makes everything look like it's too far up. They should make the bubble so that it looks like it's evenly padded for most words they way they do with window titles and menu options. Here's an example and the font is also changed to Helvetica Neue - you can see the letters are balanced better:

    1000

    Switching to flat buttons instead of glowing glossy ones wouldn't be all that bad either but I don't think that would be needed. Maybe the maximize/minimize buttons could be flattened but it won't be quite like iOS. The way windows zoom and the shadows are quite noticeable so it would be good for them to be more subtle in some areas but they have to use the OS themselves so if anything annoys consumers, it will annoy some of the people working at Apple too.
  • Reply 33 of 35

    Marvin, thanks for your lengthy reply to my opinion on iOS7’s graphic design.  For the most part I agree with your general comments on style but I don’t believe that this iteration met its objective.  There are people that don’t like change of any kind regardless of the benefit; I’m not one of them.  I enjoy change, I enjoy technology, but I don’t like change that has no propose and that is a step backward.  Take for instance the iMessage app.  The iOS6 version font was clear, colours were muted, and it was easy to read the black on green/blue boxes and black on grey..  The iOS7 white font on lime green just punches you in the face.  Trying to type a message at 1:00am with the green and white merging into a fuzzy blob is exasperating.  It’s very hard to see sometimes.  This is not an improvement.  I find myself using 3rd part apps more now just to avoid iMessage.  It is no benefit to have a “timeless design” if it has reduced functionality.  This look like something I had on my 10 MHz 256 colour IBM PS2 back in 1987.  Didn’t like it then either.  What is wrong with using the new iMessage colours on OSX Mavericks?  They look great.

     

    Now, I’m sure that Apple will interpret the growth of the mobile platform as being partly due to the fresh new interface, but in effect the growth and decline curve of an operating systems is on a much longer timeline.  People are locked into the ecosystem with iTunes libraries, cloud services, etc and it’s just too hard to change for minor inconveniences.  But, if you do lose the person you lose him/her for a long time.  Change can seem glacial but once it starts it is a hard thing to check.  The first easy tell-tale sign will be the adoption rate of OS X if Jony Ive turns that in to a cartoon also.

     

    I may be critical of this interface but I have been a huge Apple fan for years and I buy almost every new product they make.  I believe that Apple products are superior to everything else on the market.  The thing that annoys me though is that I have to but up with this inferior redesign now for the next five year or longer as I’m not sure whether Apple listen to their core customer base anymore. 

     

    P.S.

     

    I have to comment on that link you attached…

     

    I fully appreciate that Jony and his team had very good reasons to adopt the colour palette and design style it did for the new look.  Unfortunately, I have learnt through first hand experience that what is logical to a graphic artist or marketing person does not always translate well into the real world.  For instance, the link you supplied on the meaning behind the colours of iOS7 had the following paragraph:

     

    “A color trend is the end result of a long process. It usually starts with designers analyzing the emotional outlook of the culture, which includes political and economic movements. When U.S. mood was uneasy leading up to Y2K, colors reflected that. Today, at the tail end of a long war and recession, many of us want to feel happy and secure. That’s why we’ve gravitated towards colors that bring about those emotions, like the purples and orange-tinged reds in iOS 7”.  

     

    LOL! This is a classic case of over-analysing a colour choice!  

  • Reply 34 of 35
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post





    Jony Ive was made head of software design but he will have collaborated with his design team on it. Despite being artists (with uniqueness being one the traits - iconic design is typically unique), designers tend to come together on a consensus in a few aspects like use of pantone colors or standard typefaces (Helvetica Neue):



    http://venturebeat.com/2013/10/15/the-meaning-behind-ios-7s-kaleidoscope-of-colors/



    These are arrived at for usability. When it comes to a user interface, it is to be used by a lot of people so the color and typeface standards are best to follow the consensus. You don't always realise it but most advertising you see follows these standards too. Because there's more freedom with digital, not everyone follows them online or in devices but it's because they don't put much importance on it. Apple has been replacing the fonts in a few apps with more modern versions:



    http://gizmodo.com/5930274/this-is-apples-new-favorite-typeface



    When you see text side by side, you can tell the differences in legibility. You might notice Google changed their search style recently to remove the underline and I think they changed the colors to be more vibrant. People are accustomed to underlined text meaning a link but nowadays, it doesn't really matter and it adds unnecessary clutter.



    The change to the color palette and icons in iOS is not something everyone will appreciate but it makes things more timeless. If you look at the candy scrollbars from early OS X, they stand out as unique and colorful but over time, they become tiresome to look at because they constantly attract your attention and stop rewarding you when they succeed in getting it. The more modern scrollbar is deferential and doesn't draw you away from your content so you don't have any expectations of it.



    Icons are supposed to be unique (pretty much by definition) so I think it's ok for them to have more flair and identity and I'd say a number of iOS 7 icons could do with being reworked. Removing the gloss however was fine. This was something placed automatically on top of other people's icons.....


     

     

    Marvin, thanks for your lengthy reply to my opinion on iOS7’s graphic design.  For the most part I agree with your general comments on style but I don’t believe that this iteration met its objective.  There are people that don’t like change of any kind regardless of the benefit; I’m not one of them.  I enjoy change, I enjoy technology, but I don’t like change that has no propose and that is a step backward.  Take for instance the iMessage app.  The iOS6 version font was clear, colours were muted, and it was easy to read the black on green/blue boxes and black on grey..  The iOS7 white font on lime green just punches you in the face.  Trying to type a message at 1:00am with the green and white merging into a fuzzy blob is exasperating.  It’s very hard to see sometimes.  This is not an improvement.  I find myself using 3rd part apps more now just to avoid iMessage.  It is no benefit to have a “timeless design” if it has reduced functionality.  This look like something I had on my 10 MHz 256 colour IBM PS2 back in 1987.  Didn’t like it then either.  What is wrong with using the new iMessage colours on OSX Mavericks?  They look great.

     

    Now, I’m sure that Apple will interpret the growth of the mobile platform as being partly due to the fresh new interface, but in effect the growth and decline curve of an operating systems is on a much longer timeline.  People are locked into the ecosystem with iTunes libraries, cloud services, etc and it’s just too hard to change for minor inconveniences.  But, if you do lose the person you lose him/her for a long time.  Change can seem glacial but once it starts it is a hard thing to check.  The first easy tell-tale sign will be the adoption rate of OS X if Jony Ive turns that in to a cartoon also.

     

    I may be critical of this interface but I have been a huge Apple fan for years and I buy almost every new product they make.  I believe that Apple products are superior to everything else on the market.  The thing that annoys me though is that I have to but up with this inferior redesign now for the next five year or longer as I’m not sure whether Apple listen to their core customer base anymore. 

     

    P.S.

     

    I have to comment on that link you attached…

     

    I fully appreciate that Jony and his team had very good reasons to adopt the colour palette and design style it did for the new look.  Unfortunately, I have learnt through first hand experience that what is logical to a graphic artist or marketing person does not always translate well into the real world.  For instance, the link you supplied on the meaning behind the colours of iOS7 had the following paragraph:

     

    “A color trend is the end result of a long process. It usually starts with designers analyzing the emotional outlook of the culture, which includes political and economic movements. When U.S. mood was uneasy leading up to Y2K, colors reflected that. Today, at the tail end of a long war and recession, many of us want to feel happy and secure. That’s why we’ve gravitated towards colors that bring about those emotions, like the purples and orange-tinged reds in iOS 7”.  

     

    LOL! This is a classic case of over-analysing a colour choice!  

  • Reply 35 of 35
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,309moderator
    I don’t like change that has no propose and that is a step backward.  Take for instance the iMessage app.  The iOS6 version font was clear, colours were muted, and it was easy to read the black on green/blue boxes and black on grey..  The iOS7 white font on lime green just punches you in the face.

    They use green for messages sent over cellular and blue for messages sent over wifi, the blue isn't too bad. The green is a bit overpowering and they could even have used dark grey:

    1000

    or maybe a very light green with dark text on top. They used green in iOS 6 but it was less saturated - they have to saturate it strongly now to contrast the white text. Maybe they are trying to discourage people from sending texts via cellular. The iOS 6 design side by side looks easier to read but I think it looks older too:

    1000

    The new UI looks modern. A few people don't like the color choices though:

    https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5322164?start=0&tstart=0

    This is the case with the iPhone 5C too. They are bright and colorful but not selling nearly as well as the 5S. It's hard to please everyone because before iOS 7, there were so many complaints about skeuomorphic UIs and how Scott Forstall needed to go and let Jony Ive in to fix it all. Now there are more complaints about iOS 7 doing exactly that and from some of the same people. I think people were expecting the change to be more subtle.
    I’m not sure whether Apple listen to their core customer base anymore.

    I don't think they ever did really. They must hear a barrage of input all the time. The problem is filtering out what will work better for them. They need to maintain consistency across their software. When they decide to go in a certain direction with their UI, it has to go all in and it creates issues in places.
    I have learnt through first hand experience that what is logical to a graphic artist or marketing person does not always translate well into the real world.  For instance, the link you supplied on the meaning behind the colours of iOS7 had the following paragraph:</span>

    <span style="letter-spacing:0px;">“A color trend is the end result of a long process. It usually starts with designers analyzing the emotional outlook of the culture, which includes political and economic movements. When U.S. mood was uneasy leading up to Y2K, colors reflected that. Today, at the tail end of a long war and recession, many of us want to feel happy and secure. That’s why we’ve gravitated towards colors that bring about those emotions, like the purples and orange-tinged reds in iOS 7”.  </span>

    <span style="letter-spacing:0px;">LOL! This is a classic case of over-analysing a colour choice!  </span>

    It is further reaching when it's a 3rd party trying to deconstruct the choices made by someone but it's the process designers go through to choose colors themselves. There was a story about the NeXT logo:

    http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2011/october/jobs-v-rand

    "Rand flew back and presented his solution in the form of a book (scan above, more at Imprint here) walking Jobs through the rationale. Jobs loved it but asked for the yellow of the 'e' to be brighter. According to Isaacson, "Rand banged his fist and declared, 'I've been doing this for fifty years and I know what I'm doing.' Jobs relented."

    It's easy to say to Jony Ive, 'why not just make the green in iMessage a little more subtle?' but it then doesn't match the green used in the palette in other parts of the OS. There's a tendency to avoid inconsistency wherever possible because the more it happens, the more you notice it. This is the case with Windows and Android. Their UIs are not consistent at all and not everyone bothers about it but it affects how you interact with it.

    I think they made the right decision to change the UI but some of the choices could have been better in a few areas. I really don't like some of the new icons. They said they used a grid for spacing but they pushed some of the icons too far to the edges (like Reminders) and some are way too complex like the settings icon. I'm not much of a fan of window zooming. I know why they do it but it always seems too extreme. The iOS 7 update improved the speed:


    [VIDEO]


    but I'd still rather they made this more subtle. For example, they can zoom it out of transparency. When it's really small, they can set the window to 100% transparency and then at 50% scale, it's 50% transparent and then fully opaque at full size and the same in reverse or some variation of that opacity change.

    There are some settings in accessibility to help adjust the UI but if people feel the need to use them to make the UI more bearable for typical use then the main UI could use some adjustment.
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