On January 5th, 2000 Apple unveiled their new web site. This site was like nothing we had seen on the Internet (I'm practicing my RDF). In a time of flashing animated GIF 'SALE' graphics and more, MORE, M-O-R-E on every site, Apple took a clean approach. It was awe inspiring, it was easy to use and every page looked like it belonged. Go from the home page to the iReview page and you know you're on iReview because the whole banner turned orange. Each page was identical yet different in some way. It was a work of art.

It seems someone has vandalized Apple.com over the years. The culprit was none other than Apple themselves.

Take a look around Apple.com today. The black background of the homepage is a stark contrast to the header and it looks out of place. Go from navigation tab to navigation tab and see how sometimes the tabs will change colors and other times it will not. I thought that maybe hardware tabs had their own color, but .Mac is the same light blue as the iPhone, iPod + iTunes, and QuickTime, but not the same blue as the store. The homepage has a gray bar, but not the same gray as the Mac OS X page. Rather than having one continuous and beautiful work of art from page to page it seems Apple.com has fallen victim to the worst design catastrophe of them all: trying to please everyone in management with mini-brands on every page.

I remember the moment I first noticed the vandalism. Mac OS X 10.3 (panther) was sporting a pretty new brushed metal interface and so Apple decided to give the header in the OS X section a brushed metal look. While they were at it they redesigned the .Mac page to be really, really brushed metal which completely broke the styleguide. I guess it's a lot like a diet, once you slip the first time, the second time is easier and the third time is even easier. Well, now Apple has slipped so many times they have become a big fat monster again.


It was obvious that Steve Jobs had something to say about the Apple.com redesign back in 2000 and he was clearly interested at the time. Jobs may have lost interest or he may have allowed politics to get in the way of design, but now the Apple.com website is a mess. No two pages are alike and while the top navigation is still easy to work with, each page has so many mini-brands and links going on that it's impossible to find anything any deeper. Quick, find me a chart of supported Final Cut Pro VTRs. Oh, I'm not making that up, the chart is there, even if it's extremely difficult to find.

I think it's time that Apple redesigned their site once more. Web 2.0 is upon us and Apple is capable of some of the greatest industrial designs in the world. I have no idea what they should include, but I believe once again it should be art, not a corporate compromise like what we have now. Don't go asking a group of people what they think it should be, that will just lead to a really bad design. Make it great. Insanely great.