Apple Store Redesign | Hacker News Reader

Apple Store Redesign

store.apple.com

39 pointssinak46 comments

I am not a designer by any means, but does anyone else think the images feel a little too big and overpowering to the point the name of the product and price gets lost? The colour of the price for me is hard to see unless you really look as well. It definitely marks an improvement over what their site looked like a few years ago, but I can't help but feel it is not very well thought out.

The limited colour palette of grey and white also means it is sometimes hard for my eyes to differ from the contrast which confuses me (the Beats by Dre section is a good example). Once again, I am not a designer, but I do not find this store redesign very appealing at all, it is confusing on the eye. I hate to be harsh, but feels like I am looking at a catalogue that came in the letterbox with large shouty product images on weird angles.

As for people making remarks about Apple selling third party products on their site, they have done this for as long as I can remember. Laptop cases, third party peripherals (external hard drives), headphones and more. You also have to remember that Apple bought Beats not long ago, so the Beats headphones are actually their own products even if Beats is being operated separately for the moment inside of Apple and probably will continue to do so.

This is what the Apple Store page looked like in 2011 shortly before Steve Jobs died: https://web.archive.org/web/20111001165346/http://store.appl...

I am very confused as to why people are saying he his rolling in his grave over third party accessories being sold through the Apple website - it has been this way for as long as I can remember.

Everything recently that Apple does that people don't agree with has Jobs 'rolling in his grave.'

Sort of a weird rebrand. I also, had jank scrolling. The massive screen real-estate donated to a double menu bar and this huge "busy" picture, just instantly puts me on edge. Also, when you go to a selection ('iphone', 'ipad') you get all products in the category not all products so you have to go back, you can't quickly browse around the site. I think it is super ugly, a total change in brand focused on parents and being trendy (small children, road-trip selfies pictures) and less on pure powerful technology that is exceedingly simple.

Kinda funny how the top story was "Stop Changing UIs for No Good Reason" earlier this morning, and then this comes up.

Perfect day for it really with them breaking a few of the rules laid out in another top story "7 rules for creating gorgeous ui" [1]. Having non white text over a high contrast photo with skinny text certainly is bold according to the pervious article.

[1] https://medium.com/@erikdkennedy/7-rules-for-creating-gorgeo...

'text over a high contrast photo' - rule applies when the text is over a high-contrast PART of the photo. The rule is there for legibility - black text over a flat, white (or just off white) part of a photo that also, in a separate part, has some high-contrast elements, is perfectly fine for legibility.

The only unreadable type on that page is actually the white type over the high contrast photo at the very top of the page. "From one gift come many" - on my MBP, that looks really poor. My eyes are nearly in pain trying to read that.

All in all, I do think it's a bad job of a redesign. Very trendy, but quite obnoxious navigationally. Bad UX. I'm fine with big images and minimal text, but I think it needs to be shrunk quite a lot -- the entire Beats by Dre section should fit, top to bottom, on my 1440x900px screen. As it is, it's a full 2.5x screen heights (estimated).

A while back (Jan 2014), a designer called Sebastiano Guerriero created an unsolicited redesign of the Apple store. The square grid of large images in the new Apple store redesign reminded me of his concept. I wonder if Apple looked at the design (it went viral) and took some inspiration. Regardless, I thought the unsolicited design was rather nice.

https://www.behance.net/gallery/Apple-Store-Redesign/1411391...

http://ambercreative.co/experiments/apple-store/

Am I the only not feeling 100% comfortable with the new design?

It is more graphically appealing but the user experience is not what I'm expecting on an online store.

In the past Apple's store website has never worked in Firefox; a typical problem is buttons that don't do anything when pressed (like "add to cart" or "checkout".) With this new site, it almost works with Firefox: I got stuck in an endless loop for engraving on an iPad, but after a chat an Apple tech put the iPad into my cart, and I was able to complete the purchase. Almost!

This is clearly aimed at parents, who want to give gifts to their kids - a segment Apple are targetting anew in the run-up to Christmas. I guess what I'm seeing is a more "Home Shopping Network" thing going on, and it perturbs me .. but as a parent, I can see their positioning having effect.

I guess Apples' "thing" this Christmas is "Family-Friendly, Safe"..

Is apple only now falling in with the useless-giant-image-and-lots-of-scrolling trend, or is this just 'refined'?

At least they didn't slap a giant, full-screen video loop on the background. That fad can't die soon enough.

It's interesting to see the new direction they seem to be taking.

All of those fullscreen pictures of people don't feel very "Apple-y", they look more like Tommy Hilfiger ads to me. And the contrast is especially noticeable when you scroll down to the all white, all products sections right beneath them.

This is apparently what the UX profession as a whole has decided is the best, most pretty-looking thing. Interestingly I've not seen studies that show people like it when they go to a web site with intent to find things, but that's secondary to looking pretty.

The pictures don't have to be meaningful or relevant - they just have to be big, and avoid distracting you with silly text that might convey relevant information. To get to anything like that, it's 'good design' to force the user to scroll first. hadn't you heard?

</rant> Sorry. This large picture + no meaningful up-front content + much scrolling trend is so irritating.

I'm guessing this is Angela Ahrendts' influence from the luxury goods world. Their ads have led with narrative (vs. cold tech specs) for a while now. I think it's just made it's way into their store design. High-end fashion knows a thing or two about making you feel good about an expensive purchase.

Maybe it's a side effect of their Burberry provenanced head of retail? Marketing more of a lifestyle product than technology?

I think the inclusion/highlighting of third party brands is Apple sticking it's toe into broad, Amazon-rivaling e-commerce.

Apple is looking to become a/the source for all things worthy of association. Side note - they're already great at brick and mortar shelf bullying (i.e. Fit Bit & Bose).

There are a lot of non-Apple products. I recall seeing things like printers buried in the old design, but I assume drones are new? I am curious how people will feel about the perceived dilution of the brand vs. knowing their audience and curating interesting ancillary product offerings?

I, for one, am outraged. Outraged, I tell you! /sarcasm

Eh, it's the Xmas shopping season. It's to be expected and at least it's not the usual trainwreck of design that pops up on other sites. There's a room in Hell for designers that give people eye-plosions.

I haven't checked, but I guess it is "drones you can fly with your iPhone or iPad". That's what hey had last Christmas, and it follows the rule that they sell quality/decent/not too rubbish (opinions will differ on this) accessories to their hardware.

The cheapest pair of Beats is $99. Are they moving upmarket or have they always been so expensive?

Compare with Skullcandy earbuds, which seem to be of similar quality, starting at about $20.

Interesting strategy if that's the case. Definitely fits with the Apple image.

Think of Beats headphones like a very expensive fashion accessory. Their performance as headphones pales in comparison to the price. Professional audio engineers use less expensive (and FAR superior) headphones.

Price doesn't always translate to quality. In many cases, it's pure status signalling. Many luxury fashion brands operate in this manner.

they've always been ridiculously expensive. amusingly, they were made by Monster up until a year or two ago. so a cheap pair of Beats would just be Monster headphones anyway, not Beats.

Beats have always been in that price range IIRC. They were always marketed as a luxury product, just like Apple's stuff. I think Skullcandy aim to be more approachable.

Beats have always been expensive. I honestly didn't realize they had any pairs that cost <$200.

6th month old Macbook Pro, I'm getting jank on this page in both Chrome and Safari. This is legitimately disappointing.

What do you mean? The page doesn't work?

"jank" is a euphemism for "choppy scrolling".

Indescribable disgusting, like yet another n00b startup landing. I want to view key positions, click and buy.

The difference between Apple now and Apple a couple years ago is that they would never dilute the main Apple product page with external brands. While I think it's great that you can buy Apple-compatible drones, I hardly think "people who impulse buy $500 drones or $300 headphones" is a large enough market to warrant ~30% of the page.

> The difference between Apple now and Apple a couple years ago is that they would never dilute the main Apple product page with external brands.

Demonstrably false. About a third of https://web.archive.org/web/20111001165346/http://store.appl... (2011) and https://web.archive.org/web/20090312055045/http://store.appl... (2009) are taken up by third-party products.

accessory attachment rate is huge in the cell phone industry. the companies care about it so much they fire sales reps who don't sell enough accessories with the phones in the overall numbers

The headphones are owned by Apple. They paid Dre over a billion for Beats.

I wish the menu icons at the top were a custom web-font or SVG. They look a bit blurry.

Images seem to load slowly on my traffic-shaped connection.

Apple's website is just getting worse and worse...

Using user agent sniffing for responsiveness...

Noticed that too. What a poor decision -- UA sniffing is ultimately unmaintainable. And what's funny is how everyone is going full on responsive and moved away from UA sniffing because of the move to phones like Apple's. Yet here they're not. Strange.

Yeah-- it's a little awkward if you have a half-monitor window that is smaller in width than their page: it starts horizontal scrolling, which is slightly disappointing.

All I see is the fancy-scrolling kind of website with pictures of products.

No photo of the redesign of the store?

It's not even clear if this is about a physical store or an app store...

That website is the store...

store.apple.com has always been the online product store; not physical retail stores, not app stores...

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Back when SJ was alive, I bought an HP printer from the Apple store at the same time as a MBP. So it's nothing new that they have crappy stuff alongside the good stuff, it's just now on the front page.

Did not Apple buy Beats?

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