Apple quietly updated the retail section of its website today with a new look that more closely resembles iOS 7. Where the previous version of these pages used content boxes, borders, textured backgrounds, and gradients, the new page instead utilizes ample whitespace and thinner typefaces.
The change is probably best illustrated on the section’s home page, where images previously constrained by content boxes now fill the entire page. On the “Learn” page, buttons with heavy gradients have been replaced by thinly-outlined, lighter versions of the previous design. Gradient-filled headers have disappeared from every page, now replaced by unadorned text.
Oddly, the “Make a Reservation” button that allowed users to quickly create a Genius Bar appointment has been removed from the site’s navigation. Appointments can only be made by navigating to the Genius Bar page and clicking a link in the first paragraph of that page’s content. The Concierge page has not been updated to the new design yet.
You’ll find a bunch of before-and-after comparisons and take our poll on the new design below:
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- Learn page – old design
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- Learn page – new design
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- Genius Bar page – old design
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- Genius Bar page – new design
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- Learn page with heavy font and content borders
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- Learn page with lighter font and no content borders
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- Retail front page – old design
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- Retail home page – new design
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- Bottom of retail home page – old design
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- Bottom of retail home page – new design
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- Old gradient-filled version of the JointVenture logo
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- New unadorned text version of the JointVenture logo
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Now they need to update the Apple Store site. And fix the hideous gray navigation bar at the top.
It’s been like this for me in Canada for at least six months already. This is not new at all.
This is not really “inspired by iOS7” like the headline suggests, it’s just flat/minimal design. To the untrained eye it’s close, but a bunch of white space and lack of gradients does not equal iOS7. None of the colors, fonts, icons or anything else is the same as iOS7. If Apple was going to update the website to match iOS7 it would not look like this.
They used SVG’s for many of the icons. Which kinda goes against the design philosophy of the rest of the Apple site. And the icons themselves are all pre-iOS7 graphics.
Hmm, something tells me this was either made a long time ago and for some reason is only being uploaded now, or it was made by someone with very limited contact with Apple HQ, like an independent design firm.
Also, the 2px border radius on the grey outlined squares looks really bad, they should be using 3 or 4px like in iOS7. I could keep going but I won’t…