Comments on: Apple.com to be redesigned by Zeldman, Bowman

Apple.com to be redesigned by Zeldman, Bowman

dilokiam — Wed, 27 Aug 2003 19:55:50 -0800

Apple.com to be redesigned by Zeldman, Bowman Apple has contracted Jeffrey Zeldman of Happy Cog Studios and Douglas Bowman of Stopdesign to collaborate on a redesign of the company's Web site. Congratulations!

By: hyperizer

hyperizer — Wed, 27 Aug 2003 20:03:44 -0800

I'll bet it will be orange ;-)

By: Space Coyote

Space Coyote — Wed, 27 Aug 2003 20:10:13 -0800

uhhh... I'm as big an Applefilter apologist as any but... really now.

By: ColdChef

ColdChef — Wed, 27 Aug 2003 20:13:50 -0800

Can they hire someone to make better commercials for them?

By: stonerose

stonerose — Wed, 27 Aug 2003 20:14:56 -0800

Damn. Steve Jobs just sneezed, and I can't FPP it because I just posted some lame-ass shit about relief workers.

By: X-00

X-00 — Wed, 27 Aug 2003 20:17:34 -0800

er, no. Stopdesign say's:

Update: To clear up some confusion and speculation, this does not imply a visual redesign is in the works. Happy Cog and Stopdesign will be consulting with the in-house team, providing guidance and a bit of a jump start as they explore the waters of web standards and forward-thinking design.

By: riffola

riffola — Wed, 27 Aug 2003 20:17:52 -0800

As long as they don't use copius amounts of text as images, as the site currently stands, this is a very good thing. Of course we can expect the site to be a shining example of using the latest W3C recommendations, and using semantically valid code.

By: bobo123

bobo123 — Wed, 27 Aug 2003 20:26:08 -0800

Yeah, I could care less what a page looks like, just as long as the w3c validator likes it and structured nicely, like using the H1 tag to reflect the title of the page instead of just using it for larger text. And no spacer images, that's just lazy.

By: timeistight

timeistight — Wed, 27 Aug 2003 20:32:30 -0800

I think it's great and I'm very excited to see what they do. Thanks for the link, cousin.

By: kickingtheground

kickingtheground — Wed, 27 Aug 2003 20:39:40 -0800

Is this AppleFilter or ZeldmanFilter?

By: donkeyschlong

donkeyschlong — Wed, 27 Aug 2003 20:49:29 -0800

seriously. congrats to them and stuff, but the only reason you posted this is presumably because zeldman happens to be a figure in certain circles that abut metafilter or blogs or "the community" or whatever ... not really noteworthy in any general capacity.

By: timeistight

timeistight — Wed, 27 Aug 2003 20:58:59 -0800

I disagree. When wired.com adopted a standards-based approach it was post-worthy and this is even more so.

By: riviera

riviera — Wed, 27 Aug 2003 21:16:29 -0800

As long as they don't use copius amounts of text as images, as the site currently stands, this is a very good thing. Problem with Apple is that visual identity, right down to the fonts, is bound up with corporate identity, and brand identity, and everything Apple. Can you imagine an Apple site without that particular sans and serif? This is a computer that's still, at least in the workplace, for graphic designers and desktop publishers; use non-anti-aliased fonts and you alienate that part of your client base. And we all know how rabid Mac zealots can be about any dent in the sacred brand identity: any hint of departing from it and there'll be Mac users with torches at Zeldman's door. He'll need a big stick to deal with the corporate identity people, or come up with a no-brainer way to ensure that PC users have the default Apple-brand fonts installed.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Wed, 27 Aug 2003 21:44:54 -0800

Macromedia recently redesigned, as Todd pointed out they have full CSS/XHTML versions of their site but kind of shoehorn flash onto the front pages. But aside from some lame ad code, the front page of Macromedia is now valid xhtml. That apple will follow is great news.

By: Satapher

Satapher — Wed, 27 Aug 2003 21:58:16 -0800

yay! i paid $40 bucks for that book! maybe web standards have graduated from pipe dream status OFFICIALLY.

By: specialk420

specialk420 — Wed, 27 Aug 2003 22:31:16 -0800

let the guys at cubancouncil do the interface design.

By: ehintz

ehintz — Wed, 27 Aug 2003 23:02:41 -0800

This is a computer that's still, at least in the workplace, for graphic designers and desktop publishers

I dunno about that. I've been seeing an awful lot of fruit co boxen showing up on coder, sysadmin, and general unixy IT type desktops lately. And the number of iBooks and TiG4s running about Defcon this year was notable. Actually, as I understand it, a lot of the graphic designers have been os 9 holdouts; I think the Apple corps is marching to the beat of a different drum with the metamorphosis of NeXT and FreeBSD into OS X.

By: dabitch

dabitch — Thu, 28 Aug 2003 04:13:05 -0800

this rocks, I'm exited to see what he does with it! (the pressure is on Mr Z. ;)

By: JollyWanker

JollyWanker — Thu, 28 Aug 2003 05:13:59 -0800

You guys shouldn't get too excited... Apple's online presence is inextricably bound up with it's overall marketing and communications design (yeah, I know, a lot of corporate sites are, but this is Apple, so it's practically a religion...). With all due respect to Mssrs. Zeldman and Bowman, to think they'll influence the actual look and feel of the site is crazy; as Bowman's own site says, they've just been asked to look at the technical implementation. Unless they have some miracle font technology that nobody knows about, I can all but assure you those "text-pictures" in Apple's corporate Myriad are there to stay...

By: timeistight

timeistight — Thu, 28 Aug 2003 08:47:57 -0800

There's nothing inherently wrong with text-as-image as long as it's set up to degrade gracefully (appropriate alt attributes, Fahner image replacement, etc.). Zeldman may be a standards evangelist, but he's also a practical, real-world designer. If he and Bowman can replicate Apple's current look and feel in standards-compliant markup, they'll have really achieved something.

By: NewBornHippy

NewBornHippy — Thu, 28 Aug 2003 10:50:43 -0800

If anything, some change in content would be welcomed. I'm obviously not the only one to find their page a little bit condescend. Here.

By: kindall

kindall — Thu, 28 Aug 2003 11:45:57 -0800

If he and Bowman can replicate Apple's current look and feel in standards-compliant markup, they'll have really achieved something. A better experience for their users? No, not really. Ummm, what exactly will they have achieved again? I suppose it might be easier to maintain but that's not exactly difficult right now, considering Apple's site is built on WebObjects.

By: timeistight

timeistight — Thu, 28 Aug 2003 12:53:24 -0800

Certainly a better experience for their vision-impaired users, mobile phone surfing users, robotic users, text-browser users, etc.

By: Satapher

Satapher — Thu, 28 Aug 2003 13:13:56 -0800

timeistight is exactly right. chew you food and be thankful for both eyeballs.

By: Tlogmer

Tlogmer — Sat, 30 Aug 2003 14:56:11 -0800

Not to mention your fast connections. Dialup doesn't like 5 layers of nested tables (neither do slow computers).