20 ms·
Off-topic but this website is such a blatant rip-off of the AirPods Pro landing page[1] (EDIT: Discussed at the time [2]), and I _hate_ the UX. I'm not sure wha
by clusmore 6y ago
Off-topic but this website is such a blatant rip-off of the AirPods Pro landing page[1] (EDIT: Discussed at the time [2]), and I _hate_ the UX. I'm not sure what device this is optimised for, but it requires a tonn of scrolling, it's janky, you end up scrolling past the info you want, it breaks basic functionality like Ctrl+F. Why not just make a video instead of a webpage, since that's clearly the effect they're going for?
[1]: https://www.apple.com/airpods-pro/ https://www.apple.com/airpods-pro/
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21378754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21378754
- cmckn 6y agoScroll-jacking is a scourge. I appreciate what Apple and others are going for, but it's way overused and is better suited for a splash screen in a retail store than the main product page.
- po1nter 6y agoI 100% agree with the point you're making but at least Apple's landing page is scrolling smoothly on Firefox (76.0b8 (64-bit) on Windows 10) unlike Google's which is "jumpy".
- clusmore 6y agoOn the other hand, Google's is 4.5MB whereas Apple's is 55MB. For comparison, the 1 minute YouTube video[1] in 1080p is only 11MB. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC9urbiVp4M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC9urbiVp4M
- po1nter 6y agoApple should be using WebP on their page. It'll reduce the page size quite a bit.
- foepys 6y agoSafari doesn't support WebP.
- 72deluxe 6y agoThat's insane!
- bzb3 6y agoWhat, Apple not sucking up to whatever new format Google wants to shove into the web?
- viraptor 6y agoApple not supporting formats which are available in the wild. They don't have to promote it or advertise it in any way. But not being able to play webp at this point is kind of silly if the alternatives are worse. Also, Chrome does support AAC which was popularised by Apple pushing it onto iPhones.
- shakna 6y agoSafari's list of supported video formats is pitiful. > Safari on iOS supports low-complexity AAC audio, MP3 audio, AIF audio, WAVE audio, and baseline profile MPEG-4 video. Safari on the desktop (Mac OS X and Windows) supports all media supported by the installed version of QuickTime, including any installed third-party codecs. [0] Despite that probably being written many, many years ago, it's pretty accurate from what I can tell. [0] https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/AudioVideo/Conceptual/Using_HTML5_Audio_Video/AudioandVideoTagBasics/AudioandVideoTagBasics.html https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Au...
- lstamour 6y agoThat’s not strictly true. You can use Apple’s preferred alternative to WebP, HEIF: https://www.cnx-software.com/2018/03/17/heif-image-container-format-leverages-h-265-hevc-to-store-photos-and-image-sequences/ https://www.cnx-software.com/2018/03/17/heif-image-container... And eventually AVIF: https://twitter.com/mathias/status/1248135249663574017 https://twitter.com/mathias/status/1248135249663574017 & https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=207750 https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=207750
- dmitriid 6y agoApple's page also features way more animations which are more extensive and complex than a total of may be three on Google's page? And also seamlessly flow into each other.
- vile_wretch 6y agoInterestingly the AirPods Pro scrolling is super jumpy for me in Safari 13.
- whalesalad 6y agoThe experience from Google transcends this page. What you’re describing has been the difference between iOS and Android for years.
- chrismorgan 6y agoOn Windows 10 on a Surface Book (high-DPI): both are utterly unusable in Firefox Nightly, and lousy (but just barely usable) in Chrome. I despise such sites. It’s fundamentally impossible to do such scrolljacking well, and I wish they’d all agree to just stop trying.
- frank2 6y ago>I wish they’d all agree to just stop trying I don't need all site owners to stop trying, I just need one usable browser that ignores the attempts.
- chrismorgan 6y agoTake a look at the AirPods Pro page with JavaScript disabled. After a very slightly suboptimal start (consuming too much vertical space for fairly meaningless content), it’s actually pretty great. That’s what they should have made for everyone. But far more of the time, what you request is impossible, because such fancy scrolljacking sites are normally utterly broken with JS disabled. The Pixel Buds page is basically just blank, for example.
- sneak 6y agoEverything about the pixel buds is a blatant airpods ripoff, it appears. That’s fine by me, though. I’d love to see a third company/platform try to get in on the act, too.
- screye 6y agoWhy does it sound like people keep disregarding Samsung ? Samsung has a lot of first with true-wireless headphones. Wireless charging, IEM style buds and first android to have Apple style seamless pairing. They pair to multiple devices too. They also have much better battery life than both the pixel buds and air pods. Lastly, the android app itself is pretty great with decent customization and information, without looking half bad. Idk why they get left out of the conversation.
- sahaskatta 6y agoThe Samsung Buds+ also work pretty well with iOS too. There's an app to tweak settings, view battery life, and update the earbuds too.
- hobofan 6y agoBoth the product and the landing pages are so generic that I would have a hard time calling them a rip off. Every major audio/smartphone company has a product with very similar featurset in their lineup, and this is just Google following suite.
- aikinai 6y agoThe products and pages look the same since they all copied Apple. The same thing has happened with packaging. I guess you could technically call it standard now, but it all originated with Apple.
- hobofan 6y agoI don't know how so much people believe that AirPods were the first of their kind of product. This isn't the first time I had to make a similar comment. Bragi crowdfunded "The Dash" in early 2014 (to much publicity) and released them in late 2015. To my knowledge this was the first high-profile pair of "disconnected wireless earbuds". AirPods were released late 2016, so a full year later, so they were not the first with this kind of a product by a long stretch. By that time, Bragi already released a second stripped-down version of their product. The Pixel buds also much more closely resemble "The Dash" than AirPods. As for product pages, I sadly don't have paper trail, but I'm sure people more into the topic can find examples dating back ~10 years for pages where the product twirls around the page while scrolling (and there is nothing more connecting the product page for the Pixel Buds and the AirPods).
- neuronic 6y agoThe Pixel Buds look nice, but the page stutters like absolute hell while the AirPods page moves like butter (Firefox 76). Must be a subtle reference to their mobile operating systems.
- alias_neo 6y agoI had the same thought, having first viewed it on Desktop (FF 75). On mobile it's much smoother (Oneplus 7T Pro), however, it doesn't come close to how in awe I was at the smoothness of the Mavic Mini mini-site on mobile: https://www.dji.com/uk/mavic-mini https://www.dji.com/uk/mavic-mini
- the_pwner224 6y agoThe site stutters a lot for me on Firefox on my 1+ 7 Pro. I had a hard time trying to read the text in the middle of the first scroll section because it also seems to override the scroll to have tons of acceleration & low friction - which does not combo well with stuttery input. Meanwhile Apple's scrolling pages work great.
- rtkwe 6y agoThe Mavic site is doing something different than the the Airpod and Pixel Buds pages. The Mavic looks like it's triggering the animations once they're on screen. The two other sites are tying those animations directly to the scroll position, on both the Google and Apple sites the videos and animations will play backwards when you scroll back up. The closest the Mavic site comes looks like some of the static images replay if you scroll back up and down.
- alias_neo 6y agoThat makes sense. I could "feel" that they're implemented differently, but as a non-web developer I couldn't tell what the difference was. I just recall being really impressed with how the Mavic site looked/felt on mobile when it was first posted here some months ago.
- have_faith 6y agoBoth pages crawl to a halt in chrome on a 2017MBP using a 4k external display.
- globular-toast 6y agoIt's a copycat product, plain and simple. I guess they thought there was no point pretending otherwise.
- screye 6y agoThings like this make me feel the accusations about Google are true. A bunch of brilliant engineers with no sense of how to develop a product around the said technology. I used to be a huge critic of Samsung for blatantly copying Apple back in the early Galaxy days, but Samsung has come a long way at differentiating themselves and carving an identity for themselves that isn't all that terrible.
- crazygringo 6y agoThe entire product is a copy of the AirPods. But you know what? I'm fine with that. That's how competition works, and competition is what brings down prices. And I personally find the scrolling page design (both Apple's and Google's) pretty cool. It would drive me nuts if a site I used daily implemented something like that, like if it became a trend for news sites. But to show off a new product where I'll scroll through once in my life? It's pretty slick as far as I'm concerned. (Provided you've got the CPU to handle it.)
- cat199 6y ago> The entire product is a copy of the AirPods. as if airpods were the 1st rechargable wireless earbuds anyway
- kelw22 6y agoGenuine question: has anyone ever made the claim that being rechargeable is what makes AirPods unique?
- hackmiester 6y agoTo me, the biggest thing that makes AirPods unique is that they look pretty weird. The Google ones don't, so I see them as clearly differentiated from AirPods.
- kadoban 6y agoWhat _is_ unique about AirPods? All I can come up with is the look. These ones from Google look way different. Are they really clones in some way?
- Kalium 6y agoWhen you're selling a luxury good, one of the important aspects is it being recognizable. Other people in the target demo need to be able to see and understand that your customer owns and uses a status symbol without it being tastelessly obviously flashy. Think the Birkin bag.
- thanksforfish 6y agoThis is a good reminder that if you want good design, don't just rip off another site, implement it, and ship. Build a prototype, user test it, and when they say this sucks, try something else. I'd love to see some more tech companies go the Berkshire Hathaway route: https://berkshirehathaway.com/ https://berkshirehathaway.com/ Metrics for load time, readability, usability, are great. :)
- jahn716 6y agoWow that BH site. Could be a remnant from the Geocities/Angelfire days and I wouldn't say otherwise.
- yaitsyaboi 6y agoYou might like that website, but do you really think most consumers would have faith in your product if the landing page looked anything like that? People use external markers like that all the time--the bathroom at this diner is nice == the kitchen must be clean.
- thanksforfish 6y agoMy suggestion is to user test your site. I agree most consumers would not like such sites (and that you'd learn that in user tests). I also believe consumers hate scroll jacking, janky experiences (anecdata elsewhere in the thread). My personal taste is just one data point.
- kristianc 6y ago> My suggestion is to user test your site. I agree most consumers would not like such sites (and that you'd learn that in user tests). Are you really suggesting that Google doesn’t do user tests? Google likely has a larger headcount on UX than most tech companies have employees.
- thanksforfish 6y agoZero user testing? No, I'm not suggesting that. My reply is to the BH thread.
- eastbayjake 6y agoMore of an Amazon Echo Buds rip-off than AirPods, yeah? (Right down to the name and competing voice assistant.)
- neil_s 6y agoI don't know who actually ripped off who, if at all. But in terms of product name, if we go based on public launch date, the first generation of Pixel Buds were released in Oct 2017 and the first generation of the Amazon Buds were released Oct 2020 IIUC. Google Assistant was announced in May 2016, Amazon Alexa was launched in 2014. Disclaimer: I work at El Googs but not on these products. These dates I just searched on the web within 30 seconds.
- shrimpx 6y agoThat choppy frame by frame scrolling interaction is hilariously bad.
- bananicorn 6y agoThe page is in fact almost completely blank for me - I don't think it loaded properly, all I can see are the related products at the bottom... Maybe it's because I'm on firefox? Edit: it works in chromium, what a piece of junk.
- RandomBacon 6y agoFirefox for Android, and I'm having the same issue. I do have uBlock Origin installed, but I'm not going to disable it for this.
- josteink 6y ago> it works in chromium, what a piece of junk. Google is what Google does. And it’s not webstandards.
- whywhywhywhy 6y agoLot of people have been raving about these new Apple product pages but really they're at the point where some of them are basically just video trailers that you scroll through, and that comes through in terms of information density too.
- bestnameever 6y agoApple really continues to be the leader when it comes to design.