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Apple.com (2004)
- k-mcgrady 13y agoThe navigation bar is the most interesting part I think: - Store - iPod + iTunes - .Mac - Quicktime .Mac and Quicktime were actually two of the most prominently featured products on Apple.com. Wow. iPod and iTunes have stuck around but are now treated separately probably due to the variety of content available on iTunes (apps, books, movies, games). I find it strange that Mac's aren't featured on the 2004 navigation bar. Instead it's OS X.
- chaz 13y agoNavbars are a great way to get a sense of the company's priorities, generally influenced by the biggest money makers. Amazon's navbar in 2004: https://web.archive.org/web/20041102060756/http://www.amazon.com https://web.archive.org/web/20041102060756/http://www.amazon.... Books, clothing, electronics, toys/games, music, phones. Today, it's streaming video, streaming music, ["streamed"] ebooks, Kindles, apps ... and then (separated by a horizontal bar) Books / Audible (still plugging digital goods!), music/movies/games, electronics, home, etc.
- iambateman 13y agoOr what they want to be money makers.
- bertil 13y agoIndeed: Quicktime wasn’t making much money at the time (or ever was) but when streaming films became a Moor’s law prospect possibility, the fight with Real became insane.
- chaz 13y agoOr what they don't want to be money losers. When the support link is in the top nav, it's an indicator of a customer-focused company. Bonus points for a toll-free number at the top. If it's buried in a tiny font at the bottom, you might want to walk away.
- bertil 13y agoQuicktime was mainly to have access to some of the rare actual videos on-line at the time: film trailers, hosted by Apple (and streamed by Akamai at great expense). It seemed incredible at the time. I would religiously connect there every Saturday for new releases and wow at how fast a 240 would download. You had that, dancing-baby/wombat gifs, or that guy jumping into a tree (that because YouTube first big video) if you weren’t tired of it, and… that’s it. The Show with Ze Franck was insane idea: the technical feat was more mind-bogging that his antics.
- robinhoodexe 13y ago"Introducing iLife '04 - it's like Microsoft Office for the rest of your life" I nearly pissed myself in laughter.
- dkyc 13y agoCan you explain this line to me? I somehow don't get it.
- antris 13y agoSounds like a pretty accurate description of hell to me.
- kzrdude 13y agoIf MS Office is a suite of programs that you use in the office, iLife would be "for the rest of your life" = free time, that is, Photos, Music (Listening + Arranging), and more(?)
- QSIITurbo 13y agoAs far as I can tell: He is extremely easily amused and has a terrible case of urinary incontinence. The former will heal with age, but the latter will get worse.
- bertil 13y agoMicrosoft Office was pretty much was computers were to most people, and they came off (Bill Gates personally, ‘computer-savvy‘ managers in general and meetings involving PowerPoint in particular) as… no really inspiring. ‘Office life’ was an oximoron -- the title of the show “The Office” didn’t make sense. It was dredge reports, inexplicably weird titles, erratic page numbers, section numbers and inserted images on crack, illegible bar-charts because color-copies where too expensive, and tweaking with margins that sent the key information outside of your fax borders. Apple played on that angle a lot. They were the computer for the cool kids who made music, took wowing photos, edited gorgeous books, and gave snappy presentations. Things clicked. They had the cool typeface, always, without even pointing at it. They even knew those were not called ‘fonts’. They made computers you actually wanted to spend time with, not be paid to be next too. Not sure why OC is pissing: either at the office gimmicky memories, or how Apple’s angle seems dated now. But, at the time, that was compelling.
- icodestuff 13y ago"WWDC 2004 Register early and save" Ah, for the days when you didn't have to register in the first minute to have a chance of getting a ticket.
- Garmonidas 13y agoIt's more shocking see how Samsung was 7 years ago ( https://web.archive.org/web/20070222044411/http://www.samsung.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20070222044411/http://www.samsun... ) and now ( http://www.samsung.com http://www.samsung.com ). Evolving from refrigerators to smartphones!
- Edmond 13y agoit may well come back to refrigerators once the "internet of things" takes hold, except this time it would be your smartphone talking to your refrigerator and vice-verse :)
- SemanticCoder 13y agoIt's still pretty much about refrigerators, washing machines and cameras. Just the US site is different from the rest of the world. Their German site for example clearly advertises washing machines and refrigerators on the front page: http://www.samsung.com/de http://www.samsung.com/de .
- Phlarp 13y agoI see smartphones, solid state drives and TVs. Perhaps it's targeting based on cookies?
- triangleman83 13y agoI'm seeing LCD TVs, a smartphone, and an ultra-mobile PC...
- antonius 13y agoThe change in technology and "coolness" is staggering. I remember buying the white 20GB iPod with the scroll wheel and being the coolest kid in high school. Looking at it now and it looks painfully outdated and ugly (IMO).
- rayiner 13y agoThe word you're looking for is "fashion."
- pekk 13y agoFashion is something Apple is good at.
- rayiner 13y agoIts not just Apple, of course. The entire web is very fashion conscious.
- pekk 13y agoThat's true. Especially today - some oldies like Amazon don't have a lot of knack for it. I meant that few companies have the same ability to predict or set fashion that Apple does. At least, the same awareness or willingness to make it a top priority.
- GotAnyMegadeth 13y agoOr the same need to make it a top priority
- skyebook 13y agoIt's kind of interesting how that G5 ad on the front page has a testimonial about freeing you from the chains of Intel and MS. Apple was was probably right in the middle of getting 10.4 ready to run on Intel at this point
- cleaver 13y agoI remember scratching my head at the numbers from Apple... The PowerPC chips were four times faster than Intel (or some such number). Then they released on Intel and it became twice as fast. (Of course, this might have been somewhat accurate if PowerPC did not gain performance at the same rate over the years. Still worth a chuckle, though.)
- wsc981 13y agoApple tended to use numbers that were based on calculations made with AltiVec[0], a very powerful SIMD instruction set on PowerPC processors. Of course many apps didn't benefit much from AltiVec at all. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltiVec http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltiVec
- JohnTHaller 13y agoApple always cherry-picked those benchmarks. The Apple PowerPC machines were so much slower than Intel-based Windows machines (in actual use) yet Apple would always claiming they were 4x faster. Then Apple releases their Intel based machines and suddenly they were the fastest ever.
- smackfu 13y agoKind of funny that the "iBook Logic Board Repair Extension Program" gets a front page link.
- zafiro17 13y agoThat lampshade imac was one of the coolest bits of hardware ever. I find it more interesting than the new "trashcan" model. I had a friend with a lampshade imac and I was very envious. It still seems more useful to me than the new all in one macs where you basically can't service anything. The lampshade was a good compromise.
- usingpond 13y agoThat's a PowerMac/Mac Pro you're thinking of, lampshade is iMac.
- pekk 13y agoNot so different from Apple in the late 90s. And it kept struggling to find its stride until the iPhone. Let's have some context. 1993, Apple Newton 1994, IBM Simon 1996, PalmPilot/PalmOS 1996, Apple Pippin game console 1998, iMac 1998-2000, tons of MP3 players 2000, Microsoft Pocket PC/Windows CE 2001, Microsoft's tablet PCs 2001, iPod 2001, OS X 2002, Pocket PC smartphones 2002, BlackBerry (I included a few flops to show that this wasn't a God-given destiny but an iterative search process...) So as of 2004: * PDAs are an established market but mostly limited to business. The functionality will only take off in smartphones, which are really just PDA-phones * iPod has gobbled up the pre-existing MP3 player market in a way that prefigures iPhone, with a decent device and very good marketing * Smartphones are just getting taken up in 2004, as an outgrowth of the PDA market. It'll be 5 years before iPhone hits a pre-existing smartphone market with a decent device, very good marketing and "app store" * Tablet PCs are bombing, largely because nobody understands or wants the form factor yet Near future after 2004: transition to Intel 2005-2007ish, MacBook Pro and MacBook 2006, iPhone 2007, Android 2007, MacBook Air 2008, iPad 2010. and consider the contribution of economic downturns/booms to the timing of products which did well
- iambateman 13y agoGreat web design basically doesn't need to change over time. Apple has kept the same ideas: big hero image, top nav bar, a few secondary things, and that's it for a decade.
- largehotcoffee 13y agoBlinking "Hot News Headlines" bar. You know, great web design.
- coldtea 13y agoIt's not blinking. It just changes headlines. You know, like what this AJAX gizmo is often used to do today.
- Phlarp 13y agoAll completely overpowered by the skeuomorphic image background buttons.
- bennyg 13y agoThe biggest thing that sticks out to me is the design of the tab buttons in the nav bar. I remember looking at Photoshop tutorials and using Macromedia Fireworks to create buttons that looked similar to this for phpBB styles. Yikes, I'm not old. But damn I'm old.
- abdophoto 13y agoYou should take a look at this 15 year slideshow of Apple's homepage: http://thetechblock.com/15-years-apples-homepage/ http://thetechblock.com/15-years-apples-homepage/
- larrys 13y agoI've seen that but just took another look. No doubt they should have the dates on the pages otherwise it's hard to get the full effect.
- cordite 13y agoThat machine still feels modern to me. From the outside.
- JohnTHaller 13y agoAh, the 'truth stretching' benchmarks of the advertising for the Apple PowerPC machines.
- tomswartz07 13y agoSeeing the 'Education' section makes me disappointed. Apple's recent departure from the educational market really changed how school districts (like the one where I'm currently employed) made their purchasing decisions. They used to offer deep discounts for K-12 and higher ed, even featuring it on their main page. Now they don't offer anything of the sort.