Maybe it’s just me being a big pedantic fussypants, but for those of you who have .Mac accounts, have you noticed how bad the main service homepage looks?
I’m not talking about the .Mac product page, which is the page you’ll get if you’re either not a member or not logged in. I’m talking about the page you get once you’ve logged in.
For those of you who don’t have a .Mac account, this is what the current member homepage looks like, and this is the area I’m talking about.
That text looks like it’s been tossed out quickly without any thought to aesthetics. There’s something seemingly uncaring and throwaway in the gigantic font size (that screams “I’M AN H1 TAG!”) and awkward letter spacing. Considering how well Apple gets the importance of design (cf. iPod, Apple Displays, yadda), the glaring lack of detail and care that the .Mac pages seem to have received is jarring.
I suppose this is partially because the member’s home page is lacking in content (the “fill-empty-space-with-large-text” syndrome) but compared to other Apple web pages, there are some shockingly amateurish problems with the type that just shouldn’t be there (like the bizarrely centre-aligned text of the new .Mac Groups section).
These are pretty nitpicky details. But we’ve come to expect good design from Apple, and it just makes the rare occasions when errors or poor design appear seem all the more glaring.
So, yo, Apple! Give that .Mac homepage some lovin’, stat!
