Apple’s streamlining, redesigning and flattening efforts go beyond iOS 7 or Jonny Ive’s title. Today, the company has issued a major revamp to its iCloud.com Beta website. The enhanced experience focuses on an all-new yet familiar look which takes more than a few clues from iOS 7, to put it mildly.
But rather than draw snippets of inspiration from the forthcoming iOS 7 refresh, Apple has taken it upon itself to actually recreate the complete iOS 7 look and feel, right in your web browser and down to the flattened icons, minimalistic look and light fonts.
I’ve taken a bunch of screenshots so do check out the full gallery right below…
Right below is your new iCloud Home screen.
That background is taken from iOS 7, by the way. It’s animated smoothly on my mid-2011 MacBook Air, right in the Safari browser – it’s pretty incredible. Just don’t try turning your Mac upside down or shake it.
Check out the Account section.
You gotta love the circular selector in the profile image manager.
I also love the time zone selector (below). For those wondering, iCloud web apps feature web notifications but you can’t mute these yet like in OS X or iOS.
The iCloud Mail is fast and responsive.
Check out the “app switcher”, it looks great! Notice the new Home button which takes you right back to your iCloud Home screen. Again, just like in iOS. Streamlining, indeed.
iCloud Contacts, just like in iOS 7.
Of course, there’s a reason they’re calling it iCloud Beta.
Your new iCloud Calendar.
iCloud Notes, one of my most often used stock apps.
Clicking the down arrow in iCloud Reminders reveals all your completed tasks. Plus, there’s a handy button to delete all the tasks I’ve completed to keep my reminders clean and uncluttered.
Find My iPhone opens with a nice compass animation as the web app is busy locating my devices. Strangely enough, Find My iPhone still uses Google Maps tiles.
Linen background in iWork apps? Boom, gone!
Of course, iWork for iCloud apps now support rich editing capabilities, here’s Pages.
And Numbers. Not everything is in place yet. “Chart editing is coming soon,” a notice reads.
And Keynote.
Even the error page has to be beautiful!
All told, I’m sure you’ll agree this is very well done. I’m curious as to whether this apparent streamlining of iCloud web apps indicates the possibility of a flat OS X down the road.
There’s no escaping the fact that OS X Mavericks is a mixed bag of clean and skeuomorphic design (we’re looking at you, Reminders!) as Apple surely isn’t done yet with the de-Forstallization of the Mac operating system.