Apple is getting sloppy.

Graphic designers and web developers have always had a place in their heart for Apple computers. In general, they’ve always been prettier to use. But since OSX has come along, something at Apple seems to be amiss. Somewhere in the bowels of the corporate beast, they’ve become quite sloppy with their presentation layer. Apple, once known as the epitome of human interface standards adherence has slowly become a random mis-mash of interface ideas and implementations.

For starters, it’s next to impossible to identify Apple’s standard interface anymore. This is perhaps the most common gripe expressed on Daring Fireball. To be fair, OSX has been very much a work in progress, and a lot of interesting desktop UI things have come out of it, but we’re getting a tad tired of them redecorating in a seemingly randomly fashion from application to application.

Then there’s the ease of use (or namely, increasingly lack thereof) of their applications. I love iTunes, but there are so many illogical UI issues with it. I can’t browse more than one page at a time. I have to jump through hoops to add podcasts one at a time. I tried playing with Garage Band the other night and it appears that the days of being able to open a Mac app and intuitively get the hang of it in 5 minutes are slowly fading away.

And, finally–and perhaps most frustrating for designers and developers–is Apple’s lack of thought put into it’s own design and web products. For starters, take a look at Apple’s new Macbook page. Not only do they expect me to bask the gloriousness of this new machine by forcing me to maximize my web browser across the entirety of my screen, but they then expect me to read dark grey 9px text on a black background. Sure, this is a common problem when aesthetics trump basic readability (certainly a common problem on the web), but coming from Apple it’s a shock.

Then, to go a step further, it’s been discovered that Apple’s new iWeb web production software spits out awful markup and scripting. Normally, we’d associate this lack of attention to detail a typical Microsoft move…not Apple, who have long been the detail kings.

And, as a final ironic kicker, Apple’s new Photocasting feeds use a bug-ridden flavor of RSS that was only tested in a handful of readers. Of course, the irony being that Microsoft, of all people, have recently announed that Internet Explorer 7 will not only support standards compliant RSS, but ONLY standards compliant RSS.

Those last two issues are particularly egregious. As Garrick points out, Apple’s pro lines are shifting their market share increasingly towards that of software and web developers. That, combined with the fact that users are increasingly becoming developers to some extent themselves, Apple better start being careful about the quality of their own products under the hood.