This morning I decided it was finally time to upgrade my home computing set up. My 6 year old Powerbook has served me well, but like a dog on it’s last legs, it now takes a 20 second breather before responding to commands.

On the bus, I took a look at the Apple Store to see what I should get. To my horror (I was horrified), I discovered what you see in the left image below. It’s a major surprise that Apple haven’t optimised their retail site (or brand site) for mobile devices. I guess there are three potential explanations…

1) They are doing it – but their design and QA processes mean it won’t be launched until it’s the most amazing mcommerce site ever.

2) They’re still thinking about it. Hey, there are more important things going on right now.

3) They aren’t doing it. They get a perverse enjoyment out of iPhone users zooming and scrolling all over the place to try and buy something from their site.

It’s a simple equation… effective usability + mobile-centred design = increased product exploration time and purchasing through mobile. I know this, we’ve designed and built mcommerce sites for various brands (including M & S). Many brands have launched or are launching mobile optimised versions of their sites because of this. Apple even has an Mcommerce UI webkit on it’s site for others to use!

I don’t do much design work myself nowadays – so I set myself a 20-minute challenge of creating a mobile version of the Apple site. A whirlwind of cut and paste later – I came up with the above (the image on the right).

What do you think? I’d like to see others take on this…

Tags: apple, iPhone, mcommerce, mobile web, retail