Apple came out with updated Mac Pros and iMacs today. I’m an iMac man myself, so that’s what I checked out. Looks nice! Of course, The League of Internet Commenters is busy finding flaws and comparing it to similar offerings from Apple’s competitors. Hardware isn’t my strong suit, but I know half a thing about website design. So let’s look at the websites for Apple’s primary desktop computer, and the same from Dell and HP.

Spoiler alert: Dell and HP suck at web design.

To this day, Snow White may be my favorite phase of Apple design.

White models of Apple’s new iPhone 4 have continued to be more challenging to manufacture than we originally expected, and as a result they will not be available until later this year. The availability of the more popular iPhone 4 black models is not affected.

How could Apple have not foreseen the manufacturing nightmare they are now in?

In other news, I’m pretty sure this is how vaporware starts.

The Des Moines Register will be one of five regional design centers for Gannett Co. newspapers, the company announced Tuesday.

The announcement is expected to bring 35 to 60 jobs to Des Moines, said Carolyn Washburn, the Register’s editor and a vice president. Gannett hasn’t determined the timeline for the project, but it is expected to take at least two years.

The Des Moines center will design news pages for 21 newspapers, including the Iowa City Press-Citizen, and other locations in South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Missouri, Arkansas and Louisiana.

In short, the newspaper giant Gannet will be laying off designers at local papers and moving page design to a central office.

I spent almost 4 years designing my college newspaper, and let me tell you, layout went a lot smoother nights that I spent the afternoon in the newsroom. Design and writing have to be interlinked for a good, accurate product. Gannet obviously is putting cost above quality. Which is part of why newspapers are in such bad shape.

Update: The “Big News” one is also crazy touching.

The current Calendar looks very similar to iCal on Mac OS X. The new Calendar Web app gains new views for month, week, and day, as well as a handy list view. These seem to map very closely to the Calendar UI on the iPad. Along with the UI changes, Apple is adding private calendar sharing with other MobileMe users, public sharing via CalDAV and a read-only Web view, and event invitations with RSVPs. Like the new Mail, Calendar will also gain performance improvements as well.

It’s interesting that both MobileMe Mail and now Calendar have been overhauled to match closely what is on the iPad. Clearly, Apple wants iPad owners to be comfortable with MobileMe’s web apps — and vice versa.

Like iLife before it, iOS is slowly proving to be Apple’s playground for new user interfaces. It wouldn’t surprise me if Mac OS X 10.7 had an iOS feel about it in certain areas — Snow Leopard’s interface just feels thin compared to the iPad and MobileMe.

Also interesting: this beta breaks compatibility with OS X versions previous to 10.6.4, Entourage and Outlook — the new system is powered by CalDAV.

Apple seems very confident about the precise size and dimensions of the iPhone display: 3.5 inches, with a 3:2 aspect ratio. Not 3 inches. Not 4 inches. In fact, Apple seems very confident regarding everything it decided for the original 2007 iPhone. There are no new buttons, or even moved buttons. The Retina Display is emblematic of the iPhone 4 as a whole, both hardware and software: the same fundamental idea as the original iPhone, but clarified. It hasn’t really changed so much as improved — like the same picture in increasingly sharper focus.

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The iPhone 4 feels like a major step toward an idealized iPhone form factor.

He’s right — the iPhone 4 is an obvious, healthy evolutionary descendant from the original iPhone.

Apple finesses and evolves its designs over time.

The first example that came to mind was the iMac.

When the iMac G3 was announced, its simple, all-in-one design* was highlighted heavily in Apple’s advertising. In the three years it was on the market the core design remained intact. Every iMac G3 looked basically the same, even though the external treatment (Flower Power, anyone?) and internal components evolved quite a bit.

In 2004 the original iMac G5 came out and the design was praised for its simplicity. Apple highlighted the design in a product video, promoting the design — tying it to the iconic look of the iPad.

Apple has moved to aluminum and glass, but the iMac of today is much like the iMac of six years ago, just refined.

Another example that comes to mind is the pre-unibody MacBook Pro. While the case looked very, very similar to it’s PPC-powered ancestor — the PowerBook G4 — the MacBook Pro packed all new internals, which, at first, were not laid out very well. But over time, Apple’s engineers made the machines more easy to work on, and by the time the machines were phased out, even the most complicated repairs were simple to carry out.

Likewise, the insides of the pre-unibody MacBooks also evolved over the years, losing weight and gaining rigidity and simplicity.

This philosophy pretty genius, actually. Apple likes to announce one new product at a time. (At most they highlight a single line, like the yearly iPod update in the fall.) By revamping the same design over and over, it makes any major redesign a big deal. Throw in some Stevenote time and — boom — instant news story.

Another upside of this mentality is that it lets users upgrade their gear with ease of mind that they will be able to use it. Anyone who can use Snow Leopard can use OS X 10.2 pretty easily. Anyone who has an iPod can use the original iPod without skipping a beat. iOS 4 operates basically the same was as the original iPhone OS did.

It’s tempting to think of this philosophy as being a lazy one to have. In fact, it’s the opposite. A refinement is basically a critique of past products, and finding ways to improve existing work takes a great deal of honesty and attention to detail.

Of course, Apple creates artificial refinement opportunity. Why doesn’t the iPod touch or iPad have a camera? Why didn’t the 13-inch aluminum MacBook have a Firewire port?

Upgrades, baby. Upgrades.

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* Of course, the iMac harkens back to the original Macintosh in many ways, including this.

The overall build quality seems impossibly good. The iPhone 4 is beautiful to behold and feels like a valuable artifact. It’s like a love letter to Dieter Rams.