Apple’s Janky Websites ⇥ applepaysupplies.com

I mentioned earlier this week that Apple’s official online store for replacement parts for its products is typeset in Roboto — the Android font — and looks kind of shady. It turns out it is not an isolated case.

Jason Robinson pointed me to the Apple Pay Merchant Supplies site, writing:

Something so fascinating about non-Apple-y Apple sites like this one and Apple Pay Merchant Supplies. I’d love to know what anti-design design brief is given to the designer.

Me too. This website — also a first-party Apple site — is typeset in Arial. Arial! And the images are pixellated.

There is something very funny to me about how Apple, a company famously protective of its own branding an image, produces websites like these which are so shoddy as to look completely disconnected. Perhaps that is the point. But why would it not want its Apple Pay branding to be presented in a way which reflects the company as a whole? Baffling, I tell you.