iCloud beta site adopts iOS 7's look

The clean, anti-skeumorphic look of iOS 7 caught many Apple fans by surprise, and it appears that Jony Ive-inspired design is only going to spread to more of Apple’s creations. According to 9 to 5 Mac, Apple’s iCloud beta site has now been updated with the same kind of style found Apple’s upcoming iOS 7 — one that ditches the fake leather and shiny chrome for cleaner, more minimalistic icons and applications.

After learning of this change, I dove into the iCloud beta myself to check things out. Comparing the iCloud apps to the versions installed on my iOS 7 beta-running iPad, I found the Reminders and Calendar apps looked like they’d been pulled right off of my tablet and plastered onto my laptop screen. Which isn’t a bad thing — I’d often felt that the iCloud apps felt busy, and I’ve been spoiled by Google Calendar’s clean look and feel on the desktop.

There are some places — in the Pages, Numbers and Keynotes apps, which Apple calls iWork for iCloud — where iOS 7’s look hasn’t entirely grabbed hold. These use the old-style icons and throw back to that patterned design we still see in the non-beta iCloud site, iOS 6 and earlier, and OS X. It’s not a stretch to imagine these apps being updated to sport the new look, but since they’re in beta and have only been public knowledge since iOS 7 was announced, I find it kind of odd that they didn’t sport the iOS 7 look to begin with.

There’s no definitive timetable yet on when this new look will be rolled out to the official version of iCloud, or when the iWork for iCloud apps will lose their beta tags and be unleashed on the whole world, but next month isn’t a bad guess. That is when most of the world is expecting a new iPhone, and traditionally, Apple has released its latest mobile OS around that same time. It would make sense for the company to let everything blast off at once, unleashing that new iOS 7 style not only on its iOS devices but on iCloud, as well.

Will OS X be updated with that look someday? It seems a bit odd to roll it out in certain places but not on the company’s desktop operating system, which also has its own versions of the iCloud and iWork apps. That’s something we’ll have to keep an eye on, though a full refresh of OS X is a much bigger undertaking than one of iOS. Apple might need an extra year.

Have you jumped into the iCloud beta site and given it a try? If you do, be sure to drop by and let us know what you think of the new look.