Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) and Apple Inc. (AAPL): This Could Be a Beautiful Marriage

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The Yahoo! Weather app that was just released is also clean and striking. The app pulls relevant location images from Yahoo!’s Flickr service and accomplishes a similar effect to what Microsoft’s Bing home page does, which is known for its beautiful imagery. Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) Weather also makes heavy use of intuitive gestures that have become accepted conventions.

Yahoo! Weather. Screenshot preview from iTunes App Store. Source: Apple.

This is all coming from a company that investors mostly (and justifiably) disregarded a year ago as having missed out on mobile, yet Mayer’s focus on product design is earning the company a shot at mobile redemption. The bottom line now takes a back seat to products, which is the right long-term call for Yahoo!’s turnaround.

I’ve already replaced the standard weather app on my iPhone with Yahoo!’s new mobile meteorologist. Yahoo! provides the back-end data to the iPhone’s default Weather app, so the information itself is more or less the same. Yahoo!’s is just much easier on the eyes.

On the other hand, it’s not as if Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is prepared to outsource design of its first-party apps, many of which are still mostly in their original forms. Apple doesn’t have a particularly good track record with updating its first-party apps, but hopefully that will now change with its shift toward greater interdepartmental collaboration. Ive and Mayer were recently spotted bumping elbows at an all-star pizza party of Silicon Valley’s elite. Perhaps they discussed minimalist typography.

Ive’s iOS is due out in a matter of months, and if Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) takes any cues from the design direction that Mayer is pursuing with Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO)’s offerings or integrates some of the search company’s services, Apple and Yahoo! could give Google some serious competition in the design department.

The article Yahoo! and Apple: This Could Be a Beautiful Marriage originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Evan Niu, CFA.

Fool contributor Evan Niu, CFA, owns shares of Apple. The Motley Fool recommends Apple and Google and owns shares of Apple, Google, and Microsoft.

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