Q: Please, Why this redesign? I thought Apple should make things better... not worse.

Bob Jacobson, Jimmy Stewart, Scott Newman, Zebulun and others, for your consideration:

preferred alternatives to Apple Support Communities for providing support to users and developers of Apple products and services

I should add: I do realise and appreciate the many good things about Apple Support Communities.

Some things good, some things bad.

On balance, and following quiet careful consideration over a period of months, the few bad things are bad enough to drive me almost completely away.

For a minority of things, things that will benefit from the the widest possible audience, I'll remain. Examples:

1. sidebar missing from iCal in Lion — seeking a third party product to restore lost functionality (including some necessary negativity)
2. MAC OS LION FAQ's — there, I'm trying to prevent users from putting themselves in a situation that might cause their systems to become unusable (some necessary caution for a long term positive outcome)
3. iCal preferences, default calendar, last selected calendar: proposed improvements to behaviour and user interface (10.7, Build 11A511) — a point of reference, maybe a poll, for people finding difficulty with an aspect of the new iCal.

In the future I might return for things like (1) or (2).

For anything like (3), or wherever I ask a user to paste some text, I'm not inclined to return. Whilst I'm very conversational online, the UI of Communities simply makes me want to look away. READING IS DIFFICULT! CONVERSATIONS ARE TRULY, REALLY TRULY DIFFICULT TO FOLLOW! I rarely use uppercase in that way but I can't stress enough the damage that can be done by giving the illusion of conversation within a constrained interface that causes people to write without reading, write without searching.

The constraints of the UI — in particular, the fixed width — are, to me, too frustrating.

For my dissatisfaction with the current user interface of Apple Support Communities, maybe I'm in the wrong topic! Mine is not a knee-jerk reaction to changes, it's not even reaction to change. It's simply reaction to a design that's not well suited to technical support.

Today I completed the survey that was offered, I encourage other users to do the same.

After completing the survey, it occurred to me: where currently the personalised view is limited to content from Apple Suport Communities, there could be value in drawing selected content from other domains …

I'm getting allot of messages "tagged as spam" from Apple disussions in my Gmail folder, I previously never got.

Last count was 1405 messages.

All look genuine emails and from Apple discussion forum.....and have not signed up to recieive specific postings from them, unless i explicitlly set it too.

This was only about the time the forum changed..   Anyone else getting this ? 

Also, I don't get notified about any regaring new posts, is the option not ticked by default now ? or is there somewhere after you've posted to edit and tag as a notification ?

Btw:  ya... new forums always take getting used to, navigation particually.

the emails are new

Thats good. I decided what I dont like is the two columnur approach on the home page, with the scrollinbg window on the left to find the forums - its not very easy to scan like it was before.

I pick a two column format & I only fill topics on the left column!  Ends up looking like a one column format!!!

Robert