Could be a sign of a shift to a darker tone in OSX Lion as as been rumoured in the past.

Darker tone? OSX is going to go all futuristic-holocaust on us? "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe...."

Well, they are back from the dead and much more powerful this time, so it must be a sequel.

Or a more dark plastic look based on the top menubar. Out with the metal, in with the plastic?

Agreed, the translucent dark black looks somewhat Windows Vista/7-ish. The metallic theme was more distinctive, more Apple. Wonder what their reasoning behind the redesign is...

I'm not seeing any dark black -- am I not getting the same thing everyone else is getting?

Honestly if there's a difference from the old version I don't see it myself.

See the Macbook Air page for instance: http://www.apple.com/macbookair/

Though that's the only page so far I've found with a dark black background. I'm not sure why it's black, all the other Macbook Air pages have a light background.

This is the old and unchanged MacBook Air page. Apple heavily customizes product pages – no two look alike. That has always been the case and is definitely nothing new. I think that the Final Cut Studio page was entirely black in the past, maybe even the Mac Pro page.

Here is a screenshot from 2007: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pxlronin/542462785/

Also from 2007: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaymeydad/541257980/

It's mostly the same, but the current Macbook Air page does have the new menu.

Obviously. Site wide elements obviously changed (I think the site map at the bottom also slightly changed), but that’s not really relevant to the comment. The page content itself – everything minus the site wide elements – is completely unchanged. It being black is not new and also not surprising.

Ok, right. I wasn't contradicting that the Air page is customized, just was saying that the menu is change. I see what you were meaning now. Sorry!

Erm. Dark Grey. Sorry. aixelsyd again.