I really appreciate that someone's job (or at least part of it) was to "prototype concepts that would add some interactive sparkle to the site". Working on a larger team, we generally add this kind of interaction at the start of a project or during redesign. There are larger prototypes, of course. But very rarely is someone designated to independently go out and just find small ways of making the experience just a bit nicer for the users, and build that; and I really like that idea.

As much as there are things to complain about Apple in 2026, it's nice that it still seems like their design and UX teams have latitude to do things like this. See the folding animation on the Duo, for example.