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I really wish and am hoping against hope that on April 1, 2026 we are going to get some kind of Retro nod to the past, and there will be something special released: I dream of a MacBook Air with a six colors rainbow on the lid and a theme/skin that can be applied to the OS that is called RetroOS...

But instead, I bet we will get a tweet.
 


Apple has been updating some classic Mac icons during the macOS Tahoe beta, upsetting some longtime Mac users who prefer the original look. In beta 5, Apple changed the design of the built-in Mac storage icon, which you'll notice if you have it on your desktop.

macOS-Tahoe-Beta-5-Macintosh-HD.jpg

The existing icon still resembled a hard disk drive, but the new icon looks like a modern solid state drive. Apple's Macs stopped using hard disk drives starting more than a decade ago. The low-cost 21.5-inch iMac was the last Mac that had a hard drive component, as it used Apple's SSD + HDD Fusion Drive. All current Macs use SSDs.

If you don't want to see the new icon, you can hide Macintosh HD from view entirely. To do so, open up the Finder app's settings and click the check mark next to "Hard disks."

Apple also updated Disk Utility and the Finder icon in earlier betas. With the Finder icon, Apple initially reversed the color scheme with the light shade on the left and the dark on the right, but the uproar was so significant that Apple had to return it to the classic color arrangement.

Article Link: Macintosh HD Gets a New Look in Latest macOS Tahoe Beta
Yes, overdue.
 
I’d be 99% of users had no idea what the old icon was.
And so the thought process was "better make it 100%"?

I acknowledge that knowing what a harddrive is/looks like is becoming less common, although I suspect the percentage was probably quite a bit higher, but that still doesn't make the generic grey box a better option. Now it doesn;t look like a harddrive, or an SSD, and it sure as hell doesn't signal "this is a avatar of all of your machine's internal storage."
 
I get that an update is probably long overdue, but the original HD icon's whole purpose was to make it glaringly obvious to the user that they are interacting with the local "internal" drive, rather than a network share or an external drive. Changing the icon to what looks like an external SSD kind of defeats that purpose.

There's a reason why the save button in so many applications is still a 3.5" floppy disk.
I agree, but they had to do something.

Would you have preferred a PCB with a chip on it? (I think that'd be cool)
 
That's too bland. An effective graphical user interface (GUI) uses metaphorical icons that mean something to users so they'll more intuitively understand the function or application the icon represents.

That icon is too bland to represent anything to anyone. Very disappointing. They should keep the original, which actually looks like a real-world object.
 
That's too bland. An effective graphical user interface (GUI) uses metaphorical icons that mean something to users so they'll more intuitively understand the function or application the icon represents.

That icon is too bland to represent anything to anyone. Very disappointing. They should keep the original, which actually looks like a real-world object.
Most people don’t know what a HDD looks like in real life. SSDs, External Drives, and flash drives, on the other hand, are commonplace in the public.
 
Someone please tell Apple that the perspectives on that icon are all off! Like the Apple logo can’t look like that if the drive is supposed to be tilted.

I don’t get what the deal is with Apple. For a company that is all about design, they shouldn’t be able to release something like that into a beta.
 
That ancient 3.5" HDD icon is a weird anachronism at this point. It's been a few years since the last Mac with an HDD shipped, and they were being phased out 10 years ago. The new one looks quite janky, though, and I also wonder if it's a placeholder.

FWIW this is the icon I've been pasting in for quite a few years now. I no longer remember where I got it or who designed it but I like it a lot:

View attachment 2534782
Unfortunately pasted icons don't show up in the sidebar. Although an icon like this is too detailed to see well at the size shown in the sidebar.
 
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