Macintosh HD Gets a New Look in Latest macOS Tahoe Beta

[neomorpheus]

Its horrible.

 

[JohnC1959]

Why, exactly, did they have to do something other than "because old hard drive is old"?

If this were a change being proposed for Mac OS X 10.3 or earlier, then I might agree with you because the anatomically-correct internal hard-drive icon was always a terrible design (at least compared to common alternatives, including the icon used in Mac OS 9 or earlier). But now that icon has 20+ years of being ingrained as the standard internal hard-drive icon for Mac OS. Changing it now does nothing to help with making the OS more intuitive.


No, a PCB would definitely be worse from a user-friendliness perspective, but I do agree it would look pretty cool.

The change does no real good but also no real bad. It's an incredibly minor change that is suitable for a whim. People will spend at most two seconds going 'hmmm' then move on and forget it.

 

[ThomasJL]

There goes one of the last pieces of beautiful classic Apple-style skeuomorphic design, and it’s being replaced with tasteless Microsoft-style flat design. Apple started copying Microsoft-pioneered flat design in 2013. Steve Jobs would’ve never allowed something that clueless and mediocre to happen, but since Tim Cook is a clueless and mediocre bean counting corporate suit, Cook allowed it to happen.

 

[iDento]

They wisely made it an external SSD, perhaps a Freudian slip at how no one can afford their internal storage upgrade pricing

And people who paid for insanely expensive internal storage, get this icon, and a *

 

[frownface]

It's been a long time since a disk drive on a modern computer (let alone a mac) even looks like that. While 3.5" mechanical hdd's still exist, most computers these days ship with either NVMe drives (which closer resemble sticks of ram) or simply with chips soldered onto the computer; but im guessing an icon depicting a few chips would be confusing to the layperson.

Who said skeumorphism is dead

 

[JohnC1959]

It's been a long time since a disk drive on a modern computer (let alone a mac) even looks like that. While 3.5" mechanical hdd's still exist, most computers these days ship with either NVMe drives (which closer resemble sticks of ram) or simply with chips soldered onto the computer; but im guessing an icon depicting a few chips would be confusing to the layperson.

Who said skeumorphism is dead

And besides, this icon could well be seen applying to an external drive as well as the internal one.

 

[frownface]

There goes one of the last pieces of beautiful classic Apple-style skeuomorphic design, and it’s being replaced with tasteless Microsoft-style flat design. Apple started copying Microsoft-pioneered flat design in 2013. Steve Jobs would’ve never allowed something that clueless and mediocre to happen, but since Tim Cook is a clueless and mediocre bean counting corporate suit, Cook allowed it to happen.

tbh it still is skeumorphic design.

It's been over a decade since any internal storage on a mac has looked anything like either of those.

I don't think apple has made any external hard drives since maybe the time capsule which was discontinued nearly 10 years ago??

A quick search for any first party products on their website just yields the below. So yeah, they've simply moved from skeumorphic icons of 30 year old items to icons of 10 year old items.

 

[Mac Fly (film)]

What are the 3 holes? Triple headphone jack?

Indeed, they’re not just bringing it back, they’re doing so for the whole family. There’ll be headphone jack parties. Gather round, everyone!

 

[turbineseaplane]

If this is supposed to visually communicate “internal SSD”, then it must have been created by Image Playground. Is it to convey “external”?? If so, when is Apple going to release an external SSD with a microSD card slot?

View attachment 2534832

When I first glanced at it, it looked a little like an AV dongle for iOS devices with the cable ripped off

 

[frownface]

And besides, this icon could well be seen applying to an external drive as well as the internal one.

It's true, and while you can still buy external mechanical drives same way you can still buy internal 3.5" mechanical drives, usb drives, or even floppy disks; they're on a sharp decline

 

[nathansz]

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

excellent

I'm taking this

 

[sevoneone]

I've wondered for a long time why they don't just use the icon from About This Mac for the internal drive. Better than the 20 year old spinny disk and whatever this iPod Shuffle looking slab is.

 

[einsteinbqat]

The perspective is odd

 

[transpo1]

Fugly and nondescript new icon - not to mention that anyone could already change it for anything else.

Agreed. It couldn't be more generic. Perhaps they were trying not to offend any single hard drive manufacturer. They should have just made it look like M.2 NVMe storage (minus the Samsung logos of course):

 

[pdxrevolution]

I wonder if they will ever rename "Macintosh HD." Apple is dropping support for the 2019 iMac in Tahoe, which was the final Mac that could have a hard drive in it and still run the current macOS. So there are no Macs that can run Tahoe with a built-in in hard drive (the six Mac Pro users out there, don't @me). Everything is now SSD. Makes sense to not use an icon that looks like a drive your Mac didn't come with. But, if that's important to Apple, you'd think they'd change the name to "Macintosh SSD."

 

[KurtWilde]

What’s the save button now?

 

[nathansz]

Oh imagine actual 3D icons so they have a unified perspective on screen.

Privacy nightmare - but any Mac with a webcam could track the users position and set the one-point perspective relative to their eye line 😎

Don’t give them any ideas

This is the sort of pointless over engineered nonsense that gets in the way of making sure things actually work properly

 

[nathansz]

What’s the save button now?

Where in macOS is there a save button?

 

[Jeeve Stubbs]

From realistic to sketchy.

 

[DENZIE]

I never knew the MagSafe battery pack had a built in speaker

 

[CharlesShaw]

but at least that icon was somewhat explanatory of what it was

Exactly. Like using an envelope icon for email, even though there is no paper envelope involved.

 

[allenvanhellen]

Did they rename it to Macintosh SSD?

 

[germinator]

Absolutely worst icon ever. Indicative of the degradation of Apple's design and IU.
It's so bad it's laughable. What are the 3 holes?

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

To people who thought liquid glass and 26 iterations meant the death of flat design and emergence of 3D and skeuomorphic design . Ha

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

Absolutely worst icon ever. Indicative of the degradation of Apple's design and IU.
It's so bad it's laughable. What are the 3 holes?

3 holes are exits for the spinning fan , I guess ? Doesn't make sense since this is a ssd form factor but whatever

But look at this crap, above is macOS 26 and below is previous

Disk utility . adjustable wrench and hexagon. lol