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Macintosh HD Gets a New Look in Latest macOS Tahoe Beta
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To someone who never opened a computer (before spinning disks were outdated) the old icon explains nothing either.
Because there was a time when. Apple took such care over everything they did. It indicated a pride and craftsmanship that was missing from other company’s products. Things like making sure the slots in the screws that held the bottom of the iPhone were perfectly aligned. Things like making the packaging easy to open yet secure.
Some miss the gradual erosion of that kind of thoughtful design.
Ironic that they use an icon of what vaguely looks like a SATA SSD when internal storage has been Apple-proprietary NVMe chips soldered into the logic board for about the past decade.
RIP hard drive icon, you've double-clicked my heart for so many years 💚
RIP hard drive icon, you've double-clicked my heart for so many years 💚
Let's please stop saying "doesn't matter since it can be changed".
It does matter that Apple is THIS bad at design now.
These are basic icons that they can't even get right or do well.
It does matter that Apple is THIS bad at design now.
These are basic icons that they can't even get right or do well.
High time. HDDs are absolutely the thing of the past, they were so unreliable and loud that this is one of the things why I am not really nostalgic about the past. SSDs are now much cheaper than they were 10 years ago. Even looking at this icon doesn’t make me nostalgic: like what is it? A bunch of moving parts that will break if you shake
Why would anyone miss gradual erosion of thoughtful design? I’d rather not have gradual erosion of such quality.
Fine
But the new icon is horrible and not at all representative of what's currently in use.
I don't even know what the hell that icon is supposed to be.
It's nonsensical if trying to represent an internal storage drive.
I'm surprised it looks more like an iPod Nano than an SSD. But I'm a little surprised it took them this long, what with Apple discontinuing using traditional or hybrid hard drives in their Macs early into this decade.
I don’t think a set of chips on a green board would speak to the imagination of the masses either though.
So what do you recommend?
A strange drive enclosure icon (I guess?), poorly done, is not an improvement.
Something totally different than anything looking like an enclosure should have been the starting point to clearly reflect "internal" vs "external".
So an icon that explains its purpose to some people vs an icon that means nothing to everyone? I think the right option is obvious.
Regardless, I’m not saying they had to keep the harddrive icon forever, just that this new icon is not good enough to replace it. They can do better.
No problem changing the old icon (mechanical drives are old fashioned, sure), but what the heck is that new one? Ye gods.
Explain exactly how your getting this upset about people's opinions on what is for you a minor matter on a public forum is in any way more edifying. Not like we want to be judgmental, you understand...
I recommend not overthinking too much what an icon symbolizes.
It doesn’t have to be a literal representation of something physical. Especially not now SSD’s are such an abstract thing to most people. I bet the vast majority of users has no clue what the actual SSD in their Macs looks like nowadays. They do however tend to know to a certain degree what an external drive looks like. So as long as it conveys “drive” and you differentiate by color what type it is exactly it’s gonna be fine.
That said they might as well have kept the HDD icon.
I love custom icons. 
I would like to hide/move to another section that "Network"... ball, but I guess it's not possible.
I would like to hide/move to another section that "Network"... ball, but I guess it's not possible.
Really all just cosmetics (and pretty shocking to think they have whole departments dedicated to such stuff when there are bigger, older and longterm issues to deal with), but just out of spite I'm almost inclined to go all skeuomorphic (or the even earlier near line-drawings) with the icons on my Mac.
The sort of thing that would make Jony Ive foam at the mouth.
The sort of thing that would make Jony Ive foam at the mouth.
Well, "they" can always do better, but can they?
The old icon explains its purpose to a relatively small and shrinking number of people and potentially confuses the majority of users.
It sits on the desktop. It has an Apple logo.
If the icon looks similar to external storage icons which appear if you plug in external storage then it becomes even clearer.
But they should rename it from "Macintosh HD" to "Mac Storage" to make it foolproof.
The old icon says "hard drive". The new icon says... I don't know what that is
We still use a floppy disc for the save icon even though a considerable chunk of users have never seen one. I think we can keep using a hard drive for *check note* HD
We still use a floppy disc for the save icon even though a considerable chunk of users have never seen one. I think we can keep using a hard drive for *check note* HD
A must watch video
Source:
elk.zone
Source:
Gary (@garyj_co@mastodon.social)
Attached: 3 images @siracusa @marioguzman It’s like the design was a collab and one designer was in camera perspective — the other in orthographic… and both hit render at the same time to create a mashup 🫠 Not sure how the holes along the bottom were decided though.🤷♂️ I rendered this out...
elk.zone
Oh I don't know, if you look at the perspective changes from System 6 through Mac OS 8/9 to Mac OS X and now today it almost makes perfect sense, Apple keeps tilting it more and more. (This is of course a joke, it looks terrible).
Attachments
By MacOS 36 we’ll be looking at the back of the drive.