Upgrade - 595: Contrast in the Horse

Episode Date: December 22, 2025

From Relay, this is Upgrade. The Upgrade Holiday Special, in fact, this is episode 595. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace, Century and ExpressVPN. My name is Mike Hurley, and I have. pleasure of being joined by old St. Nick himself, Jason Snow. Hi, Jason. Oh, ho. Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas! Wow, that was a level of enthusiasm. I was not expecting. I mean, I don't know. You set me up for it. I really did. I guess. It is our holiday special, so you know it's going to be jingles all the way. So I would like to thank our friend Lex for the creation of our wonderful jingles that we use at different episodes throughout the year. I will point you over.

to lex dot games which is lex lex lex's games uh i'm going to say it's lex friedman it's not that lex friedman every single time i say lex friedman somebody writes in and says oh that lex freeman no it's a different lex free no it's not it's the other one it's the other one that's right but mike we don't have time for all of that because i don't jason what do you think it's time for snow talk i have a snow talk question that comes to us from drew who wants to know jason do you have any favorite holiday snacks? Holiday snacks. So this is a food question, is it?

Yes. There's so much I eat for Christmas. There's so much I eat for Christmas. There's so much I eat for Christmas. Could you grab me a beer? All right. We have a jingle for the food question. Wait.

Where does that come from? That's Lex. Wait, did you have that made? Last year. Yeah. Oh, man. I forgot. about that.

Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Favorite holiday snacks. Ginger cookies, I love it. I love a ginger cookie. Wait, oh, we've done this before. Yeah, we've done this whole thing before. That's okay. It's part of the heartwarming charm.

We repeat these traditions. I love a ginger cookie. I asked about this because we just spoke about snacks, right? So Drew wrote in about Hollywood, Hollywood? Yeah, yeah. So ginger cookie, my friend Tina, who is not tuna, makes fudge every year. That was a deep cut upgrade reference there. fudge every year. And because

my son doesn't like the taste of mint to this day we get half the fudge doesn't have mint on top of it. It's just plain chocolate fudge and the other half has mint on it. So there's not everybody likes the mint. What else? Checks mix. I think I probably said that last year too. We make our own checks mix

sometimes in the... You literally said that last week. We're talking about the checks mix. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, those are the pretzels, the pretzels, but they're not a holiday snack. Anyway, yeah, that's my answer. Mike, do you have favorite holiday snacks? Is it, and is it Aspick? Tell us. No, thank you. I was actually talking about that today

with someone. I have come to really love peppermint bark. That's like a thing that I enjoy significantly. So that's chocolate with some peppermint on top of it. It's awesome. Big fan. Gingerbread I make a gingerbread house every

years. I'm actually doing that this weekend, which I'm looking forward to a lot. So I'm going to make a gingerbread house and I like that, you know, gingerbread with a little icing on it. It's really good. But yeah, ginger is fantastic. And then, you know, in the UK, there are lots of, like, chocolate selection boxes, like little chocolates and stuff like that is a thing we do here, and we do it well. And I'm a big fan.

If you would like to send in a Snell Talk question of your own, just go to Upgradefeedback.com and send in your own Snell talk. It's time for some follow-up, Jason Snell. Follow-up. Okay, thank you. Sam writes here and says, the gingerbread Pepsi that we spoke about last time is actually quite nice.

Although it's not as nice as the discontinued Pepsi Max Ginger, what could possibly be the difference? You know what I mean? What could possibly... That was Max. That was Max. Yeah, but what, why, you know,

like ginger and gingerbread, surely there's not a difference, right? Like, realistically, like in the flavor of the soda? Ginger, more ginger? That can't be a difference. I can't imagine it. but says Sam when they released the gingerbread Pepsi

they also did gingerbread Doritos because they're both from the same company and the Doritos are weird because they're sweet I thought I didn't like them but I kept picking away at them that is a crime

So I'll just tell you I just tell you Taco Bell used to have a dessert called I think they were called Cinnamon Crispas but what they were is they were sugar cinnamon and corn chips and they were good

they're good I can imagine that though corn chips can be sweet they don't have to be savory they're you know we think of Doritos I think Doritos

that's a misuse of the Doritos brand to call it that no I would say sugar cinnamon on like is fine but I don't gingerbread Doritos seems wrong

like that seems like really wrong I feel like so Kate mentioned that they saw the gingerbread Pepsi here in the UK like in a stool

I feel like I need to buy and drink the gingerbread Pepsi now at this point. I think I have to do this. I think I have to do this. That's your challenge. I do have follow-up. Somebody wrote in and they correctly identified what I was thinking of when I said that at the curling club, we have weird flavored Oreos. And that there was one that was, it was like both sides. And it was, it was Reese's peanut butter cups.

There were Reese's Oreos, which I did try. And they also made Oreo Reese's. Oh, yeah. I know these have been very popular. It was a collab. Yeah, but that to me makes way more sense, like Oreo. That's just like, the two sweet things, just putting them together, it's like fine, you know? So my question is, if there's gingerbread Doritos, does that imply the existence of Doritos gingerbread?

Where it's like Flaming Hot gingerbread. Corrange gingerbread. Cool ranch gingerbread house. Oh my God. It would be in a ranch style. There'd be little ginger cows out in front of it and it would be cool ranch gingerbread. Yeah. here's the thing that I wouldn't have expected. Zoe says the gingerbread Pepsi and Doritos are UK exclusive? What is happening? No way. What? The Brits. That's madness. Okay. You love the ginger. Adam wrote in with a post on Mastodon that I'm going to put in the show notes of a screen recording of us effectively gaming the Apple podcast system last week where we mentioned a bunch of podcasts in succession and it in fact showed them and added them to the links. Yeah. Yeah. We actually were just like,

messing around and named a bunch of podcasts, and you can see those podcasts just keep appearing in Apple Podcasts as we go. It works. So I don't know how long it's going to work for, but, you know, get all your good podcasts, I guess. Yeah. Sorry. It's time for some room around up, Jason Snow.

Settle up and ride into the future. Saddle up and ride up to the future. up and ride into the future It's the rumor roundup I don't know if we'd mention if people could realize this but we are just having a bunch of really condensed segments in today's episode

so we can play as many jingles as possible. Yes, that's correct. There is a rumor that the iMac pro is coming back. This is a thing, apparently. What? I don't understand it. I don't know why they would do this. But there's a rumor that

they're testing an iMac pro with a with a with a max chip in it yep and i dug it up two years ago mark german said because he's been reporting that they they aren't imminently doing one but that they have been thinking about it he said in the m1 generation they were thinking about it and they decided to table it and then two years ago he said they're still thinking about it but they haven't done it yet and he actually said it was a 32 inch iMac with a higher end chip, and he said it would probably arrive maybe as late as late 2025.

Well, we're running out of time for that, but this new thing says that that Mac might actually exist and be in testing for next year. Okay, fair enough, all the reports say this, I just don't understand it. I don't know why in Apple's current strategy, where they've got a Mac studio and a Mac Mini, and they've got

studio displays, why they would make a 32-inch iMac, even it's an IMac Pro, what's the market for that. I mean, there's barely a market for the IMac. And for a much more expensive IMac Pro, where people, is somebody with a 32 inch monitor not going to want to prefer to buy a Mac Studio or something like that? I don't know. I find that very weird. And then, and then the other thought that I had was how, again, how wasteful it is that Apple makes these IMAs and they can't be

repurposed as monitors. Because even if you buy that 32 inch M5 Max, IMAX, Pro that might be coming, when the M5 Max has now been left in the dust by the M9 Max, are you going to toss the perfectly good 32-inch monitor that came with it, which is, like, if they do stuff like this, they really need to build back in a mode that just turns that into a studio display at the end of its life. Yeah, it's worth noting that this has come up again because at Mac Room, as they were talking about finding references to an IMac of an M5. Macs in kernel files. The 32-inch thing is something that Mark Gohmann had reported on previously.

There's nothing to suggest that this Mac has a screen size that's any different to the one that we currently have, right? Well, it's unclear, but I think German's report would suggest that that was the idea at least a couple of years ago. I'm all for the idea that the IMac enclosure can hold other chips. That's fine. I don't understand the idea that they would build this 32-inch iMac because the iMac is just, it is a niche product now.

It's perfectly fine, but it's not needed anymore. It's not needed. We only talk about a pro iMac because they made one once because there was nothing else. One time. That was supposed to be the Mac Pro. The Mac Pro. Now, personally, I think it would be hilarious if this product existed and the Mac Pro did not get an update. That would be very funny to me.

just because of how weird that is. But ultimately, for all the reasons you're saying, I don't see why or where this product has any reason for existing anymore. A bigger IMAQ is one thing. An IMAQ with a max chip in it makes no sense. Like, I think if you're going to have the IMac, there should be two sizes and that maybe you can choose between the standard and pro chips. And pro chips.

But really, the only reason you do that is because you're going to have two sizes. of iMac, which I think would just be a good thing to have. It doesn't make any sense to me to put the M5 Max or any Max chip in the iMac as it is today. I don't know. I mean, unless the only thing I can guess is that they've got signals that IMac buyers would prefer a larger screen. But again, that would fit better into your suggestion that they just make a bigger iMac. And then that iMac might be big enough that they could have better thermals in it and so that they could let you upgrade to a pro chip, maybe, or maybe even a max chip.

Maybe, maybe that's what the story is. It's just that they're going to sell a larger iMac and it's going to have different chips that are on offer because they can have a bigger cooling system in it. Maybe that would make a little more sense. But, yeah, it's very weird because I feel like they're in a really good place on the desktop. Keeping in mind, too, that three quarters of the Macs

that they sell are laptops. And so external displays are like a great story because if you've got a laptop, you can connect it. Otherwise, you can choose Mac Mini or if you want more power Macs, studio, this makes sense. Only, you know, the iMac exists because you want a self-contained

thing that you can move around or put on a desk or put on a at a hotel lobby and things like that. Like, which is fine. It's good that that product exists. It's nice. It's a nice product. I just don't know how much more IMA we need in the world. And again, I'm just going to say, I really hope the next

time they re-engineer the IMA, especially since, let's say this, especially since the studio display already has an A-series chip in it. Right. So they've written software that will run on Apple Silicon that basically makes the the Apple Silicon chip just drive a Thunderbolt display. Yeah. Right. Please, Apple, if you're going to do that and if you're going to sell more IMAX, engineer a mode that just turns it into a studio display. Because one, if I'm home and I've got an IMac and I want to plug and I'm like for my kids and I want to plug my laptop into it to get a bigger screen. that's a nice use case. And at the end of their usable lives as a computer, they could become a studio display and still get use. And like that is what they should be doing. So yeah, so I find this a very weird rumor. But there it is. It's a rumor. We've got to watch it for next year. I'm Mac Pro. I did not have that on the big go card, but there it is. Well, if more models is what you would like, I have more models for you, but it's of the iPhone. I don't. Okay. More iPhones. Great. Let's do it. information is reporting on the next two years of Apple's iPhone roadmap. So they've kind of map things out. There's some little piece of information that they seem to have. So I'm going to

start with these, I think this will go in chronological order. The iPhone 17E coming in spring 2026. The main difference between this and the 16E that is reported is it will be bringing MagSafe back to the product, which is absolutely should have. While that the 16E did not. The iPhone 18 Pro will have a quote left aligned selfie camera and a new camera image sensor that can capture more light at night while preventing

washed out photos during the day. Now that left aligned selfie camera, that would only make sense to me in a scenario where they've put face ID under display. Yeah. Because otherwise why would you do that? Yeah. Right? So maybe. Is it is it hidden in the bezel

in that scenario? Or is there a punchout in the upper left corner? I reckon there's a punch out in the upper left corner. That's what I reckon you've got going on there. But maybe it's small. Remember it was described in another rumor as a pinhole? Maybe it's like a really small cutout. Yeah, you can't. Yeah.

Okay. Weird. Then the iPhone fold. The iPhone fold will have a 5.3 inch outside display and a 7.7 inch inside display. Okay. Keeping your mind that the 5.3 will be very tall and the 7.7 will be very square. Yeah.

So it'll be a much, many more pixels. But what that will be like to do things on, we just don't know yet, right? Did you see MKBHD's video about the Trifold? Yeah, I did, yeah. Samsung Trifold? I thought it was a really, it's a really good video. And he talks about how it is ridiculous that it, you know, it's thick. Although he said it's not as thick as the first five generations of Samsung fold.

Which is amazing. And he said, And he also said, I don't think it can get much thinner because it's so thin because it has to be like you can't make it that much thinner. But his point was more, it is really nice to have a rectangular screen when it unfolds instead of the little square screen. Now, his argument, and I've seen this argument before, is if what you want to do when you unfold your phone is watch video, unfolding a twofold like the iPhone fold is supposed to be, doesn't help you. you because it's square. And so your video is not any bigger. That's true. I find that kind of a bogus argument because there are lots of things you probably want to do with that interior display. I don't think, I mean, obviously, I just goes without saying, if the primary thing you

want the folding phone to do is have a bigger video playing, don't buy it because it won't work. I think it's just an argument, right? Like, I don't think he's saying that it's like bad or whatever, but it's just like, this is a thing which makes it interesting that it can get real big. It's a terrible use of the pixels though, but his argument is still very interesting and just in the sense that you've got so much more space with that trifold. The trifold is on one level ridiculous and another level actually kind of what he says is basically once you unfold it, you're like, oh, this is actually pretty cool. That's like an actual tablet, like honest to goodness tablet, where before this, they're like, well, this is a really big phone, you know, like this, which is how the folding phones all feel. Yeah, and the 7.7 iPhone folder, that screen will be like a kind of mini iPad, but like not quite an iPad mini, but a small iPad. And we'll have to see. But anyway, that was a good video about what people want in folding phones.

And I recommend, I mean, I recommend the MKBHG's channel in general, but that's a really good video. Yeah, I liked it a lot. Seeing him use that thing is like, oh my gosh, that is actually just a tablo. and it folds into a phone. That is really interesting. Then we have the iPhone 18 and 18E coming in spring of 2027. So this is the start of the split strategy. The iPhone Air 2 will also come alongside that,

possibly of a price cut and a second camera. Great. Then in fall of 2027, the iPhone 20. This will feature a radically new design. This is quoting from the information. Curved glass on all four sides and a narrow metal band running around the midpoint

of the device's edge where the buttons sit. Can't fully get my head around that. And I think that that's like, I can imagine what it might look like, but I just don't know. And then the iPhone 19, 19 Pro and Fold 2 could launch alongside the iPhone 20,

which would result in 10 distinct iPhone releases in the next two years. Wow. Yeah. This is, I mean, Tim Cook did say, and I know he says this sort of thing a lot, But he, it seemed to me that he emphasized the strength of the iPhone pipeline in the last year. And this is, this strikes me as being why he did that.

Yeah. Because he knows that there's this just a whole bunch of new stuff that they're going to put out and that, when he said it's stronger than ever. Again, you could just take it as a word that it's just like, he always says that. It's just hype, whatever. But like, to me, it felt like a different sort of hype than you. usual. And this just on its own, the 20 and the fold are going to be really exciting, let alone all of the other things that might happen to the other regular phones and all this kind of stuff. And the beauty is if the fold and the 20 are expensive and sort of like for a more

niche audience, I made this point a bunch, but I'll say it again, Apple still really likes the idea of exploring the upper reaches of what people are willing to pay for an iPhone because there is a portion of their audience that will pay a lot more than they're even now paying for an iPhone. There are people who will say, if you can give me a super awesome cutting edge phone at the high, high end, I will buy it. And they want those people to spend more money on their iPhone. It makes sense for them. They make more money that way. But also important to that strategy is you still sell an iPhone 19 pro and an iPhone 19. And so people are like, I'm not ever going to buy a $2,200 phone or a $2,500 phone. It's fine. They also still sell an iPhone for you.

So that, that it's, we'll see how it goes. But like, I think that's the strategy they're doing there. I have just now at this point worked out how difficult the next few years are going to be. Because they're bringing out a folding iPhone and then this really interesting new 20. And like, what am I going to want? Right. And an air too. And an air too.

Man, oh man, man, man. How many iPhones can one man on? I think that's what they're going to try and walk out. It's time for the B-tail. It's the Beatles Funny story When I asked Lex for this jingle He didn't know that it was a Duck Tales reference

He thought it was a Beatles reference Which explains that song So there we go I didn't know that it was like that. That's why it was like that. That's why it's like that. I just thought it was trying to be similar to Ruma Roundup because they feel similar those two songs.

Yeah. Woohoo. Part of this is follow-up. So 26.3 beta 1 is out now. And it includes Apple's, thank you, Apple's side of the Android iPhone migration. That's it. That's what I'm looking for.

words for me. So it includes that. So we now know from Apple's perspective that you'll be able to quote, users can opt to move over photos, messages, notes, apps, passwords, phone numbers and more. Data transfers occur with no need to download and use a separate app, making the process simpler. This is from Mac Rumors. Health data devices paired with Bluetooth and protected items like locked notes are not transferred over to the new device. So to do this, you need to use Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. You have to have those turned on. on to perform the transfer and it will be initiated via a QR code that you scan or you can also use a manual pairing code as well to kind of set the two devices up so I guess this is like you know

a more simple way of doing the kind of QR code thing than the one that Apple creates where it's got that like weird like pulsing orb thing you know that they do with all like the shimmery stars or whatever I guess it's just like a kind of really basic version of that also notification for for non-Apple wearable devices is showing up. This will allow users to send notifications to a single third-party connected device. They can choose which apps, so it can be a subset, just kind of like with the Apple Watch, where you can say, like, don't show all of my apps, just show certain apps. This was a DMA requirement and will only be available to European iPhone users.

Oh, interesting. Interesting. I thought that was going to go everywhere. It is showing everywhere Apparently it will only be available in Europe At least to start with That Mac rumor story got updated Which smacks of somebody from Apple calling and saying No, no, no, no, no, this is not going to be in Europe

Well, I mean, that's a bummer It is, you know, if you download beta 1 in America You see the option, but it just doesn't work It's just like the idea that this would make Something like the Pebble work a lot better And they're going to be like, no, you don't get to do that only in Europe is frustrating. But this is like part

of the cruxes of the Department of Justice case is like this exact thing. It's like one of the only good things in that DOJ case is that idea of like of third party devices because they're thinking about like meta stuff or whatever.

Yeah. Speaking of frustrating, I wrote a piece about this. 1873 is out as well as 26.2. And they both patch a bunch of security holes, including a zero-day web kit bug

and a messages bug that's bad and a bunch of other stuff. And in a very weird quirk, iPhones that are capable of running 26 are currently not being offered 1873 if they're running on iOS 187. They're only offered 262, which goes against Apple's longstanding tradition

of releasing updates so that you can update your security without going to a new version for a year or two or three or whatever. On the iPad, if you're running 1872, you are offered 1873. You don't have to go to 26, which is why to me this sounds like a mistake, like either it's a bug or there was something wrong with the 1873 build they were offering and that they removed it. But it has the net effect of sort of saying, if you want to patch security holes,

we're going to force you to update your phone to 26 if it runs 26. Phones that don't run 26 are offered the update. phones that do run 26 are only being offered 26. So my gut feeling is it's an error and not a sneaky way of Apple forcing everybody on to 26 in order to get a security update. But that's the net result. Man, I bet that is a rampantly running wild conspiracy theory right now, I'm sure that that's...

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. People want to believe that. But like, the fact that the iPad is fine suggests to me that something went wrong somewhere. And I asked Apple about this a couple days ago, no response. So I don't know. I don't know. I tried. This is your final call to put your votes in for the Upgradees. Go to Upgradees. The voting will close on December 23rd. So if you're, when you're listening to this on the day, it comes out. This is your last call to get your votes in. Yeah, yeah. We're going to be recording the 12th annual Upgradees next week, which I'm really excited about. So I'm really looking forward to that. go to upgradees.

That's how you send in do it now because depending on when you're listening to this you have almost no time yes exactly or you have no time it's done yeah and you missed it

or it's done don't be that person don't miss it you don't want to miss it do it now speaking of time running out you don't have much longer to get 20%

of an annual plan to support this show and get Upgrade Plus for just $56 a year you could get longer ad free episodes of the show every episode you will get

with no ads more content. It's about a dollar an episode, and you'll be supporting this show. So we'll probably be talking about it just one more time next week. But, you know, if you're listening to this in Christmas week, this is like a, maybe a perfect Christmas gift for you, and you can give it to a friend or family member, and you can go buy it for you. Go to getupgradeplus.com with the code 2025 holidays at checkout, and you'll get 20% of the first year of supporting the show, and we will really appreciate it. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform designed to

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use the offer code upgrade and you will save 10% of your first purchase of a website or domain. space.com slash upgrade with the offer code upgrade to get 10% of your first purchase and show your support for the show. A thanks to Squarespace, for the support of this show and all of Relay. So, Jason, what are we doing for the holiday special this year? For the holiday special this year, we are going to revisit a classic from Upgrade 526, the amazingly titled Journal and Learnel. which is we are going to look at Tahoe icons and we're going to place them in a tier list. We're going to compare the previous icon to the current icon, have some thoughts about that,

and then place each of them on a tier list, which goes in the traditional tier list format of S, A, B, C, D, F. So we're tier ranking the new icon, right? even though we're going to compare them for fun but we're going to rank them against each other also this isn't every icon we have I believe you have picked a subset which you think do a good job of summing up what's on Tahoe

it's 28 icons from Tahoe that we're going to cover if we get through them all and I find it valuable because one we want to see how they changed in Tahoe yeah and we can comment on that because some of this is like did they get better or worse yeah and then if we will say if we

if we previously rated the icon in Journal and Lernel back in 526, we will say what we gave that app as a rating. So we're going to just go through and dig through the somewhat controversial new icon designs in Tahoe. That's the plan here. I look forward to establishing a set of rules that we don't follow. Yep. I think that's what we did last time. All right, so what will we start with? We are starting with audio MIDI setup. Okay. Not previously rated. in journal and learnal we didn't do it there um this is an icon that uh both versions it shows a piano

keyboard um the old version was a piano keyboard with some sort of uh uh on it's a black keyboard with uh with some controls at the top dials the new one the new one it's all shrunken the keys went all the way down on the old one to almost the edge the new one the keys are pushed up there's more of a black border around the round direct here the uh the squircle i And there are now six colorful buttons in a familiar color pattern just above the keyboard. And then there are some, a little more cartoony controls above that for the audio MIDI set up. What I like about this icon that we're starting with here is you have chosen one that is absolutely better on Tahoe. It is.

Because what I really don't like about... These are an alphabetical order, by the way. Only the alphabet chose. No, you chose. You chose. You know what? Maybe. Maybe in the designers, they started at A. And like, this was the first one. So it was like really good. It's like, we're done now. We haven't got any more in us. We're done. We did it, everybody.

This is it. Audio MIDI set up. This is it. What, what, pre-Tahoe, we'll say pre-Tahoe. What I really don't like about the pre-Tahoe icon is that the square keys on the keyboard clash with the roundness of the icon. the round rack. It's very unpleasing to me that those corners kind of hit into each other in a way that I do like. The keys on the Tahoe icon

are curved at the corners. So they form that kind of curved border around it. Which doesn't really make sense for a keyboard, but looks nice. It does look nice. And also, I just think, also, this icon is just a good looking icon. Like the... I agree. The Apple six-color rainbow

as colorful controls above is, it's so good. Yep. I think it's really good. And I also I always really appreciate it when they pander, you know? And that is the pandering. I like the pandering of the six colors. They know who they're getting with that, you know? They do.

They do. So where do we put this? I think this is at least a tier. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I think that's good. I don't know if I want to hold it out for S tier. Well, as I like to do in all of my tier lists, you've got to allow for a re-rank at the end.

Of course. So, you know, this may go up. We're going to have to see what's in there. Well, we'll put it in a tier for now. We're doing this. We'll put a link in the show notes at the end to the, I guess, the tier list before and after. So people can see, some imagery. Yeah, sure.

We're doing this in free form, which is fun. We are. That's fun for us. So I love that. We've got some fun image. I've got an iPad in front of me because I opened the freeform board before we started. I'm not on Tahoe on this Mac. I'm on whatever, what is it?

High Sierra, who knows? What am I doing? You're forbidden. Mountain Lion? What am I on here? What operating system was before Tahoe? I don't know. Sequoia was the one, Sequoia.

It was the one where we both picked a location that was the same distance away. And I opened the free form board on Sequoia and it said, this is not supported. Update your operating system. Like, wow. So Jason's doing some advanced graphics work. I got it. I got it. We're doing great here.

Okay. that means we're up to automator. Yeah. Yeah. So automator, the old icon, we had given a D rank in the two lists. You didn't like it. This is Otto, the Automator.

He's the robot mascot of Automator. He has got his head with his one eye, and he's got his robot arms holding a pipe, and standing in a circle that kind of ripples out from that, and it's the classic kind of automator icon. You didn't like it. No, why are his arms? like a spring. Why has he

got claw hands? Why is he even holding a pipe threateningly? Like, nothing is good about the old icon. I disagree but that's why it's not F tier is because I made you do it at D tier. The new one? The new one is so bad.

It's like, why did you even bother? Mike, Mike, let me try to characterize the new icon. The new icon is the old robot icons driver's license photo or a mugshot yeah or a mugshot he knows what he did he beat somebody with that pipe oh yeah he got arrested for the pipe yeah yeah yeah it's his mugshot you got it oh my god

it's just it has no personality at all it's literally just his head and it's the same shape right it's his head and the top like his shoulders facing forward in a gray round wrecked it is it is what yes what do they do what do they do to my boy it's so bad it's so bad it's such a bad one like it is funny that they ran out steam between audio midi and automator it's like the next one bankruptcy it's bad it's if if the old one where he was at least kind of a an interesting looking robot is a d tier i i this is f tier this is mugshot territory it's bad yeah there kind of is nowhere else for it to go um yeah it's it's real bad like i mean i you know you know Yep. I also think the old one's bad, but at least it had her personality.

It's not a personality that vibes with me at all. But this one is just like, they did the absolute bare minimum. They may as well have just, I don't know, just made it a pipe. You know what I mean? Like, do anything. Actually, my theory, I mean, they did have to do a new illustration, but my theory is that they didn't have the art for the old robot, because they could have just shrunk down the old robot and put him in a bigger round wrecked.

And I think they maybe, like, didn't have the file. And they're like, yeah, we'll just make a new one. and then we'll make a mugshot. It barely has a body. What does it communicate to you? What does that communicate to you? A faceless robot. It's more threat.

Facing forward. It's looking directly at me. Why is it going to... I guess they did bring that over from version to version is the, like, threat of Otto. The all-seeing eye. Yes.

All right, so move on to... Should we move on? Yeah, let's move on to calendar. Calendar. Now, I hadn't realized how bad a job they'd done with calendar. So the previous version of the Canada icon... We put it B tier. Yeah.

Oh, actually, I have a question for you. Yeah. Because this may have changed... This may be changing my opinion here. And maybe changes my opinion of myself in the past. Did the Mac version of the calendar icon have the date on it? Or was it always July 17th? When it's launched and running in the dock, it has the current date.

Okay, and the new version doesn't, it seems. And the new version, when it's launched and running in the dock, it has the current date. Okay. That hasn't changed. It's just, what is the icon of the app out in the finder? It has gone from a proxy date, July 17th, to a calendar that's got the red stripe at the top with nothing in it, and then a bunch of dots, including one red dot, indicating the date. Okay.

kind of gone from a date that is not the date to a thing that looks like it's a calendar. So this has actually done the opposite of what I thought was going on here because I thought they had replaced the calendar with a date on it with like just no date anymore. So this has actually made it better because I think as a just a proxy, the app is an open icon. The new one is a better icon for a calendar than the old one that had a date that wasn't today.

Right. You know? Like if you're just looking at this in Spotlight or Launchpad or whatever you would call it, seeing July 17th is not particularly helpful to you if it's not July 17th? And actually in Spotlight, it shows the date. In the new version? Yeah, yeah. It's a white background and it has, you know, the day.

of the week at the top in red and then in black the number of the date. So it's actually you know, this icon is not seen a lot but they decided yeah, I think you're right. I think they decided that having that because the way it works is a finder icon

can't be updated dynamically. The other ones can be, although some of it is like Apple gets to play by rules that other people don't get to play by, but they they're like launched apps. I'm pretty sure that other apps can't dynamically update themselves in Spotlight,

although I might be wrong about that. Yeah, probably not. Yeah, Fantastic Cal is updated in my dock, but not in Spotlight. So Apple's got some special sauce they're doing there. But they must have just decided, look, we don't like the fact that if you look at this app icon out in the finder, it can't be dynamic. And so it's just going to say July 17th on it.

So let's just dump it and have the image of a calendar. So because I think this has improved the icon. I don't know if it's improved it, from B to A, though. Yeah. I think it's just keeping it in B. I think I agree. What we liked about it, I think last time, was the idea that it imparts with a red stripe, it imparts

calendarness with a little bit of personality, and it still has all of that. Yeah. In fact, my disappointment is that when you launch it, it's just a white background. They didn't do the, like, styling of the app. It's just, I mean, it's more readable, actually, a rare thing for Apple. to make something more readable. Let's put it at B tier. Yeah, I think so.

I think that's the right place to put it for now. Let's move on to everybody's favorite app. It's been there since the beginning. It's still there. It's chess. And they decided, oh, chess, the old icon was a chess board inside a round wrecked. And then a chess piece in front of it, in the old Apple style, it used to be you had a round rect

and then you had like an object that would be out of the round wrecked. But we can't have that any. more. Everything must be inside the lines. And so they replaced the chess board with a chess with a, it's a knight, it's the, you know, the horse, with a new one where there's just four squares of the chess board. And then a glass, I guess, translucent brown knight, just in profile from the side, sort of flat. Yeah. Here's the thing. As Kate, Kate just said in our discord, why is the horsey a ghost?

Okay. Here's the thing. the new one is from a like graphical perspective obviously worse right it's just four squares and it's a clear horse flat the old one that horse is just got way too much detail you can see like the individual muscles and hairs on the horse it's like it's too much so i actually from a perspective of an icon i prefer the new one to the old one, but I don't think it's good. You know what I mean? I don't think it's good either. I don't think it's good, but I like the new one more. The old one, I would have given like a D. So congratulations to the chess icon designer. You improved it, but it's still bad.

Yeah, exactly. Like, I think it is a better icon. Because again, it's like we're going back to the automator problem. And I actually think this is maybe a thing in some spots here. A classic Apple design problem from 20 years ago when these icons were designed. A lot of the icons have way too much detail for how small they are in the system. Like, so many of Apple's icons are only good when you see them a size that you never see them at. So you lose the detail. And I know it's like whimsy and detail. I get that. But is that actually helpful to the user in any way?

It is actually a usability argument. Lauren and I talk about this. So when we drive to curling, we're driving on the interstate through Oakland, and there are lots of billboards, and those billboards are now electronic billboards. Yeah. So they change. And it's really interesting.

I mean, bad billboard design exists, but you see even more when they're rotating through. Yep. These people have built these billboard designs thinking that people are going to be able to see the little tiny bits of text that are on them, and it's completely unreasonable. the best billboard is like a big image and like two big words anything but some of them are like five lines of small text as like no one's reading that even if they're in the passenger seat

there's not enough time to read it until it flips to the next billboard so it's the same thing here you're trying to make something that's scannable especially at small like out in the finder these icons are very small and even in the dock they're usually pretty small at least for me yeah so you wanted to be scanable. And this is scanable, although I would say arguing against it is by this thing of making it glass and transparent, it actually makes the profile horse, you know, chest piece icon, the knight icon, less scannable because the chessboard squares are showing through it. So it's actually not enough, I think, contrast in the horse. And that's why I think it's a bad icon, even though I do think it's better because it's simpler. So like I would probably just put it in

D. Yeah, I think that's right. I think it's, I think it's D tier. I kind of like it, but also don't think it should be rated well. I don't know if I can explain. We'll see where we go. We'll see where we go. Okay. Next up is clock.

Now, we gave the clock icon an A in the previous tier. It may have been the iOS. We did iOS and Mac last time, but like we're sticking to Mac this time. So the previous icon was a black border in the round wrecked and then inside of it

was a round clock with the you know set to whatever it is 1008 and 30 seconds basically and it was a clock with numbers 1 to 12 the new one is all white so the the little lines

around the clock spread further out to the edges it's it's more like an Apple Watch clock in that it fills the whole round wreck instead of being circular within it and only 12-9-3 and 6 are showing the hands are in the same position

so it's simplified and those numbers that you probably couldn't see clearly are gone and so it's just 9-6-12-3 I I kind of like it better I agree with you

because everyone in the discord is like why'd they do this why'd they do this and the whole time I'm like oh okay this is an S-tier this is an S-tier icon. It looks fantastic, and it's a clock. It looks like a clock. It's not a weird circle inside of a square. It's actually a square, because clocks can be square. You've just got to work

out the, I don't know, math to make that work. This is a great, great icon. I love it. I guess I should say, I did this all in light mode. Apparently in dark mode, it's a black clock instead, which is fine. Amazing. So first off, talking about simplicity and scanability, you don't need all 12 numbers. Not all clocks have all 12 numbers. That's why they got the lines there is so you can tell what the time is. You don't need the numbers. And I don't like the shape of the black frame around the circular clock. It ends up being if you removed everything else and you just had that border shape, it's a weird shape. Where it's thick on the edges and thin in the middle. And this one is just, it's super simple. The whole icon is a clock face. I think it's better. It's fantastic. It is S tier, in my opinion. I think, whoa. Yes. It's super clean. It's super clear. It works like a clock, which is an extra fun thing that it does on all the platforms. I guess. Actually, I don't know what happens on the Mac.

Does it tick on the Mac like it does on the iPhone? No. Okay. Boo to that. But nevertheless, I'm going to say S dear. I love it. It does. In the dock, it does show the current time.

That will do for me. But it doesn't have a second hand. That will do for me. As long as it, okay, the second hand disappears? Yes. Okay, that's fine. As long as it works as the current. time. I think that's great. I really like it a lot. I think this is fantastic.

All right. S tier it is. S tier. Let's go. Let's go. All right. Next. Yeah. I mean, we're surprising ourselves here, but that's okay. This was a journey. I didn't preordain anything here. I just put them in there. It was enough work to make this freeform board. I don't want to prejudice myself. Okay. Contacts is next. man why does the contacts app exist you know what i mean previously beat here previously b tier well here's the thing having a database of your emails and phone numbers and addresses for the people you know in your computer life sync to all your devices is a great idea contacts app is so bad yeah it's so bad

it is it is i'm gonna i'm gonna say it perhaps apple's worst system app is contacts. Yeah. Every way in which the system interacts of contacts is bad. Like on my iPhone, like I'm texting with someone. I'm like, oh, what is the number that I'm texting with? It just doesn't tell you anymore. Like it used to indicate it and like,

it used to highlight it in a color to be like, this is the, it just doesn't show it anymore. Oh, it's terrible, man. I wish they would make a better version of it. There are other apps that try this, like busy contacts and card hop and things like that. And like I've used,

and I've used different contacts apps over the years and they're all better than contacts and every time I use contacts and people sometimes will ask like what's your solution for contacts and my answer is my context database is a disaster and we like for our Christmas card list it's in a spreadsheet

we have ours in an Apple Note shit Apple Note it's like I'm not putting it in contacts I'm not relying on contacts. Forget it. I never even thought about the fact that you could do it in context because I've never spent any time in that. Don't do it. Don't do it.

So it's not good. But what about the icon? The old icon was a sort of brown cover of a book that had a little darker brown binding on the left side. And the book was embossed with the classic sort of like person icon. It's a circle with a little semi-circle for the body. down at the bottom and then a round circle for the head that thing and then little tiny subtle colored tabs on the on the right side the and it feels like a physical object and we gave it a beat here the new one is just kind of gray background no binding the person circle now is

in a dark gray and the person circles themselves are white and the on the right side the tabs which are now part of the round wrecked instead of being sticking out from the round rect are there are only three of them, and they're blue and orange and green. I don't think you could have made this contact any more worse, this contact icon more worse than they made it. It is atrociously bad, all right? So, one, it's a crime. Who has a contact book made a gloss? No one has that. That would be a terrible way to have your address book. And I know that all... I dropped my contacts and they shattered, so now they're gone. And I know that all the icons look like glass, but for some reason they decided to keep this one

still looking like an address book where they didn't need to do that. They could have just made this one gray with the little person silhouette and it would have done the job. Because one, the person's silhouette is not in the center anymore, the icon, which just looks ugly. Like, that looks really bad. And they actually could have said it if they were made a bit smaller, but they didn't want to do that. They have the little tabs down the side, but the tabs do not overlap anymore. So they are therefore useless, right, as tabs, because they don't overlap because it doesn't. Exactly. It just doesn't work. And also, you can see them all through with like I think the same level of of clarity right as if they're

just like one on top of each other underneath this got terrible this is a terrible icon so Zoe in the discord said it looks like an ice sculpture of the old icon that is a great yes this this came from a party that the contacts team had at Christmas when they had an ice sculpture made this is a terrible this is terrible it's real bad I am really not one for skemorphism like it just in general like I just don't really like it anymore, like it grew old. But the contacts app is absolutely an app that should have remained looking like that. That icon was good skeomorphous in it.

You got it. It was subtle. It was kind of whimsical, but it had the binding on the left side. It's totally unnecessary, but it's really nice. And it balances the tabs on the other side, which have depth so you can see that they are tabs. Yep. They absolutely should have automated this icon, and they didn't.

They just tried to make it one. This is my argument is throw it away. is throw it away. If you're going to do a new icon like this for context, don't ape the old icon, because all you're doing is spitting on the grave of the old icon by making this zombie version of it. Do something different and original rather than just destroying the old icon. Absolutely agreed. Terrible. F tier? Oh, yeah. Okay. Let's do F tier. I love it. Let's put in F tier. I think it's a bad icon. I think it's a crime. We could also rename F tier to auto tier. I wouldn't mind that actually. Well, we'll just, we'll keep that under advisement.

next up is we've talked about this before because this is one of the and we didn't rate it last time but it is one of the most bizarre icons on the Mac it is digital color meter the old icon was a little it's a red background round wrecked and inside it there's a circular thing that's got a a bunch of little little shapes they're not quite squares but little little radial strips like a color wheel and there's a iDropper. And the eyedropper is full of, I'm just going to say it, blood. It's full of blood. So me and you spoke about this together in Memphis when we decided to do this episode. Yes. The conversation we had at the time is I'm sure as a conversation we probably had on this, when it's icon update shipped at some point. I think so. Is Apple had the opportunity to have any color inside of Nazi blood? Any, any of the colors. There's lots of them. and he could have chosen any of them but they just to be clear there's an orange one right next to it

to be clear the old icon has very strong eye experiment on human beings energy right yeah I'm a mad scientist experimenting on other people I have the blood so so yes this is your opportunity to make the color

that is being sampled in the digital color meter not blood literally any color but blood and so the new icon is a white background It is a series of circles Instead of the skeuomorphic color wheel It's just a series of circles

In a circle That go from red Up to pink And then from yellow back around Through orange to red And the sampler of course Still in the bottom left And still sampling blood red

But now the the eyedropper Is no longer Photorealistic It's a cartoon eye dropper With cartoon blood inside And now that's I have even more distinct color options because the previous one

there's only like three colors and they're all this kind of weird green. So that's that is to the advantage of this new eye. There's a good thing about the new icon. It shows different colors as choices. Instead of it being sort of like there's red and then light red and then the rest of them are just gray. We don't care. Instead it's like

no no, this one goes all the way from red to pink and it goes from red to yellow. Choose your color. Okay. The cartoon eye dropper like okay. Although I will say it is a little weird that the old eyedropper was made of glass and the new one is I guess a flat piece of glass instead

I thought we were doing glass here it's all glass we are in the glass realm now glass sampling glass okay you're right you're right you're right but like you had one job which was not to have it be a blood draw and you failed it here's the thing the new icon

better I actually think the new icon is better than the old icon it's better they just missed their opportunity to not have it be a blood sample icon. Knock it over by one and it could have been orange, you know? And then it would have been fine. Just got orange juice in there. I much prefer the new icon to the old one. It is. It is less bananas than the old one. I do think it's at least a B tier. Like I just think it looks like a nice icon. Like I enjoy looking at it. I kind of want to ding them for staying with red though. It is a nice icon. We can put it in C then. We can put it. Let's put it. Okay. I want to put it in C tier because you had you had one job. You made a nice icon, and then you made it a blood draw. What are you doing? Yeah. All right.

We are going now to discuss perhaps the most controversial of our choices last time, I think. Because we, it's disc utility. Okay. And we chose to make it an S-tier icon. I don't remember why. I remember why. We decided to make it S-tier because it is so. so extremely weird

that they just went all the way with it and we wrapped all the way around from F tier to S tier because to replay what the disc utility icon was, it's a silver tray in the shape of a round wrecked with white on the tray but the silver edge.

On the tray is a stethoscope. Hovering above the tray is a hard drive icon. The tube at the end of the stethoscope disappears around the hard drive icon. snakes, snakes back around over the hard drive icon, and the stethoscope itself is on the hard drive as if listening to the beating heart of the hard drive for disc utility. The metaphor works. The choice of imagery is deranged, but I think what we decided was it was so bad, it was good. And it communicates it's a disc checkup something. And the level of detail on the hard drive is unbelievable. Yeah, it's the classic Mac hard drive icon, right?

So it's got like the things on the back and it's got like a warning label at the top and then the stethoscope has detail. And I like the medical tray. It's like your doctor came in with this tray to check on your hard drive with their stethoscope. Again, deranged from a metaphor standpoint, but also kind of a classic icon

that does communicate something. Yeah. The new icon is a wrench, is a hex wrench with a little hex wrench with an apple logo. on a gray background. And, you know, many, much virtual ink has been spilled on the utilities, because there are lots of utilities icons that have this hex wrench, and people have talked about a real wrench like that would break,

et cetera, et cetera, and that they sort of like tried to create a format for utilities where the wrench has an icon inside it in this hex shape that communicates something about what kind of a utility it is. However, okay, it's like, oh, but on the Bluetooth utility, it's a blue hexagon, and there's a Bluetooth logo in it, huh? Huh? I'm like, okay, I'll give you that. I'll give you that, except for one thing. What's on the hexagon and disk utility?

And the answer is, an Apple logo. Yeah. An Apple logo. If we give up, what could it be? I think that these utility icons are totally fine, like the overall suite of them. Like, people are very upset about it. I think they're totally fine. A generic suite of wrench icons with a little hex icon in the center that it says what kind of utility this is.

Because expansion slot utility, wireless diagnostics utility, and AppleScript utility previously. It was just a crossed screwdriver and wrench, like each of them. They weren't, they were not inventive before. Like, disc utility is the biggest loser because they also didn't do a good job with the, one that they replaced it with, because it doesn't make any sense to put an Apple logo there. But the problem is, the problem is, the problem is, the problem is, what do you put graphically in there? Because there aren't discs anymore. They're not discs. They have, they have, we're going to get to it. They have their hard drive icon. They could have put that in there on the,

on the, on the, on the, on the hexagon. They could have put a chip in there or something. Yeah. But they just put the Apple logo. It's a give up. It's like, look. Disc utility might be your most important utility. If you're going to have this unified hexagon utility design, you better make sure you've got a plan for disc utility. And putting the logo of your company on the hexagon is not a plan. It's not a plan. What are you doing?

I would say, though, in general, like, disc utility's level of importance to the typical Mac user could not have fallen through the floor harder. It has diminished greatly. It's true. this incredible icon was made. Like, it was maybe an F-tier importance app and is now an F-tier importance app

because there isn't much you can do of it, nor do you really need to anymore. Yeah, that's true. There are, I use it occasionally, and when you use it, it's kind of important, but I wouldn't say it's F-tier, but it's certainly diminished from the days of the spinning hard drive, for sure.

Yes, because like, but again, I just not required in the same level. So I'm happy, I think you and I are both happy to defend the idea that, okay, you're going to create a different icon language for utilities to unify them as utilities. And the wrench is a way you could do that. You know, if you care that the wrench isn't designed right,

I mean, whatever. I like the idea that they're going to do a little hexagon inside it and that there's going to be a symbol in there that changes by utility and it signifies, well, they're all utilities, but they're all different. But if you're going to do that, you cannot punt on perhaps your most important utility. You need to do something.

You need to come up with a plan to represent. present disc and your company logo is not it. So this is a, in my mind, Mike, this is a complete abject failure of an icon because it doesn't impart anything about it. I don't mind the look of it. It looks fine. Yeah. But it's a flop. So is it an F? Yeah, it is. Like the overall system that they came up with, I am totally fine with. But this one is just a really, really bad interpretation of that new system. Yeah. Yeah, this is, that's not why we don't like it. We don't like it, not because of the wrench, but because of the Apple in the center that is a give-up. It's just a give up.

Absolutely. Next up is everybody's most important, talk about an F-tier app. It's DVD player, which still exists. And so I thought I throw it in there. What is a DVD player icon look like in the year 2025? What is it? So the old one, and this is great, the old one seems at first glance to be a gray around wrecked, but if you look closer, you realize it's a super drive.

it's Apple's external super drive that when they stopped doing internal optical drives with the MacBook Air, they made the SuperDrive, which was a round-wrecked optical drive that was external USB.

That's what it is. You can see the little slot, it's a super drive. And then, as with a lot of these old icons in the bottom right corner, sticking out of the round-rect is a disc.

Okay. The new one is a gray round-rect with a disc on it, and then over the disc is a play bar. It's like a little floating play window with the play icon and a little progress bar.

Or volume bar, whatever, whichever one you want that to be. I mean, I'm not very enthusiastic about this icon, and it doesn't really matter because it's the DVD player, but I do think it imparts what it is. I think the new DVD player icon does a better job than the old

DVD player icon of suggesting it is a DVD player. player. The old icon is not really... All it is telling you is there is something to do with discs here. Is it CDs?

Is it DVDs? Do I play them? Do I rip them? What do I do? Do I burn them? Okay. Better job, but also not interesting

at all. I mean, I don't think they should have put a lot of effort into it. I do think it's a better job. I think they put quite a lot of effort. Actually, here's another thing I'll say. I think it does a better job

of imparting what it is, but it's not as nice. That old icon is awesome. When do you realize it's a SuperDrive? It's like, oh, that's actually pretty good. But this is the problem. You're literally showing the product. You have to really make it big to show that it's a SuperDrive. And also, didn't a SuperDrive have an Apple logo on the top? So they didn't actually replicate the Superdrive clearly. I'm going to say that it does wherever it does or it doesn't. Okay, what is this? DVD player.

The tier, C tier, D tier. One of the two. Like, it's not incredible. Apparently, SuperDrive does not have an Apple logo. I want to talk, but still. It has a cable coming out of the back. Where's the cable? That's what I want to know. D tier? D tier. Okay.

I think so. And one more before we take a break. It's the big one. Stephen Hackett, pay attention. Finder. Finder. Now, there was a controversy over the summer. They did a different Finder logo.

We're not going to talk about that. That was a beta. Here we are with the new Finder logo. So the old Finder logo. Round wrecked, all the way out to the edge. with the traditional Apple Mac face. So it's blue on one side, kind of gray on the other side, goes all the way to the edges with the face and the little person's silhouette.

So it looks like a face and then also another face. The new one, everything's inset a little bit, and the white face is made of glass now, and the little face parts are made of glass. So it's more textured, and it doesn't go all the way to the edge. Something I learned this year is that I don't like the finder icon, just in general, that I don't like it. I didn't really have much of an opinion about it, but because I was forced to look at it a lot, week after week after week. It angered you.

I decided I didn't like it. And I decided I especially didn't like it when everyone was adamant that you must have it. That there's two faces. It's like, I don't like that there's two faces. What is the other person doing? Why are they so close to the other person from a side of way? Why do they share a mouth? I guess if you share a mouth of someone, you've got to be close to them.

You can't go far. I don't like it. Why is there a person like peeking in front of? Why are they getting in the way of the other person? I don't like it. And also, also, what is this got to do with anything that Finder does? It has nothing to do of it. Nothing.

Nothing. The truth is, first off, I'm not sure what we have. as a Finder icon if it's not this. And the truth is, there is enormous, I could say nostalgia, I could say brand equity in the symbol of the Mac that has existed since the System 7 era. It was the MacOS logo originally.

Yeah. And then they applied it to the Finder. Where are we going to put that thing? We'll put it here. Here's what I'll say. I'm a fan of the Finder for all those reasons because I was around then. Yeah.

And like Stephen Hackett, what I'll say is, I think the new one is fine. There are other mock-ups that people have done all over the summer that look a little bit better. But I'm also not going to get too upset about the fact that this icon, instead of it going to the edges, the person shape is smaller made of glass

and comes in a little bit from the edges. I feel like it still expresses a thing that is what I think of as the finder icon. And at this point, it's been the icon so long that let's just make it recognizable. I'm going to share Zoh. You said what would they do, right? So I'm going to share Zoe's take because I agree with it.

It should be called files. Because Finder, that's actually what Spotlight does. Spotlight finds. Yeah, remember, we did this thing, chooser, Finder, you know, all the different, all the different er names that they had. And this is a relic of that. You're right.

Actually, I would say there's probably a bunch of people within Apple who, when they suggested that we renamed the Finder files, they're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we can't do that. It's finder. It goes back to 1984. We can't do it. And I think you're right. There is a strong argument to be made that this should just be called the files app. Yeah.

And what I like is that that argument was like, you know, I can imagine this thing. No, you can't do that. It's like, okay, but can we destroy the icon? And they said, yeah, sure, you can do that. To be clear, the files icon is a white round wrecked with a folder on it. Yeah, I know. I mean, the folder isn't great, right? Like, like, what is that doing?

But at least the folder. icon exists within the finder right like folders look like where you put your files you hiding in the finder somewhere there's like oh we got the smile face it's not i don't know i haven't looked everywhere maybe it pokes out like and i just haven't found it surprise finder man is here this icon just as a graphic i actually quite like i find the new one more graphically pleasing than the old one sorry everybody but i do it's new and and uses the styles and been a little bit of a rethink and I don't have a problem with it at all.

And it also looks less like the creepy second face is poking in on the new one which I appreciate than on the old one. Great. So I think it's probably like a B tier icon like just the icon.

But in general, I wish that it looked like something completely different because I don't like it and also finder shouldn't be called fine. All right. I'm going to give you B tier. This episode is brought to you

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That's s-en-tr-y-o and the code upgrade pod or just click the link in the show notes or thanks to Sentry for their support of this show and relay. all right what's next all right it is off to font book font book uh used to use the same style as contacts where it had a little binding and then it had a gray background and on the on the gray background where the letter a in four different fonts in a square and then there were little tabs on the right like it's a little font book right yeah and the new one like contacts has been turned into a

thing that doesn't have a binding, has three tabs that don't overlap on the right that are kind of like vestigial tabs. In shades of gray, it's all gray. And then on the icon is a lowercase A in the bottom left corner and that's it. This one is

better than contacts, but still really bad for all the reasons that contacts is bad. And I think it's better because the A is like in a decent spot. You know, like it looks visually okay. rather than where the person is on the contacts where it just doesn't look right.

So I would still put this in F because I just think that it has all of the same problems that the contacts logo has. I call. It strikes me that one of the problems Apple has is that they have a lot of apps that are named for metaphors that their icon style refuses to participate in, right? This is literally font, book.

And they're like, can't really a glass book right we can't really do a book because that would be the ideal right is that

probably back I would have to look back but I'm pretty sure that font books icon used to be a literal book with font

like A's on it right yeah and then it got turned into a round wrecked book and now it's not even a book

now it is a great wall why is it just called fonts well this is this is what I'm saying is you could break the metaphor and just call it

fonts or font utility in which case you could use a wrench with a hex that had an A in it, which might be fine. That would be fine. But, like, I don't know, man.

This is, the old one isn't great, right? Like, it isn't great, but at least it shows that there are multiple fonts and it's got the book metaphor. Like, I'm not going to defend it. I mean, we gave it an A. We gave it an A last time. Probably because there's A's all over it.

I mean, it is. It's telling us what it wants it's great to be, like, A. Like, I think, I think that the font book icon, the old one, did its job, even though it was, I think, hammered down from probably a much more skeuomorphic version in the past. The new one, I don't know. It, I don't know. It's like, it feels to me like the icon equivalent of like an apartment that you go in and it's all white furniture and white carpet and stuff. And it's very modern.

And you're like, oh, this is so modern. And then you think no one could ever live in here because, all the white stuff would get stained and dirt would come in and all that so it's completely impractical but very stylish that's what this icon feels like to me yeah

what do you think I think I think it's you said it was better than contacts I do think it's better than contacts I like the A I'll say if that's a San Francisco A or whatever it is that A is a great A

if we're grading like the letter A that's a great lowercase A I like it Okay here's the thing I find it actually this this icon quite visually pleasing. I think I might want to put it in D. Oh yeah, I have no problem with D. I'd go C.

It's not, I don't like, when you think about it, it's very frustrating. But it's not ugly. I can't allow myself to put it higher than, I can't allow myself to put it in C because it's got the tabs and the tabs just fundamentally annoy me that they're there.

We'll put it in D. I will say, yes, I think they should change the name of this app to font utility and it should be a wrench with a hex in it with a lowercase a I just think that's fantastic

and also the A should be off it should be off because the range is like trying to get it you know trying to get it yeah that's right the A needs to be tightened

yeah okay we're going to put that in D here's it's not quite an app icon but it's it's controversial enough that I think we need to talk about it

and rate it the world is waiting for us it is the hard drive icon okay Now, the old one was the aforementioned hard drive that was in disk utility, so it's very detailed. Yes, without a stethoscope. It is a SAT internal hard drive that you would install in a desktop Mac that you could open up.

It's a big old hard drive, spinning hard drive. That actually has readable text on a warning label. Yeah. Yeah. It says, make sure you're properly grounded. Yeah, it's a hard drive. You can buy a Western digital and you plug it in and you got another, you know, another 500 gigabytes of storage in your whatever it is,

and your NAS or whatever. Yeah. However, I will say for regular everyday Mac users, the most common use of a drive is either your internal SSD or it's an external drive that you plug into it. So what Apple has done is created a idealized, basically USB hard drive with an Apple logo on it

they don't sell a hard drive by the way so why it feels like unnecessary Apple branding to me and then it's got like a slot and some dots and as people have pointed out the perspective doesn't actually work right if that bothers you

it's not it's not photorealistic but it's also not quite right geometrically but be it as it may, it's just a little icon that shows up on your desktop with an Apple logo in the shape of something that's driving. Now, the problem with this, Mike,

is our internal storage is a chip. It has no visual. There's no visual of it. Although I would argue that a lot of people didn't know what their hard drive looked like inside their computer either. So how do you represent storage

and then external storage? How do you do that? It is a challenge, I would say. This would have been a perfectly fine way to show the hard drive if it did not have the Apple logo

on it because what they didn't want to do because I have no doubt that a version of this icon had the Apple logo

with the correct like perspective but then somebody in branding said you can't do that's the logo can't do that to the logo and so then they

flattened the logo but kept the perspective I just take it off if you took the Apple logo off this, it would be a perfectly fine way to show a hard drive.

Because this is what hard drives look like now to people. This is an SSD drive. Like this is one of those Samsung LSD things. That's what this is. That's what this should be. And so they were so close. They were like red, they were so close to like perfection and they just fell down. And then they got it wrong.

So where does it go? Like I don't mind them getting rid of the spinning hard drive. The day has passed. And it wasn't that great. to begin with it, because a lot of people don't know what the spinning hard drive looks like even. So having it be an idealized like external drive is fine. I will say in our free form document here,

I'm looking at it and it's pretty small. And it actually looks much better small. Like the perspective thing is less of an issue for me. Yeah. I think I would be happy with like a C for this. I agree. Because I do think it is a better way of showing this thing than a hard drive. Oh yeah, for sure. I just wish it was better.

Yeah. It could be. better. They were so close to something much better. Yeah. Okay. Next up is image capture. The original image capture or the pre not the original, the previous image capture is a round wrecked, black

round wrecked with a bunch of pictures in it. Like black and white pictures as if being shown in photos or something like that. It's a collection of photos in a grid. And then again, bottom right corner, because this was the style at the time, is a little digital camera. Now this comes from an era

where I mean digital cameras are one of the we don't use digital cameras like we used to but image capture is kind of for digital cameras right the idea there is that you're you're attaching a camera or a card or something and then image capture lets you see everything that's on there and you can import it onto your Mac that's why it's there the new one

has is a black round direct but with gray clamp spars I don't even know what it is at the top and bottom? Maybe just, I don't know. And then inside is a round-wrecked photo of the rainbow stage at Apple Park. And then on top of it is a glass circle with a down icon to indicate you're going to download pictures like this picture using image capture. I think the ones on top and bottom are just meant to indicate there are more photos here. Oh, those are like other photos that are available, but they're gray. And so they don't distract you.

Okay, I had trouble reading that. I think, so here's, here's my thought about this one, which is, I like that it's colorful. I think that the fact that it is showing the download icon is actually a good idea, because that is what you use this for. It might be a little too busy, especially at small sizes. I don't think that the little shapes in the top and the bottom really work for me. But I think it's, I think it's better than the old.

one, and I think it's okay. Especially for today. Like it's better, because you can use image capture to grab things off of an iPhone. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. If you're not using ICloud, you pull your iPhone camera photos off there too. I think not having the camera is good. I think having the SF symbol down arrow is good. I love, you know, again, color in the rainbow stage. It's kind of nice. It looks nothing like the old icon, which if you're used to the old icon, it's very disturbing when you launch this thing for the first time and you're like, what the heck is that? It's like, oh, that's image capture. I think this is B2. Because I just think they chose a great image. Like, if you're going to do image capture, it should be a good image. And they chose a great image. And I think other than

that, it does a decent job of indicating, like, oh, you see this image? Would you like to download it? Like, you've got it. Like, it makes perfect sense. Yeah. I think it's okay. We'll put it in B for now. That's okay. I'd put B or C. So I'll take it. Next, also not previously rated, iPhone mirroring. So a new icon, relatively new, doesn't have the baggage of 25 years. The old iPhone mirroring icon, when that feature was introduced last year, gray background with an iPhone on it. With like a wallpaper on the app. I would have given this icon an F because it is just completely unimaginative, the old icon.

Yes. New icon, round wrecked, blue background. And then on it, there's a black iPhone shape like the iPhone. And then in front of it, there's a white iPhone shape with a bunch of gray icon round wrecks on it implying something like an iPhone home screen. I think what they're getting for here is like, the iPhone is back there.

But the ghost of the iPhone is in the back in the front. Well, the other one is in the shadows, you know? like he's he's gone now we don't talk about him I forget about that hardware iPhone because now we got the ghost iPhone yeah I like this one I think this is doing a good job with showing what it's doing I mean maybe I would have had iPhones in a mirror you know but

you know like that could have been fun skeuomorph yeah just like a little I don't know you put like a mirror in the middle of them and they're looking at each other waving or something I don't know who's the fairest iPhone of all I think this is a good icon I think this is like... I think it is trying in a way that the previous icon was not.

How about that? Yes, exactly. The old one was just like, it almost feels like a placeholder icon. Yeah, yeah. I think it was. Yeah, I think it was. I think they just slapped it together

because they needed something and it's fine, but like it's super generic. And also just not a great idea to do a system icon that is so clearly the current iPhone, right, like that you would have to be updating it, right? because it's the dynamic island it's got an action button

So this is an idealized iPhone with the ghost in front of it I think it's kind of funny that's like the spirit of the iPhone has been lifted away from the iPhone

I think it's okay I feel like I'm not sure this metaphor is the right one for this icon but I think it does impart judgment I would sort of put it

at like B or C let's put it at B let's put it at B okay next up is migration assistant oh boy Mike the old migration assistant which got an F tier from us

is the finder icon in color lurking behind it is another finder icon in black and white and then there's an arrow that's pointing from the old one to the new one it's the arrow like what are we doing we're going from that to this

from black and white to color also if you start to think about the fact that it's a face with a face behind it and then behind that there's a face with a face behind it. There's four people here. Yeah. So F tier, the arrow, it's bad. The new one is a round wrecked that's mostly white.

And then in the center of it, there's a circle with a gray outline. And then inside that is a dark gray circle. And on top of that is an arrow pointing to the right that's got a white part and then a little gray part and then a little darker gray part at the end of the of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the. of the arrow. Not good. So my thought here is, I appreciate that you're doing a new icon here, but what are you doing?

Yeah. Because why, why the unnecessary detail? Why are there two, why does the circle have a, a rim? Why does the arrow have, I guess they're trying to suggest movement.

They can't do a curved arrow, so they just do this arrow with the little bits of darker. It's not a gradient. It's just little more glass bits behind it. I don't understand. it at all. Something I find really funny right? So like

they're trying to show the arrows in motion but what they would not allow for themselves to do is to make the kind of point of the arrow smaller because if you look at it as a solid arrow they want it to be balanced visually but then if you look at what the arrow

actually is which is the top layer the shape of that arrow is all wrong like it's really bad like it's like all points of the arrow are the same length which you would not do. And so this is very funny to me.

This does not say migration assistant. Neither did the old one. No. Well, I mean, I would argue the old one says it better than the new one. This is a case where they've taken an ugly logo that does actually sort of communicate what's happening

and replace it with an ugly logo that doesn't communicate what's happening. Yeah. I think it's bad. I mean, they took a bad logo and they made it still bad. It's an F-tier logo. This is an F-tier logo. I think they have completely thrown away their old F-tier logo and

icon and replaced it with a new F-tier icon. Congratulations, everybody. We did it. Okay, moving on. We've still got a lot to go through here. Oh, yeah. We're going to an app that nobody uses because you just use keyboard shortcuts or whatever, but it's Mission Control.

Mission Control used to be a black round-wrecked with a bunch of little windows that had little icons on the bottom attached to them, a green one, a purple one, and a blue one. The new one has a black round wrecked with a bunch of windows, but now the windows have very faint Mac stoplight things in the upper left corner,

and that's it, and there are three of them. So they took the colored squares off, and they put little stoplights on them. So this new icon does a better job of showing what mission control actually looks like, because mission control on the Mac doesn't have the little squares. Mission control on the iPad does.

It shows the little app icons underneath the windows. But mission control on the Mac does not do that. So technically, the current mission control icon on Tahoe is a better visual representation of what is happening, right? Like accurately. But, I mean... You lose the fun color. You do.

It's boring. I mean, technically there is color, but you just can't see it. You can't see it because it's so small. It's just F2. Like, there's, they don't really need to argue about it. It's just not really, it's like, it's got the same problem with migration assistant. It's like you're trying to show something, but in that you're just kind of not really showing anything. To be fair, Daphne in our chat room says she's got it in her dock.

Amazing. That's fair. I guess some people do use it that way. I just always use a trackpad gesture. I just use a trackpad gesture. Me too. I mean, everybody takes, it takes different folks. It's fine.

It's fine. Photo booth. Yes. Now, I actually use photo booth. I heard somebody say, oh, whoever uses photo booth. I use photo booth all the time to test what my camera looks like before I get on a zoom or something to make sure that it looks okay. Yeah. Old photo booth icon, red round wrecked, and then in it was two symbols, a photo kind of a border. photo shape turned on its you know rotated a little bit to the left and then in front of it another

photo with a red border with a white background with that person shape inside it so it's like two photos and then in the bottom right corner the photorealistic camera lens is there the new one it's a red round rect with a little slot at the top and a strip of that's coming out it's a white strip that comes down to the bottom, right, you know, to the border, above the border, because they leave space around all of these, with two, what are basically photos on a photo strip of the little person shape. Mike, this is a great icon. Yes.

And it's a vast improvement because it's what you get in a photo booth. Yes. This is the dispenser of the photos from the photo booth. What you don't get in a photo booth is just a random disembodied lens. This is one of the weird examples. And a stack of pictures, a stack. Of where a current icon for an old app is actually the new icon is better than the old one. Like, significant, it's like this is mirrored based on some of the conversations we've been having, where it's like you took a thing that used to mean a thing and then you updated it and now it doesn't mean anything.

It has no meaning at all. It has no meaning at all. Where the current one means the thing that it's supposed to and the old one doesn't mean anything at all. mean anything at all. Where the old icon, if I look at it, this old icon could have been the preview icon. Actually, it's the photo booth icon. So I will say, and somebody who knows the history and remembers it better than me, but I'll say, photo booth used to have a different icon, right, a skeomorphic icon.

And I think the reason that the round rect is red is because it used to be a red curtain, like the idea that you're going into the photo booth behind the red curtain. So that's why the red comes from. but if we're talking about today and liquid glass icons and where they came from last time this is a huge upgrade it fits the metaphor of the app

perfectly it imparts photo booth it's cute, it's whimsical I think it's S tier yeah I think it's S tier I actually am looking now I think this is the best photo booth icon there has been so the original

was a curtain with a stool underneath it kind of poking out And then like a strip of photos of a person who's sometimes wearing glasses and sometimes not, I find it odd. And then another one is, is like the image, a set of four images of another person with this little lens on it, which doesn't make any sense. And then it became what it is now where they took the person away but kept the lens. And now I think they finally landed on the best icon for a photo booth, which is the pictures. coming out of the photo booth.

From D-tier, elevated to S-tier. Yeah. Bravo photo booth icon. Next, by your demand, we didn't have this in there and you're like, you've got to put it in there. Photos. Yeah. So the Photos app, I always think about like it didn't really change that much. It's interesting.

So the old Photos app is what, 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8. It's like a little overlapping glass shapes all arrayed. It makes it look like a flower. but they're like translucent colored chips. The new one is eight glass chips, but they're different. There's a bigger space in the center. And so instead of overlapping each other

and then overlapping in the middle to create this flower, instead it's a little more literally just the colored chips. going around. What I admire about this is that it is still recognizably the Photos app and that if you didn't pay attention you wouldn't notice that it changed but it does fit liquid glass better even though weirdly

the Photos app already kind of fit liquid glass. Yeah, but I think that why I wanted to include this is I think Previous B tier by the way, previous B tier. Yes, for previous to be. I think the Photos app to me is like a prime example of how you can make a really good liquid

glass version of an icon that keeps what it was good about the old one and either makes it better or in a way where you don't really notice and I think this is a better icon than the one it replaces. It's cleaner. The old one now looks kind of like muddy to me,

like dark. It's too much detail for an icon. Too much detail. I think that this is a really good version of a liquid glass icon. Like I would say this is an A-tier icon, I think. Okay. We will put it in A-tier then.

why not why not it gets a little bit better okay next up preview so preview has gone through some different versions over time it previously got a D from us

now I'm going to tell you why so the preview icon used to be it was actually a whiteboarded round rect very much in the style of modern Tahoe icons and inside of it a photo in a in a in a round wreck of an ocean and a sky

and like a beach. And then in front of it, again, bottom right corner physical object thing, there's a loop which photographers use to magnify things. So it's a very skeuomorphic, as many of these icons were, and this one survived, and it's a photography loop to look,

magnify something down on a physical layout where you've got a photo and you're looking in close. Okay. I think one of the reasons that we rejected this concept was, nobody knows what a loop is and it looks like a shot glass or something and it doesn't really impart

if you know what a loop is the metaphor does follow but I think I think we said it could be a better metaphor they could do something else that indicates you're looking carefully at media so

with our really sage advice in mind, the Apple designers heard our feedback and said, great, what if the icon is just a loop on a blue background? Because everybody knows what a loop is. And let's lean into the loop. My favorite thing about this is for as much as I can see, this loop would not work because it is made a frosted glass. Yeah, yeah. Probably not. Even the lens is frosted. Good news is if you look through it, Mike, all you're going to see is the blue of the round rected sitting on because there's no media down there. Yeah, but like, okay, so technically, I was thinking about this. Technically, this is actually a better, like, an okay interpretation to me because the loop is the previewer in the sense.

Like, it's just sitting there waiting for you to pick it up and take it to an image, right? And so you're like, so it's like living in its spot. Yeah, and then they're going to pick it up. But like, it's just very funny to me that it is now made of frosted glass. So you would look through it and see essentially nothing. Just haze. Yeah, in the meeting, in the meeting, somebody gave an image. impassioned defense of the idea of the loop because it is the previewer.

And therefore, this is the perfect thing. And we've used the loop on preview for a lot. And if we're going to make a radical change, we can just use the loop. I would argue, first off, it is kind of a weird skeuomorphic decision, but they made some of those and some of these icons. But for me, this is an abject failure. Yeah. For two reasons. One is, in their attempt to maintain continuity with the preview icon, they fail.

Every time I launch preview, I go, what the heck is that? And I realize, oh, that's preview. It doesn't scan to me like the preview icon at all. It's so disconnected from the preview icon that any continuity you might have kept is lost. Two, nobody knows what a freaking loop is. No. So get a new metaphor for preview that shows something that is going to be an easier read. because if you're going to throw away the scanability of the old icon,

then do something better with it. But instead, we get this thing. I think it is, I'm going to say it, Mike. I think this is the worst Tahoe icon. Oh, wow. I do. I think it's the worst. Because I think every time I see it, I go, what is that?

I'm like, oh, that's preview now. And I just think I think there's a mistake that throws away history and replaces it with something that is dumb. It's a dumb metaphor. Don't use it. Why are we throwing away the history? keeping the decision that is outmoded and weird. I don't understand it at all.

I think it's really bad. So let's put it in F then. Thank you for agreeing with my dislike of this icon, or at least letting me rage about it. I appreciate it. That's why we're here. This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by ExpressVPN. You wouldn't take a call in a public place on speakerphone for anyone to hear

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Okay. Also by your request. You wanted to seek QuickTime here. So the old QuickTime was a black round wrecked with a last vestige of brushed metal, a brushed metal cue in the QuickTime logo style. And inside of it, sort of a glassy blue gradient filling up the holes that are not the queue because quick time that the arm of the queue is basically like a clock because of time that's sort of where that comes from but it's also just at this point the quick time logo it's been

there for 30 years this is the latest iteration of it the new one is a white background with a green a blue glass circle and a blue glass cue arm laid on top of it all right so the reason i want to include this is because no icon on Tahoe is confusing me more than this one. I use QuickTime often. I use QuickTime to double check that the podcasts that I upload to our service provider that we use are like our data host for providing our MP3 files. You can open QuickTime, you can press CommandL and you can paste in a URL of where audio lives on the internet and it will play it. And so I do that to make sure that it's playing correctly. I jump through it a few spots just to make sure it's uploaded correctly because I want our listeners to make sure that

they're getting, I want to make sure that our listeners are getting an accurate, correctly working audio file, right? QuickTime used to be blue and white. Then they created QuickTime Pro. QuickTime Pro was black and silver with blue. For some reason, the QuickTime logo has remained this color forever, even when there was no longer QuickTime and QuickTime Pro. It just then became QuickTime. They have now reverted the colors back to the regular QuickTime color scheme. I don't know why they have done this and it is breaking my brain every time I open quick time. So I just want to put this in F tier because I'm upset about it. All right? That's why it's here. I don't mind the QuickTime icon. This is what I would say. Nobody knows. I just wrote a

story about the 30th anniversary of QuickTime, right? Nobody knows what QuickTime is. QuickTime is a brand name without meaning. It's old, so it's stuck around. It doesn't mean anything. It never really meant anything, but at least Apple sold it as a brand of video utilities and things.

But they ripped all of that out in Catalina or after Catalina, and it's just a video player now using some video APIs. I would argue that QuickTime should not be called this anymore and that this app should just be called player or video player and have a video

play icon of some kind. The letter Q doesn't mean anything to anybody. Also, like, I just, I mean, I get the legacy of it. I get the history of it. Like I said, I've been hanging around QuickTime for 30 years. I get it. I get it. But like, I think it's meaningless to everybody. I think having a video player utility is nice. Calling it QuickTime. It's. It's just, it's branding that should disappear. I'm sorry. It should just vanish. And the cue and the, and the, and the, and the little stroke that is the, the second hand or the minute hand or whatever it is for time. Like, I get it. It's a metaphor that's been out there a long time, but like, it's over. It doesn't impart any information. It's just, hey, here's the thing we call our video player. And I tell people, you know, record your podcast in quick time or whatever. And they're like, oh, quick time. Like, what does it? even mean. So like having it be a media utility or a video utility or a player, because you can also record audio with it. I don't think it needs to be called QuickTime anymore. And I don't think the icon should reflect a brand that was invented in the 90s. Yep. F tier? We'll put it at F. Just because

I'm upset. I'm upset about it. I hear you. I'm upset. I hear you're upset. Well, we got it. Okay. Also by your request, I believe. Oh, no, no, I put this in anyway. Safari. Yeah. Safari. Okay. So what happened with Safari? Well, let's start by saying Safari logo used to be a compass, a skeuomorphic compass, and it kind of made sense. And then at some point, they devalued it and turned it into a flat compass circle shape with a fairly flat but with a shadow, needle on it pointing red to north, I guess, and white to south, but sort of sideways. in Tahoe the circle got smaller it got lower contrast there's less of a a shadow on the needle and that's about it now we previously gave this icon a D for lots of reasons it doesn't say

safari we question the whole compass metaphor it feels like one of those things that it's called safari even like yeah but if you're going to stick with that branding like it is, they've watered down the initial concept, but I think some of the worst icons are, we had an initial concept that may or may not have been strong, but at least it was clear. And with every successive icon iteration, they've watered down but kept parts of it.

And it's so disconnected from where it was. And what I would say about this icon is, now, in addition to being the old one was a D icon for lots and lots of reasons, the new one is flatter and lower contrast. I don't know if it's an F tier or if it's still D tier, but it's not better. I would say it's worse.

You think it's worse? I don't think it's worse. I think it's exactly the same. Like, to me, it's just still a D tier. That works for me. I agree. It is still bad like it was bad before. And I, other than, again, branding legacy,

I feel like they should actually come up with a new idea for this icon. Yeah, I agree with you. Please. Please, new idea. next is screen sharing okay we had fun with this one this was also a D tier last time screen sharing it's a round wrecked that's silver on the edge but then there's a black circle very close to the edge inside that is the implication it's a screen and then there's a blue gradient in there that's the thing that the person is watching and who's the person you ask

well in the place of the skeuomorphic object there is that thing that's the shape of you know the head with the little semicircle below it that's the top of the body, that is outside looking in like they're looking, staring into the screen. It's screen sharing, okay? That's what it was. Is it you? Or is this another person that you're sharing it with? Well, it's whoever is, no, because you mostly are using this to look at something else. So it's you looking at a screen that's coming from somewhere else. But there's nothing on it. But there's nothing on it. It's just blue. New one. Blue background. So they're trying to keep the like majority blue concept here. No black border or anything. Inside it, there is,

a glassy round-wrecked screen that's kind of light blue and then inside it are those little it's like the mission control it's like little tiny windows three little tiny windows and then in front of it but centered is a circle and a semicircle that's the person

so it is still a picture of a person looking at a screen but the screen the person on the screen are now in the round-rect and the person is looking at a screen that is more shaped like a screen and has windows in it like a screen which I will say this is better.

Absolutely, it is better. It looks like a screen. It looks like a screen now. With windows on it. It's not just like... It could have been a lowly person looking out a window before, right? Lonely person just staring into space before.

And a window that illuminated on them was the thing, you know? It looks kind of like somebody staring out the window of an airplane. The old logo. It does look like that, yeah. Pondering life. And while looking down at Greenland, the right one it's a person looking at a computer screen

like yes you got it you nailed it this is what screen sharing is so they've taken a D tier icon and elevated it how far do you think that they've elevated it's at least B tier yeah I think I might even say A tier let's put it in A tier let's get it up there

and somebody pointed out that the gradient is actually Adi says the gradient's the same as the iPhone mirroring logo which is true it's sort of like sharing screens I actually think the iPhone mirroring is the same as screen sharing because the screen sharing gradient is the same as the old gradient.

Okay, yeah, yeah. Right, so like... So they all go together. When they updated screen sharing, they updated iPhone mirroring gave that the same gradient as this one. I say A tier. I agree.

Let's do it. I mean, I want to give them extra credit for making a bad icon a good icon, which as we've seen doesn't always happen, but did happen. Yeah.

So good job mysterious icon designer for screen sharing. Okay, we're going to move on to screenshot. Okay. The utility you use when you don't want to take a screenshot. Old one, gray edge, and then white red, round direct inside it. And then inside that, kind of like those crosshairs in black or dark gray.

And then inside that, a camera, a black silhouette of a camera with a white circle representing the lens on the inside. New one, and we didn't rate this before. New one is a, you know, whiteish with a gray gradient, but like the standard kind of white round rect. No border around it, which I think is a good choice. You get those crosshairs again, but they're thinner, gray crosshairs. And then inside is a camera icon, but it's different. It's a black silhouette, sort of, but it's really, at this point, we would say it's a black body. And then there's a lens.

And the lens is a gray circle with a sort of like shaded sort of white to gray to black kind of shape of the lens glass itself. And then to the right and above, off sort of diagonally, upper right of the lens is a little yellow circle that's like an indicator. Like it's going to focus or take a picture. Yeah.

Oddly more detailed. The new one has much more detailed than the old one, which makes it a better of these. Yeah, it makes it better. I think so. I think it less heavy because it doesn't have that border and that the crosshairs are lighter. and it's I think it's a better camera

I think you can still see at a glance it's a camera I think it's a better looking camera yeah I think so you don't use this so metaphors are working real hard here because you don't use a camera to take a screenshot

correct right correct yes but how do you get across this I mean do you have well you could use the three app icon

iconography that they've now screen sharing And now it's in screen sharing and emission control, and you could put those little crosshairs over the top of it. Yeah. Yeah. That's my feeling is that this is a better icon, but I'm not sure the camera is the right symbol to use.

I would say this is a C tier because it looks nice. Yeah. But it could be better, I think. And I think so, yeah, our complaint here, I think, would be we think this metaphor is wrong and that they should have done something that was different. However, if the brief was, take this old icon and make it nicer they did yeah absolutely okay this a previous s tier icon has

been redesigned that's always scary yeah the s tier stands for stickies the old stickies was a round wrecked yellow that actually was a stack of stickies so there was a top one it's got a scribble and a couple of lines on it the edge is turned up a little bit so you can see that there you can pull that one off and there's other sticky notes behind it and so it's a sticky note pad in the shape of a round rect super clever we loved it we gave it S tier the new one is

a generic white round rect and on it are three little squarey round wrecks with the same squiggle line line on the front one that's yellow and then there's a green one behind it and there's a little pink one behind it and they're

in a little stack so I will say before we judge this. The pros of the new icon is that this is actually kind of what the Sticky's app looks like. It's a bunch of

often different colored items floating on your Mac. It's not a sticky note pad. The cons are the Sticky Note Pack look really good and imparted that it's sticky notes. So it's more literal

which has advantages but it also feels a little more generic and with less personality than the previous. What do you think? I think this is an S-tier icon because it's nice and colorful. It respects the past, right, by having the exact same look of the yellow one.

And also... It's a more vibrant yellow. Hey, look, if you had a sticky notepad and that corner was peeled up all the time, curled up like that, that would annoy you. You'd be like, ah! I suppose. Why is it always cold up like that?

I mean, I would say S or A, because, like I said, I'm kind of sad. Well, here's the thing. I'm sad that the skeuomorphic nature of the old S-tier icon is going away because I like it. But also, no icon of this style made it to Tahoe. Like, clearly, they're like, no, no, no, no. We're not doing skeuomorphic objects all the way to the edge of the round wreck. We're not going to do it. We need a little bit of white space around the round wreck every time.

So with that as the design brief, I do think they did a great job. I would not have wanted to see a sticky notepad inside a round wrecked. No. And what's going for it is it's actually what the Stickey's app looks like.

Yes. It's schimorphic to the app. Which is the... Yes. It reflects the software and not an object in space. We'll make it S-tier. It stays as S-tier.

Good job. You didn't blow it. Now, this is an app that I remember you having a lot... An icon you had lots of problems with. I don't like it. When we did this before, We put it in A because I insisted.

It's terminal. I hate it. The old terminal icon has a silver border with a black border inside it with a gray screen background beside it. And then it's got a greater than and an underscore, which is basically a Unix prompt and a cursor. The new one, much simpler. It's got, it's a black round wrecked and there is a glass greater than with a dark gray cursor. underneath it. So it's a simplified version of the old logo.

What do you think? I prefer it to the old one, but I still don't like it. So I think I prefer it too, or I don't have an opinion about it? I like that the, like, the tech, would you, would you call that a cursor where the text goes? It's a cursor. Okay. I like that that is a different color to the prompt, like that it's gray. I agree. I agree. I like that it doesn't have the multiple layers of frame around it.

Yeah. Because it's like, how big is the text on this screen in the old one, you know? Yeah. And I'm sure I said this before, but I'm going to say it again, I think there was an opportunity to have this be colorful. Yeah. Like my terminal is set to have the text in a color, not white on black. I think probably I said this before. I would have wanted this green. Yeah. Green on black. Yeah, right? It's the classic green console.

Yes. So I think they have the opportunity to make, have a little pop of color here, especially with the larger prompt symbol in the cursor, to have like a pop of color. And instead, it's super monochrome. Um, but I think it can continue to live at a tier. If it was there before.

Yeah. I'm happier with it. I think it is better. It is not S tier. I don't think it's a tier. But if we gave it A tier before, I prefer it to live. last one, so logic could dictate it. Well, you don't think it's worse, though, right? No, I think it's

better than the old one. Okay. But I just didn't like it anyway. I think it's fine. I don't know if I think it's better, but I think it's fine. We'll put it at a tier. We'll just keep it at a tier. How about that? Okay. If this was a request, you made me go get this after I did all this work, you're like, but Jason, we must talk about test flight. We must talk about test flight. Okay, test flight. It's blue. Blue round wreck. The old one is a blue round wrecked and inside it there's a thin white round wrecked line as a frame and inside that is a three bladed propeller because test flight right and it's in a this is a blueprint color scheme right it's blue um you know and again this this evolved over time to this icon that was in the last

generation um some of the blades are are fully formed and some of them are just outlines and then there's kind of like a little swooshy, sort of like the relay logo was, a little sort of swooshy circle that indicates that the propeller is turning. Test flight, right? Test flight, so it's an airplane propeller. The new icon is blue

with a grid like a blueprint that goes all the way to the edge. It's a very light grid. Inside it, there are three, propeller blades. They're just glass propeller blades. They're not in different shapes and different forms of level of completeness. They're just there. And there is a circular kind of gradient pattern that goes around that is implying movement from them. But it's not like a little track behind it like on the others. It's a it's a gradient sort of like that fades away as you get

further, but still implies that they're spinning. What do you think about this one? So everything that was good about the old Tesla which we gave a B, realistically was only good at sizes. This is the thing that I've already levered as a complaint. It was only good at sizes that you would never see the icon. Like the fact that

the three blades were at different levels of design like one is pure wireframe, one is sketch, one is fully like rendered that the, you know, it says design I think designed by Apple in California it does. It's the text that's going around the sort of corner. But you would never see it.

at a level that that made any sense to you. And it just looked honestly like they were the same level of doneness, right? So I think the new version does a much better job of indicating blueprint than the old version. I think it's showing blue and having the grid, the very visible grid there, suggests like development, like something's going on here. Plus, it actually now looks more like a propeller spinning than the old one. I really like this someone is pointing out something in Discord that I think is obvious but I'm just going to say it

because they said it they're not blades they're app icons at different levels I know we're talking about it was before they're like skewed app icons right so they're like the round wrecks anyway so they look like propellers sure but they're it's it's they're propeller blades I just want to save us from the follow up

okay I'll just say it they may be hinting at the fact that yes these are actually turned, just like people are trying to make us believe that the App Store icons are are icons that are turned, that are shapes. But that's not where they come from.

That was a retcon that they did that's like a little Easter egg. Yeah. So, okay, the point is, though, that it's making the shape of a propeller. And to your point, this one looks more like a propeller. As a small, yeah, it does.

At a small size, all you get out of test flight ever is it's blue with those. three little things sticking out, like a pinwheel or a propeller. That's all you ever scan at the size that you see your test flight icon. And so this new icon passes the test because it's still obviously the test flight icon in a way that the preview icon fails. Yes. And I think it's just a better looking icon than the old icon, even though the old icon I'd like it. And so I would say this is an A tier icon. I think they did a very good job with a

test flight icon. I think they gave it more personality and also made it look more like what it should look like at the sizes that you see it. Sounds good to me. We'll put it there. I think it's good. I mean, I think it's A or S to you. I mean,

I think they did a very good job. It's a pleasant icon that still does the job and does it better and feels like it's got the blueprint thing. I think it's really good. Next up is text edit. Text edit previously got a B. Yeah. Maybe because it's got a pencil in it.

I don't know. So the old text edit was a round wrecked of a sheet of paper. So it's got the line paper. It's got the line down, the vertical line, almost down the side, but with a little space to the left. And then a lot of horizontal lines with a big space at the top. It's like a sheet of line paper, except in a round rect. And then on top of it, the skeuomorphic element is a metal pencil, mechanical pencil. Yep.

That's it. The new one is a round rect that's a sheet of line paper. No pencil. Just the vertical line. and three horizontal lines evenly spaced. What do you think? I don't remember what I said

about the text edit icon in the past, but I don't like it. I don't like the text edit icon. Maybe what I appreciate about the text edit icon is if you're going to do what they did, I appreciate the level of detail

that they went to with the mechanical pencil. With the pencil, yeah. Because I just don't like a pencil and lined paper as the metaphor for text edit. as an app

like I just don't like it there's no editing happening here there's no text to edit like you could say there's nothing there

so if they are going to keep this metaphor I actually like what they have done right because they have made it again

easier to see that it is a piece of paper because they are using less lines it is a worse icon though like it is

so boring boring like The old one I didn't like I just don't really like this in general like this is not exciting to me or like not emblematic

to me of what it should be but I appreciate how hard they went with it if you're going to do it because I think they've made it worse I would say this is probably a D tier icon hmm yeah

I agree with you I don't I don't know why we gave the old one too high a grade but it's possible that we're getting very excited at that moment because we got very excited about things looking way too real yeah i mean that it's a good pencil and all that and i like that it's paper like with a sticky notes although it's just a sheet of paper i agree with you i think that it works better i do think it's the wrong metaphor and that they've gone for continuity but they've lost that it's a text editor yeah and that you know maybe it should have been

like text in a, in one of these little windows that they've been making in these glass windows with like a cursor in between letters of a word or something. It's like you're editing text in a computer because it's still, it's still a skeomorphic metaphor, right? You don't use a pencil to write in text edit. You are editing text in a computer. So you could just throw this metaphor away and show text editing in some way. and maybe that would be more accurate.

But you could also ride this metaphor like they did where they've kind of stripped everything else away and it's just a piece of paper. So fair enough, it is simpler. I think the metaphor is wrong and it's super boring. So where do you want it, D? Yeah, I think D. Okay. I agree with that.

I mean, even though I think they didn't do the worst job of implementation, I think it's just so boring. But it doesn't matter. We have one left. Okay. What is it? It is Time Machine. Okay.

Time Machine used to be a white round-direct gradient to gray, and in the middle of it, the Time Machine logo, which was a green circle with the Time Machine backward circular arrow, and then inside of it, the clock hands. The new one is a lighter round-rect, starting from white at the top to a green. gray at the bottom, but it's a lighter gray and it's got the sort of glass texture on it. And then a slightly smaller circle of the time machine logo with the glass effect at the edges. And then like with everything, the little backward arrow and the cock hands are little glass details. And the circle of the time machine logo is, was the time machine logo? Yeah,

it was greeny and now it's light, like a light greeny. Is it green? Yeah, it's great. Would you say green? Yeah, it's great. I have trouble. It could have been gray. Sorry. Yeah, they're green. They're all green. Okay, good. They're very different greens. Maybe I'm, maybe I'm out on a limb here saying it's green.

Yeah, very, very different greens, but they're greens. Very much so. So what do you think? Oh, and I should say the head of the arrow is much smaller in the new one than the old one? It's like, this is the logo you would make if you were making a liquid glass version of the time machine logo. Uh-huh. I don't think it was coming from like a great spot beforehand and so that you've kind of just done what you needed to do.

I don't like it, but I don't think I liked what it was before either. Mm. You know? Once again, we've got a classic, clever Apple brand name that is not quite what, you know, it's a metaphor, you've got to figure it out. They could call it backup, and they don't.

They call it time machine. And if you like the whimsy of it, great. It's showing you going back in time, which is fine. I mean, I don't know. It's simpler. It's liquid glass. It's fine. I have a hard time getting enthusiastic about it.

It's, I think, slightly harder to read because the arrowhead is small. but it's simpler and I like that the gradient isn't as dramatic in the round wreck behind it it's fine it's fine it reads this time machine to me it's probably a D tier like it's because it's fine

it's actually it's easier to maybe pass than the old one I don't know or just as much it's fine this is a bit of a damp squib to end the tier list on honestly but alphabet there's something we can do about it is this is how the alphabet goes

that's how the alphabet broke so now the next question is do we move anything around on the tier Absolutely, we do. MIDI goes to A. Uh, S, MIDI goes to S. For sure, it does. We're promoting the MIDI keyboard.

Yeah. Um, let me look at what else we've got. I think maybe color picker could go to C. I think that that is much better than the other icons in the C, but I don't think the other one should go to D. So we've got, um, color picker, the hard drive and screenshot in C. And I think that,

the color picker is a more appealing looking icon than the ones that it's sitting beside. And I think that, like, just from a color and design perspective, it fits more with what else is in B, which is calendar, finders. But they whiffed on the blood. They did whiff on the blood. Yeah, okay, that puts it in C. I forgot about the blood. They whipped on the blood. Who doesn't whiff on the blood? Like, I would even say that chess maybe could come up from D to C. I think chess, I think Jess is better than one than all those others that are down there? Do we really want to encourage chess, though? It can be the top of D.

It can be the top of D. Okay. Yeah. Don't be boring. Okay. Here's a question for you. Before we finish, what is the best in our tier list and what is the worst? What is the best in our tier list and what is the worst?

Well, for me... The best is photo booth. Okay. And the worst is preview. Okay. All right. I have a completely different ones. Yeah.

For me, the best is MIDI controller. I love that thing. The worst. It is amazing. The worst is Automator. Yeah, I know. You hate... Look, most people say, I hate Automator because of what they did to the wonderful automator icon.

Yeah. I hate it because... You didn't even like it. I hated the old one, and this is worse. And this is worse. It's bad. It's down low for me. Yes.

But I just am so offended by what they did to preview. Yeah. I don't like it. I at least find... Automator is bad, though. The preview icon, while I don't like it, I don't mind looking at it. I do not like looking at the automator icon. I think it is bad to look at.

Well, like the other ones, I can look at them and it's okay. That one, it upsets me to look at it. I don't like looking at it. It's an upsetting thing to see. It's fair. I think that's going to do it. So we were going to do some holiday Ask Upgrade. We're now going to do that in Upgrade Plus because this episode is over two hours long.

It's very long. We're giving you a holiday special. It's under the tree, you've got a giant ridiculous upgrade episode. Congratulations, everybody. Even more special, get Upgradeplus.com, 2020. 25 holidays will get you 20% off your first year for new subscribers. Thank you if you become a member and support the show. If you would like

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Century and Squarespace for the support of this episode. Most of all, I want to thank you for listening. Do not forget the 12th annual Upgradees is going to be our next episode. If it is not past the 23rd, if it is not the 23rd, because I'm going to close it on the 23rd. So if you're listening to this on the 22nd of December, go to Upgrades. Dot vote, and you can vote and put your nominations in for the upgrades.

I wish there was a dot nominations domain name, but there isn't. Yeah, alas. That's great. But thank you for listening. Happy Christmas. We'll be back next week. So goodbye, Jason Snow. Merry Christmas, everybody.

Goodbye.