It's saddening to me how the all the Mac OS X icons have slowly lost their definition and uniqueness over the years - this twee figurine is just the cherry on the excrement sundae. It doesn't even have the smile crossing both sides.
It also seems to forget that the Finder icon is supposed to be a person looking at a screen, the face being a combination of the two. This is more like a simplified Picasso.
> Apple is planning to make visual design changes. It's not quite clear what that will entail, but for the upcoming table-top robot that's in the works, Apple has tested an animated version of Siri that looks similar to the Mac's Finder logo.
I really hope Apple does not start anthropomorphizing even more of their interfaces. I don't want to talk to a simile of a human. I want to talk to the machine.
I learned about apples tiktok via this post and I must confess as an old person, in terms of brands reaching young people, I find the content pretty cool (usually I either don't understand it or think it's lame): https://www.tiktok.com/@apple
I think what makes them work (for me too!) is that they're not simply random for the sake of being random. They're a oddball but there's clearly a shared theme/style and they're well-executed.
I'm not sure I'm interested in anything they're selling, but after what felt like 15 years of "young California hipster", I think this style catches my attention at least somewhat.
I remember reading somewhere that to target gen-z/alpha advertising shouldn't be direct or in your face but instead present things in an "organic" way that makes it seem cool, without the appearance of trying too hard to sell you something.
I guess the target audience they're going for is people who already have iPhones/iPads but would have bought a chromebook for school instead. This seems to be a reversal from their previous "what's a computer"-style ads that tried to sell iPads as the replacement for personal computing.
> I remember reading somewhere that to target gen-z/alpha advertising shouldn't be direct or in your face but instead present things in an "organic" way that makes it seem cool, without the appearance of trying too hard to sell you something.
On one hand, wasn't that the premise of the "iPod people" ads?
On the other thand... you're right to say that this is _very_ indirect. In an internet saturated with advertising, I guess there's nothing like just making entiretainment.
Looks like Apple decided they need their own version of the Android mascot. Theirs is definitely a little more unsettling than the little droid guy though.
My first thought: a rather strange copy of the en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillsbury_Doughboy
Google's Android robot has a much better design, IMHO. And I remember the Amazon box version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danbo_(character) and Arielle Nadel's photo stories "365 Days of Danbo" with it. Can't imagine that with the Apple Dough boy..
The shape of the bugdroid changed a couple of years ago - arms became asymmetric - narrow near the shoulder, widening at the hand, among other changes.
Honestly, who cares about anything AI-related that Apple does? Their head of MLX team just quit after months of threatening to leave due to MLX not being Apple's priority. Their Siri is a joke even Samsung Bixby works better than that. They switch between AI providers (OpenAI → Google) like you can "just change the LLM bro", and their M-series hardware is held back by lack of quality software and compute despite people literally begging them to improve it.
I was looking forward to upgrade my M1 Pro to M5 Max (128GB) until Awni (MLX head) quit. The new team isn't that responsive on X, and bugs keep getting piled up like they don't care if MLX is actually used in practice. After 3 years they still don't have a decent MLX server. Wanna try Qwen3.5? You can't use mlx_server because Qwen is a VLM. For that you must use MLX-VLM but that is not official and has tons of bugs. Apple refuses to open-source ANE source code even to their own MLX team.
It's saddening to me how the all the Mac OS X icons have slowly lost their definition and uniqueness over the years - this twee figurine is just the cherry on the excrement sundae. It doesn't even have the smile crossing both sides.
At least they remembered where the dark and light colors go this time around[1].
[1]: https://512pixels.net/2025/06/wwdc25-macos-tahoe-breaks-deca...
It also seems to forget that the Finder icon is supposed to be a person looking at a screen, the face being a combination of the two. This is more like a simplified Picasso.
I can understand your general point, but how can you argue that this in particular isn't unique/cute whatever?
> but how can you argue that this in particular isn't unique/cute whatever?
The perceived cuteness was partially what I was complaining about. It's just a bad approximation of the finder icon on a generic "chibi" body.
>I do not think this is the last we’ve seen of Lil Finder Guy…
https://www.macrumors.com/guide/siri-chatbot/
> Apple is planning to make visual design changes. It's not quite clear what that will entail, but for the upcoming table-top robot that's in the works, Apple has tested an animated version of Siri that looks similar to the Mac's Finder logo.
Fingers crossed this is right!
I really hope Apple does not start anthropomorphizing even more of their interfaces. I don't want to talk to a simile of a human. I want to talk to the machine.
I learned about apples tiktok via this post and I must confess as an old person, in terms of brands reaching young people, I find the content pretty cool (usually I either don't understand it or think it's lame): https://www.tiktok.com/@apple
I think what makes them work (for me too!) is that they're not simply random for the sake of being random. They're a oddball but there's clearly a shared theme/style and they're well-executed.
I'm not sure I'm interested in anything they're selling, but after what felt like 15 years of "young California hipster", I think this style catches my attention at least somewhat.
I remember reading somewhere that to target gen-z/alpha advertising shouldn't be direct or in your face but instead present things in an "organic" way that makes it seem cool, without the appearance of trying too hard to sell you something.
I guess the target audience they're going for is people who already have iPhones/iPads but would have bought a chromebook for school instead. This seems to be a reversal from their previous "what's a computer"-style ads that tried to sell iPads as the replacement for personal computing.
> I remember reading somewhere that to target gen-z/alpha advertising shouldn't be direct or in your face but instead present things in an "organic" way that makes it seem cool, without the appearance of trying too hard to sell you something.
On one hand, wasn't that the premise of the "iPod people" ads?
On the other thand... you're right to say that this is _very_ indirect. In an internet saturated with advertising, I guess there's nothing like just making entiretainment.
To me this looks 100% like what you used to see on Tumblr. Just pure random art with a theme. The difference is that back then it used to be gifs.
Looks like Apple decided they need their own version of the Android mascot. Theirs is definitely a little more unsettling than the little droid guy though.
My first thought: a rather strange copy of the en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillsbury_Doughboy
Google's Android robot has a much better design, IMHO. And I remember the Amazon box version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danbo_(character) and Arielle Nadel's photo stories "365 Days of Danbo" with it. Can't imagine that with the Apple Dough boy..
Android mascot is known as bugdroid - see https://www.androidpolice.com/every-android-bugdroid-ever/
The shape of the bugdroid changed a couple of years ago - arms became asymmetric - narrow near the shoulder, widening at the hand, among other changes.
Give the response this has had in the Mac community I really hope they’re smart enough to release a little playset.
It would be great merch. I know that’s not really an Apple thing but make an exception.
Tim Cook loves grubbing money.
Finder guy doesn’t technically make sense without the mouth reaching the side profile face.
I.e., only one of the two faces has a mouth.
> oh yeah, Apple started posting on TikTok and it’s unhinged
I had to see for myself and... yeah. 12 videos so far and only 1-2 make any sense at all.
It's like they told some interns to make a TikTok account that was the end of the direction or oversight.
Clicked the link hoping for something that might improve Spotlight :/
Have you tried raycast? I haven't looked back in years.
IIRC it still uses Spotlight indexing under the hood
Wow, you're right. I should have known that.
Mr.Macintosh?
Blank Check, what a wonderful premise.
Honestly, who cares about anything AI-related that Apple does? Their head of MLX team just quit after months of threatening to leave due to MLX not being Apple's priority. Their Siri is a joke even Samsung Bixby works better than that. They switch between AI providers (OpenAI → Google) like you can "just change the LLM bro", and their M-series hardware is held back by lack of quality software and compute despite people literally begging them to improve it.
I was looking forward to upgrade my M1 Pro to M5 Max (128GB) until Awni (MLX head) quit. The new team isn't that responsive on X, and bugs keep getting piled up like they don't care if MLX is actually used in practice. After 3 years they still don't have a decent MLX server. Wanna try Qwen3.5? You can't use mlx_server because Qwen is a VLM. For that you must use MLX-VLM but that is not official and has tons of bugs. Apple refuses to open-source ANE source code even to their own MLX team.
> They switch between AI providers (OpenAI → Google) like you can "just change the LLM bro"
You can. They’re not the same, but you can absolutely “just switch the LLM, bro,” and most consumers would never notice a difference.
As for the rest: this is about the future, not the present. All of your comments about the present are thus not particularly relevant, imho.
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I have built plenty. Some of them even make me money.
I never said LLMs didn’t have their own quirks. You can mitigate for those quirks.
You can just switch the models.
It’s just not as simple as a one-line change. But that isn’t what we were talking about.
Agreed. I have also built many LLM apps, and they aren't one line changes, but it is relatively simple to switch the model.
2026: Apple chose the tip of a penis as a mascot.
Say hello to your new companion!
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e949a92e17d55...
Still much better than Amazon's Peccy. Even the name is suspect.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90329525/amazon-peccy
If you see penis everywhere that's on you, unfortunately.
Or maybe you’re just in Bhutan
https://explorepartsunknown.com/bhutan/photo-essay-bhutans-p...
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Fitting as Apple have been a complete bell end lately.
The Phinder Phallus if you will.
Not the first time something Apple did was slightly phallic --- OS X El Capitan (now 10 years ago!) had a slightly unfortunate slogan:
https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/25/more-to-love-with-every-di...
As an aside, your link leads to an image/webp served with a .jpeg extension. WTF?