Can you find me some actual person who honestly does not know what a camera looks like? Not "someone who has never personally used a camera," not "I'm sure that somewhere out there there's someone who doesn't know what a camera looks like," not "in twenty years, maybe lots of people won't know what a camera looks like."

Someone that, right now, actually honestly has no idea what a camera looks like.

Well. I can imagine that there must be some kids (let's say some 4-5 year olds) who already use tablets but they have never had a picture taken with anything else but a phone. I grant you that camera is not the best example since the phones have hardly caught up to good cameras and we will see them at least in some form for a long time.

Camera's are on TV shows, books, and advertising so some 4-5 year old might not know it, but I suspect most would make the connection.

EX: http://www.buttonsoundbook.com/site/595626/product/ISBN%200-... (Recommended for ages 3 years and older.)

Images are everywhere, and images are reality (fuck off, René Magritte).

Also, young people don't live in some sort of post-technical isolation. When they go to school, they will probably see the photography students walking around with cameras. And kids still burn music CD's for each other. Because it's cute and sentimental, and it feels a lot better than texting someone a link to a playlist.

> But if you have never seen a camera

Who are these supposed people who are buying Macs but have never seen a camera? This set of people must be miniscule if not empty.

Cameras are still in use, even if most people have replaced them with smartphones. Walk around any city and you'll see gobs of people taking selfies on their phones, but you'll also see a decent number of people carrying dedicated cameras.

I'd even go so far as to say you're more likely to see them than a microphone, which no one (as far as I know, anyway) is arguing to obsolete.

Eventually there will be and the icon will have to change then, but I do grant you that now is not the time.

Now the question is: should the icons represent something "iconic" or something that most people use?

> should the icons represent something "iconic" or something that most people use?

I don't know what you mean by "iconic". If you mean "abstract and without independently-identifiable meaning", then I think in general, no. Icons should be immediately identifiable when possible. The overlapping rainbow paint chips that make up the current photos icon seems utterly meaningless. The camera was meaningful. A stack of photos would be meaningful. An abstracted "photo" like Windows 10 uses (and like Google uses in the sidebar of their online photos app) would be meaningful.

For the record, I think Android/Google's photos icon is also utterly meaningless to most people. I think it's supposed to represent a camera aperture (same as Apple's icon?), but most people probably don't know what a mechanical aperture is.

By iconic I meant represented by an object associated with an activity that has the most meaning. (I have some difficulty phrasing this)

For example, in the current world maybe 10% of the people are taking pictures with actual cameras but we still represent the camera as a "box with a huge lens". Few people use land lines but the phone icon is still a banana. To send and e-mail in general we use an envelope but we send way more electronic messages than snail mail.

In that case, yes, I think icons should be "iconic" when possible. At this point, the "most used" version of basically every app is unsurprisingly an app. The phone app is used more than landline phones (or dumb cell phones). The camera app is used more than dedicated cameras. Word processors are probably used more than paper and pen.

So you either use something "iconic", or every icon is just a small screenshot, or I guess you make something up that is meaningless.