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A comment on The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline. Parent comment

Re:The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline by yoz-y on Tuesday July 26, 2016 @11:46AM (#12166427)
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.

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Re:The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline by dpark on Tuesday July 26, 2016 @12:15PM (#12166664)
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.

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