10 Mac App Icons And What They Represent

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at the design of some of the app icons on your Mac. 

So, let's start by looking at the Finder Icon. Finder is probably the biggest app on your Mac that you may not even thing of as an app. But it is! It allows you to view, manage, and organize your files and folders. It has a very recognizable icon. In fact most people consider this to be the icon for macOS because for years it pretty much was. It started out looking a little different back in 1984. It just had a little symbol that looked like the Mac. But there was the face. For years that evolved until we had the two faces design in the 90's. This is when it also got it's blue color that we know today. That has actually changed very little from the 90's evolving with most versions of macOS and including Tahoe where it now has slightly different shades of blue and a slightly different look. But anybody would recognize it from the original blue design in the 90's. It also has a similarity to a Picasso painting called Two Women. You can see it here and why people think that Apple got their inspiration for this icon from this painting. There's another Picasso painting called Two Girls Reading and I think looks even more like it. It is also said that Apple got its design for its original Macintosh Icon, way back in 1984, from Picasso as well.

Now let's take a look at Apple's browser, Safari. Safari is a term that means an expedition to observe animals. So that the idea of taking a Safari to look at websites is kind of what they were going for here. Just another way of saying Surf the Web or Browse the Web. Apple chose an compass here that kind of evokes exploration and all of that. It has changed over the years but has remained bluish and kind of has the compass points pointed a little bit off of North maybe to evoke the idea of exploring. A lot of icon design is just like regular artwork where you can kind of get different things from what you see there. Maybe the original designers tended your to see that or maybe they just intended it to be vague so you can can see what you want with the design. 

Now let's go to the icon that inspired this video because so many people ask what this icon represents. This is the Preview Icon. In it is this little device called a Loupe. It is a little magnifying glass that you can sit down on top of something. A photo, a map, a document of some sort and it sits the perfect distance so you can magnify what's under it. It's kind of like a magnifying glass but the problem of using a magnifying glass in an icon for Preview is that a magnifying glass is a universal symbol now for searching. This isn't an app that you are searching. This is an app that you are looking at something, examining it closely, so it fits the idea of a loupe more even though most people may not have even seen an actual loupe in person. 

Now let's go to an icon that you probably know what it represents. Most people do but for how much longer. The Phone App icon is an old fashioned phone handset. It is basically the top part of the this old fashioned phone although the same design for the handset remains today. You can still buy brand new landline handsets that look pretty much like this. At least the actual part that you hold to your face looks like this even if the device underneath it is very different. Of course a lot of people today don't have landlines at all so eventually this icon will just be the icon that people recognize for phone apps and they won't actually have ever seen the physical object. 

Here's another icon that has a physical object that may eventually be completely gone. This is the Photo Booth Icon. This is the app on your Mac that allows you to use your camera to take pictures. Now a Photo Booth is this little portable room where you can go in, sit down, and then it takes usually four photos in quick succession after you pay some money. Decades ago you would see these in various different public places and amusement parks and things like that. You can actually still find them today because people do like them and you can actually hire them for parties, for instance. It's a really neat way to capture yourself because the four photos allow you to change your expression or gestures, things like that, while you're in the photo booth. The strip that would come out is the strip of four photos which is the icon for the photos booth app. In fact the Photo Booth App actually has a mode where you can do exactly that. It will take four photos in quick succession and then you get this combination of the four of them.

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Now let's take a look at the Calendar App Icon. Looking at this you may not recognize it at all because you may have never actually seen the real icon. If you look at your Applications Folder you will see this. It's an icon that represents a Calendar, strangely with only 24 days in it, but if you actually have the Calendar Icon in your Dock where you search for Calendar using Spotlight you won't see this. You'll see the Calendar Icon that shows you the actual date. So most of the time that we view it we don't see the real icon, the default icon. We see this variation of it that gives us some useful information. 

Related to that is the Clock Icon which also has the default look showing 10:09. But if you put the Clock Icon in the Dock that icon will actually show you the real time. But strangely, for that one, if you do find it in Spotlight, you'll see that 10:09 time. 

Now a lot of icons, of course, represent physical objects that bring to mind the functionality of the app. This one is a real good example although most people get the word wrong. When you see this icon, the icon for Keynote, the word that probably comes to mind is Podium. But this isn't a podium. A podium is something that you stand on, that elevates you a little bit like when you get an award for 2nd or 3rd place after a race. You certainly can't have podiums that you stand on to make a presentation. But this icon doesn't show a podium. It shows a lectern. A lectern is a little table usually with a slanted top where you can rest your notes or your Mac while you make the presentation. But don't feel bad if you've gotten that wrong because language changes over time and more and more the word podium is being accepted as a description for a lectern. If you walk into a room that just has a lectern and then somebody says stand behind the podium you know what they are talking about.

I'm not a big user of the Podcast Icon on the Mac but I do love the icon. The icon shows a little icon of a person but with the circular radio waves coming out of that person like you might see in many different symbols going back decades for radio towers. The idea is you are broadcasting not from a radio tower but from you, which describes podcast very well. In addition I kind of think the person icon looks like a lower case i which brings to mind the i for iPod which is where podcasts originally got its name. 

I want to quickly mention some other app icons that have objects in them. There is, of course, the Find My App which kind of looks like a radar display. Another one is the System Information Icon which shows a measuring device called a Caliber. Typically today we see more squared off calibers for measuring the outside dimensions of something but you can still find the curvy caliber which I thinks looks kind of neat. Disc Utility has changed over the years but now it shows a hex wrench adjusting a hex nut which is kind of a neat icon as well.

A new App from Apple is the Journal App and that is a really cool icon. To me it looks like a butterfly. So what does a butterfly have to do with journaling. A butterfly is seen as a symbol of change, of growth, of metamorphosis. Journaling is seen as an activity that you do for personal growth. So butterflies are kind of associated with activities like journaling. I think the icon looks pretty neat. 

Now one icon that doesn't look particularly remarkable when you first glance at it is the Map Icon. It looks just like some map symbol. But actually is showing you some specific location. It is the intersection if I280 and Wolf Road which is just outside of Apple Park. As a matter of fact you can see the circle of the Apple Park building right there in the icon. There's another icon that features Apple Park. The new redesigned Tahoe version of the Image Capture App shows the little rainbow sculpture in Apple Park. Here's the view of it from Apple's last Worldwide Developers Conference Keynote event.

Now there's one more icon I want to show you. That's the one for Automator. It's just a little robot icon. It looks new in macOS Tahoe but it has always featured this little robot. The neat thing about it is the robot has a name. The name is Otto. Just Otto because it is Automator. I don't think this appears anywhere but lots of people have just referred to this little friendly robot as Otto. So it is kind of neat that automator is an app that has a little mascot. 

So which of the app icons that I mentioned do you like the most. Or perhaps you like one of the other app icons, one I didn't mention, even better. Let me know in the Comments below. Thanks for watching.