The iconic Mac is being phased out after 25 years.

Apple has officially replaced the traditional drive icon with a new design that mimics an SSD drive in the latest beta version of macOS 26 Tahoe.

The new hard drive icon on a Mac. Photo: Apple .

Apple has just released a new developer beta of the macOS 26 Tahoe operating system, which includes an iconic change. The complete removal of the old Macintosh HD hard drive icon, an image that has been associated with Macs since 2000, has left some users feeling nostalgic.

The old icon, which mimicked a mechanical spinning hard drive, has been replaced with a new icon styled after an SSD, accurately reflecting the current hardware on Mac devices. Although SSDs in real life are just chips soldered onto a circuit board, the new design still retains a creative and recognizable element.

For many years, Apple stopped displaying the internal hard drive on the desktop and switched its entire Mac lineup to using SSDs as the primary boot storage. However, only now has the old hard drive icon been officially removed from the system. Apple hasn't given a specific reason for this decision, but the move is seen as aligning with the trend of modernizing the interface.

The Macintosh HD icon first appeared in the third beta of Mac OS X in 2000. It remained virtually unchanged for over a decade, with the icon only receiving a resolution upgrade in 2012 to match Retina displays and a minor tweak in 2014 when Apple adopted the flat design language from iOS 7 to macOS Yosemite.

Even in the initial build of macOS 26 Tahoe released last week, the old icon still remained. However, the new update has changed system icons across the board, including external drives, network shared drives, removable disk images, and even the Disk Utility tool.

Apple began offering SSDs in 2008 on the first-generation MacBook Air. By the early 2010s, SSDs became the standard on newer Mac models. The company officially stopped selling HDDs when the last Intel iMac line was discontinued.

The iconic Macintosh HD logo may no longer be relevant to modern hardware, but it remains an irreplaceable part of the memories of the long-time Mac user community.

Source: https://znews.vn/bieu-tuong-cua-may-mac-bi-khai-tu-sau-25-nam-post1574925.html