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Comment by CPLX | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure how to tell this guy, but I'm over 40 years old and I have been using Apple computers literally since elementary school. At a certain point the reference to intuitive design can be to ones own past, if that past has become sufficiently ingrained and intuitive to users.

I thought the lament about the photo app dropping the icon that looks like a camera was particularly odd. He seems uninterested in even acknowledging the point that most cameras don't look like that anymore, and there are many (most?) full fledged adults who have never used a camera with a large attached lens.

I'd even wonder at this point if there are more people in the world familiar with Apple products than with actual apples that grow on trees, but I digress.

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> the photo app dropping the icon that looks like a camera

But the old iPhoto icon was not only showing a camera, it was showing a camera and a photo. The camera is part of the icon because iPhoto/Photos can also be used to import photos from cameras that look exactly like the one in the icon. The old icon really couldn't be more fitting for what the app does.

And even if users don't know what a camera is, they can still recognise the other 50% of the icon.

Plus, Apple itself still uses the same type of camera in other icons, most notably on the current iOS lock screen, so I don't think anyone is confused by the iconography. Most people never compose a song and yet they know that iTunes' icon is a musical note.

It's a picture of a physical camera with a big lens, and a physical print of a photo with a white border. Supposedly representing an app that people use to store and organize photos they take with a phone and view on a display screen.

> And even if users don't know what a camera is, they can still recognise the other 50% of the icon.

Can they? who prints photos anymore?

> He seems uninterested in even acknowledging the point that most cameras don't look like that anymore, and there are many (most?) full fledged adults who have never used a camera with a large attached lens.

People say things like this in defence of the recent Apple UI changes but completely ignore the [iOS6 camera icon](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7d/IOS_6_Home_Sc...) vs [iOS7+](http://static1.i4u.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/main_i...)

We went from an icon that literally looks like the iPhone camera to an icon of a point and shoot you and others claim is antiquated and not relevant.

I consider this an an casualty of the switch to flat design: how do you draw a "flat" lens?

Without 3D or lighting effects, a lens is just a few concentric circles. So a flat picture of a camera housing is less ambiguous, even though it is not what a phone camera looks like.

> He seems uninterested in even acknowledging the point that most cameras don't look like that anymore

Digital SLR cameras still very much look like traditional cameras. Why? because the form is optimal for the task at hand - taking high quality pictures.

People still know what that kind of camera looks like, just like they know what a floppy disk looks like or an old phone handset. The new icon isn't evocative at all.

No reason to use an old camera metaphor. Apple uses it for iOS Camera app though.

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