> maybe the icon had started clicking, and Apple just wanted to replace it before it suffered from catastrophic icon failure—but regardless, the switch is logical
this is clearly the right explanation
I get wanting to move away from the spinning drive look, but it's kind of weird that they've replaced it with what looks to me like an external drive (but also looks like the power brick for the AVP, or battery pack.
Can anyone explain what the three little holes and one big one are supposed to represent?
No other Finder icon is represented as a chip on a board. The CPU, GPU, and RAM aren't even represented in the Finder. So I don't see the issue with using that as a design.
But regardless, even if CPU/GPU/RAM aren't represented in the Finder, it's still confusing to use such an icon (in many places — presumably Disk Utility and other applications also) since users wouldn't know which of those many things it could represent. TBH, many people don't know the difference between CPU/GPU or RAM/SSD, so they wouldn't know what would/should be shown where.