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Lil Finder Guy

98 points

by frizlab

13 hours ago

| past

| 10 comments

| basicappleguy.com

| HN

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GaryBluto

12 hours ago

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It's saddening to me how the all the Mac OS X icons have slowly lost their definition and uniqueness over the years - this twee figurine is just the cherry on the excrement sundae. It doesn't even have the smile crossing both sides.

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ackyshake

11 hours ago

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At least they remembered where the dark and light colors go this time around[1].

[1]: https://512pixels.net/2025/06/wwdc25-macos-tahoe-breaks-deca...

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achierius

11 hours ago

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I can understand your general point, but how can you argue that this in particular isn't unique/cute whatever?

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GaryBluto

10 hours ago

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> but how can you argue that this in particular isn't unique/cute whatever?

The perceived cuteness was partially what I was complaining about. It's just a bad approximation of the finder icon on a generic "chibi" body.

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krackers

13 hours ago

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>I do not think this is the last we’ve seen of Lil Finder Guy…

https://www.macrumors.com/guide/siri-chatbot/

> Apple is planning to make visual design changes. It's not quite clear what that will entail, but for the upcoming table-top robot that's in the works, Apple has tested an animated version of Siri that looks similar to the Mac's Finder logo.

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SpyCoder77

11 hours ago

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Fingers crossed this is right!

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neom

13 hours ago

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I learned about apples tiktok via this post and I must confess as an old person, in terms of brands reaching young people, I find the content pretty cool (usually I either don't understand it or think it's lame): https://www.tiktok.com/@apple

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Waterluvian

12 hours ago

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I think what makes them work (for me too!) is that they're not simply random for the sake of being random. They're a oddball but there's clearly a shared theme/style and they're well-executed.

I'm not sure I'm interested in anything they're selling, but after what felt like 15 years of "young California hipster", I think this style catches my attention at least somewhat.

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krackers

5 hours ago

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I remember reading somewhere that to target gen-z/alpha advertising shouldn't be direct or in your face but instead present things in an "organic" way that makes it seem cool, without the appearance of trying too hard to sell you something.

I guess the target audience they're going for is people who already have iPhones/iPads but would have bought a chromebook for school instead. This seems to be a reversal from their previous "what's a computer"-style ads that tried to sell iPads as the replacement for personal computing.

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nxobject

3 hours ago

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> I remember reading somewhere that to target gen-z/alpha advertising shouldn't be direct or in your face but instead present things in an "organic" way that makes it seem cool, without the appearance of trying too hard to sell you something.

On one hand, wasn't that the premise of the "iPod people" ads?

On the other thand... you're right to say that this is _very_ indirect. In an internet saturated with advertising, I guess there's nothing like just making entiretainment.

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halapro

8 hours ago

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To me this looks 100% like what you used to see on Tumblr. Just pure random art with a theme. The difference is that back then it used to be gifs.

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gumby271

9 hours ago

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Looks like Apple decided they need their own version of the Android mascot. Theirs is definitely a little more unsettling than the little droid guy though.

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canucker2016

5 hours ago

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Android mascot is known as bugdroid - see https://www.androidpolice.com/every-android-bugdroid-ever/

The shape of the bugdroid changed a couple of years ago - arms became asymmetric - narrow near the shoulder, widening at the hand, among other changes.

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jcynix

7 hours ago

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My first thought: a rather strange copy of the en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillsbury_Doughboy

Google's Android robot has a much better design, IMHO. And I remember the Amazon box version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danbo_(character) and Arielle Nadel's photo stories "365 Days of Danbo" with it. Can't imagine that with the Apple Dough boy..

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MBCook

12 hours ago

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Give the response this has had in the Mac community I really hope they’re smart enough to release a little playset.

It would be great merch. I know that’s not really an Apple thing but make an exception.

Tim Cook loves grubbing money.

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paradox460

11 hours ago

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Mr.Macintosh?

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NetOpWibby

10 hours ago

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Blank Check, what a wonderful premise.

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dangus

10 hours ago

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Finder guy doesn’t technically make sense without the mouth reaching the side profile face.

I.e., only one of the two faces has a mouth.

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hrdwdmrbl

11 hours ago

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Clicked the link hoping for something that might improve Spotlight :/

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steve_adams_86

5 hours ago

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Have you tried raycast? I haven't looked back in years.

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behnamoh

12 hours ago

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Honestly, who cares about anything AI-related that Apple does? Their head of MLX team just quit after months of threatening to leave due to MLX not being Apple's priority. Their Siri is a joke even Samsung Bixby works better than that. They switch between AI providers (OpenAI → Google) like you can "just change the LLM bro", and their M-series hardware is held back by lack of quality software and compute despite people literally begging them to improve it.

I was looking forward to upgrade my M1 Pro to M5 Max (128GB) until Awni (MLX head) quit. The new team isn't that responsive on X, and bugs keep getting piled up like they don't care if MLX is actually used in practice. After 3 years they still don't have a decent MLX server. Wanna try Qwen3.5? You can't use mlx_server because Qwen is a VLM. For that you must use MLX-VLM but that is not official and has tons of bugs. Apple refuses to open-source ANE source code even to their own MLX team.

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borski

12 hours ago

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> They switch between AI providers (OpenAI → Google) like you can "just change the LLM bro"

You can. They’re not the same, but you can absolutely “just switch the LLM, bro,” and most consumers would never notice a difference.

As for the rest: this is about the future, not the present. All of your comments about the present are thus not particularly relevant, imho.

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rvnx

11 hours ago

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2026: Apple chose the tip of a penis as a mascot.