@atpfm my son (14) caught the discussion of the Phone.app icon with me, I asked him if he knew what the thing on the icon was:

“a phone”
“have you seen one like that?”
“I think, like at the museum, but just a rectangle wouldn’t look good on the icon”
🫠

@zenwheel @siracusa @atpfm I mean… I’m gen z and have a rotary telephone in my house right now, but even for me I brought a spare one in to class in elementary school for a lesson on antique technology bc nobody else (except the teacher) had seen one

Landline phones in general, but especially wired ones, aren’t very common anymore and are thus used as icons because they’re *the* de facto icon for a telephone. Much like how floppy disks are the save icon, phone cameras make a shutter sound, etc. It used to be skeuomorphism, but at this point, esp for kids, that’s just the icon.