No, Gruber said, "I don’t think the old icons for these apps from MacOS 15 were particularly good"
To me this post sounds like a typical "Steve Jobs wouldn't do this" nonsense.
At least 3 of the 4 previous icons were pretty easy to recognize on sight (all but expansion slot utility). I would never guess 3/4 of the new ones (only wireless utility), and I probably would have a hard time recognizing them even after I knew what they were.
- Disk Utility: not an improvement but not a loss either. "Disks" haven't looked like that in a long time, so it makes sense that it's updated. "Disk" as intended now, it's an abstract concept, so I sort of see why the icon would be abstract.
- Expansion Slot Utility: if you looked at a Mac Pro's expansion slots, you'd see exactly why the new icon makes a lot more sense, it has 3 slots in it.
- Wireless Diagnostics: looks perfect to me.
- Apple Script Utility: both suck equally, I struggle to see why an editor/compiler share the same icon style as configuration/diagnostic apps.
So they're either just as bad or slightly better. Neither version shines for quality. The old one only looked slightly "better" because the individual pieces were in high quality, but once overlapped they just looked like slop.
All I'm saying is that these icons have obviously never mattered to anyone, you'd expect more from the author.
That's not true. You can see the history of the Disk Utility icon here: https://basicappleguy.com/basicappleblog/macos-icon-history
Look at the original 2001-2007 version, which was the nicest. It's only gotten worse over time, unfortunately. The 2020 version got an unnecessary rounded rect because macOS Big Sur introduced iOS rounded rects as a new style, and then the 2025 went completely rounded rect because Tahoe enforces it on every app.
I personally have Disk Utility in my Dock, by the way.