A brasileira Sofia Coelho, que atualmente ocupa o cargo de diretora de arte na Apple, ofereceu um raro vislumbre dos bastidores do processo criativo da empresa em uma publicação no LinkedIn, na qual revelou rascunhos e um protótipo do personagem Lil’ Finder Guy.

Embora a publicação tenha sido removida (por qualquer motivo que seja), as imagens mostram como o personagem saiu do papel para as peças publicitárias da Maçã. O Lil’ Finder Guy, não custa lembrar, estreou como o rosto da campanha do MacBook Neo e, posteriormente, também apareceu em comerciais que divulgavam recursos do Mac.

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Coelho disse que a publicação era um “anúncio de aniversário bem-humorado” e descreveu a liderança do projeto como um “projeto de design dos sonhos”. Também mencionou os colegas que trabalharam ao seu lado na campanha.

"On March 4th at 11:00 a.m., measuring exactly one apple tall, a mascot, charmingly coined by the internet as Lil' Finder Guy, was born!"

In a post by Apple art director Sofia Coelho on LinkedIn (post taken down), Sofia shared early sketches and models of Lil' Finder Guy. pic.twitter.com/4Oo8xazSxx

— Basic Apple Guy (@BasicAppleGuy) July 24, 2026

Uma imagem mostrava uma folha de esboços explorando as expressões, as proporções e a forma geral do personagem. Essas imagens estavam ao lado do que parecia ser um protótipo físico do próprio Lil’ Finder Guy — o qual tinha “exatamente a altura de uma maçã”, segundo Coelho.

Ela também observou que a campanha figurou na lista de finalistas do Cannes Lions, uma das premiações mais prestigiadas da publicidade.

Apple Submitted the MacBook Neo & Lil' Finder Guy campaign to the Cannes Lions festival. pic.twitter.com/npRQ3G0hWw

— Basic Apple Guy (@BasicAppleGuy) July 4, 2026

Além de rara, os detalhes de bastidores mostram que até mesmo as menores ideias da Apple recebem um tratamento criativo completo.

An Apple art director shares early sketches and a physical prototype of Lil’ Finder Guy, the MacBook Neo mascot that became an internet star.

(via Cult of Mac - Your source for the latest Apple news, rumors, analysis, reviews, how-tos and deals.)

Marcin Wichary:

But I also want to show things that Finder does well, and this might be something no one does nearly as thoughtfully: text truncation.

[…]

Finder position the tooltip exactly atop the existing text. I think this is really clever: it avoids overlapping other useful information, and makes it faster to reorient yourself.

[…]

Lastly, Finder only shows the tooltip when it’s needed.

Previously:

• Tahoe Broke Resizing Finder Column View

Jason Snell, on The Talk Show:

[… Apple] decides to do a big feature. The circus comes to town, they build the feature, they launch it, they leave town, and that feature sits there.

And the problem is, there’s bugs, things are broken, and in Year Two, you’re like, “You’re going to fix all the things that were broken in the thing you shipped last year, right?” And in the last decade, I would say, a lot of times what happens is they just don’t. And if you’re lucky, they’ll fix it Year Three or Year Four, […] give it a polish.

The thing that troubles me most about Apple software quality in general is the feeling like they don’t have the people to own the thing that they launch. They build the thing that they launch, and then those people go off and do something else, and nobody is maintaining and improving the thing that’s there.

Via Marcin Wichary:

I think this is spot on, and said really well. Are you honest with yourself about resourcing and focus for right after the launch and then later on? Have you really thought about worst case and best case scenarios vis-à-vis bug reports, latency, user feedback, and craft/​quality however you define it? Have you actually started to make room for those outcomes ahead of time?

For me, an ongoing tension with Apple is Finder, so central to my (and I imagine many people’s?) use of a Mac, but rewritten at some point eons ago in a new framework that caused all sorts of problems, and then pretty much abandoned like a proverbial American city’s downtown.

Revealing files in the Finder and Mail’s table view sort indicators have been broken for me since Big Sur. Disk Utility still doesn’t work as well as before its El Capitan rewrite. But these aren’t even big new features.

Jeff Johnson:

This is what happens when you release major OS updates every year: you have to keep launching new features.

Previously:

• Glow Leopard
• Child Safety Features in appleOS 27
• Will Disk Utility Ever Work Properly?
• Remaining Issues in Big Sur
• Disk Utility in El Capitan

Update (2026-06-29): Jesper:

The issue really, that Jason pins down, is that it’s so easy to use incremental development, agile development, sprints, whatever, as a method to do the wrong thing. If you have a year-long schedule, it is easier to say “I will take care of the Finder”, and within the scope of that is a number of features that need be built, but there’s also room for ongoing maintenance. Within the confines of sprint planning, within a culture that sheepishly focuses on the wrong thing, or is obsessed by following the wrong number, or worries about the internal politics of appearing to not have it together, all of a sudden the same work, scheduled into 3 week long sprints, looks like poison.

I know of plenty of organizations that make this work. That have the maturity and discipline and culture to see bugs and defects for what they are, to allocate plenty of time to them and to focus extra time on them with regular intervals.

Dando continuidade à nossa série de vídeos sobre o macOS Golden Gate 27, desta vez o foco foi em novidades que espalham inteligência artificial por diferentes cantos do sistema: Safari, Atalhos (Shortcuts), Finder, Image Playground e Fotos (Photos).

Neste segundo vídeo, mostramos o agrupamento inteligente de abas no Safari, os recursos de IA no app Atalhos e a sugestão inteligente de nomes para pastas no Finder, feita com base no conteúdo que elas guardam. Fechamos com o Image Playground e as novas ferramentas da Apple Intelligence que chegaram ao app Fotos.

Ainda tem mais pela frente nessa cobertura do macOS 27 — continue acompanhando o canal do MacMagazine para não perder os próximos vídeos! 😀

Redesigns the Icons View for the macOS Finder alternative. ($29.95 anual subscription, free update, 19.2 MB, macOS 10.13+)

Fechando a semana com a nossa tradicional seleção de promoções na App Store para esta sexta-feira!

Canon: Chord Composer, desenvolvido por Dylan Shade, destaca-se como uma ferramenta de composição extremamente intuitiva e inspiradora — e, por isso, é o nosso destaque do dia.

O app combina três modos de criação (Instant Inspiration, Intelligent Discovery e Total Control), permitindo desde progressões totalmente aleatórias até construções manuais detalhadas.

A interface, limpa e direta, facilita a experimentação dos acordes de diferentes estilos (jazz, guitarra, piano, ukulele) e a audição de tudo com reprodução realista, seja você um músico profissional ou apenas um entusiasta no assunto.

Desbloqueie sua criatividade musical! Aproveite a oferta!

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Abaixo outros jogos/apps que, juntos, somam quase R$60 em descontos:

Jogos

Jogo de aventura e estratégia.

Sons animais.

Aplicativos

Acompanhe a Estação Espacial Internacional.

Utilitário para acompanhar o sol.

Utilitário de chuvas.

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Aproveite as ofertas e tenha um excelente final de semana! Vale lembrar que as ofertas são sempre por tempo limitado, então é bom correr. 🏎️