I’m not convinced the pen pot needs any more learning than anything else. Even the ones with the paper - is it a word processor, emailing tool, something about newsletters? Maybe a PDF or markup tool? Or a layout tool for print media? Or just a signature tool?

At some point, the user has to find out, in the same manner they find out about the pen pot.

I think users could easily associate the “pen and poison potion” with word processing for years until someone says “click on the pen and ink” and then they have a lightbulb moment.

I think we went from icons being “visually distinct” to “visually descriptive” to “visually uniform”. Personally I prefer the visually distinct. I’m not convinced we gained some massive leap forward in usability moving away from it; I know I struggle substantially more to find an app or tab that I’m looking for nowadays than when I first got a Mac.