I like the newer icon too. I was resistant at first, as with any change to something as iconic as the Finder, err,
icon, but I prefer the newer one because the contrast is stronger and the face looks a bit perkier. The only thing that I don't really like is that sharp horizontal specular/reflection line.
Also, for old-school users like me, the newer one looks much more like the
original Finder smile we had for years from System 7.5.1 through Mac OS 9 than the 10.0-10.2 icon did.
See?
It almost looks like the original Aqua team for Mac OS X was just trying to recreate the Finder icon from memory and wasn't allowed to actually look at it.
The shapes are all there, yes, but all of the proportions and curvatures are a bit off.
I'm moving this thread to Apple Products; Genius Bar is for tech support issues.