One of the things that occurred to me lately about icons is that they don't scale. I don't mean in terms of resolution, I mean that demand for software hugely outstrips the supply of icon artists.
One of the ways we've hacked around this is by using web apps for things. On the web, icons aren't mandatory. Apps aren't started using icons but rather by selecting a bookmark or navigating using search/links. If an icon is supplied it's probably a tiny 16x16 icon of the type that's easy to make. There are no standard art styles and the low resolution means it's not critical to have one anyway.
If you imagine that before writing any HTML file you needed to supply a beautiful hi-res icon for it, well, there'd probably be either fewer web pages or way more people using stock icons that aren't really appropriate. But the non-icon oriented UX of browsers means it's not necessary.
One of the ways we've hacked around this is by using web apps for things. On the web, icons aren't mandatory. Apps aren't started using icons but rather by selecting a bookmark or navigating using search/links. If an icon is supplied it's probably a tiny 16x16 icon of the type that's easy to make. There are no standard art styles and the low resolution means it's not critical to have one anyway.
If you imagine that before writing any HTML file you needed to supply a beautiful hi-res icon for it, well, there'd probably be either fewer web pages or way more people using stock icons that aren't really appropriate. But the non-icon oriented UX of browsers means it's not necessary.