Big issue in mobile apps from my experience, guessing which blob of pixels means what gets old fast. Even the icons aren't very good most of the time, seemingl

Big issue in mobile apps from my experience, guessing which blob of pixels means what gets old fast. Even the icons aren't very good most of the time, seemingly aiming for anything but simplifying use. They do make a nice square target to tap compared to text, but the same effect could be achieved by using the first letter capitalized as icon or something similar. I sometimes dream of Lisp machine/SmallTalk like mobile interfaces, is there anything going on in that area?