This is much ado about nothing. I think the icons are perfect. However, I would like Microsoft to grant people the option to install and use third party icons.
It depends on the Classic Shell scheme you choose. My apps container is empty (I did that), but it's there anyway.
Icons is the least important thing in windows, how well it performs without any extra step or delays is what I care about...
I used to design icons in the 16-bit era, when they had only 4 colors and 766 bytes. Some people care about art, design, beauty, and also them spend a lot of time in front of computers. They are likely to waste their time even with computer icons. Don't waste your precious time with them!
Icons are important for ergonomics, exactly as the shape of the mouse and its precision. Sure there are more important things. A rock solid system with ugly icons is surely better than a crashy one with nice and functions icons But given we are looking at not yet born OS, hoping for a stable system AND provided with well designed icons. Something that MS forgot since the XP release.