You forget the final step: Logography. Anyone who thinks English spelling is phonetic is either delusional or illiterate. The fundamental unit of language is the morpheme, not the phoneme. Otherwise deaf and mute people wouldn't be able to communicate at all. This is why all writing systems tend towards Logography and why phonetic writing fanatics like you have to completely rehaul your orthography every couple of generations.

EDIT REPLY:

> I have no trouble reading books a couple hundred years old, like "Last of the Mohicans".

Because English isn't phonetic. If you try to pronounce any of the Native American words or names written in that book it would be entirely unrecognizable to any surviving speakers of those languages. Ever since around the Renaissance English orthography has been more focused on preserving etymology than phonetics. Try reading any text before that period and it becomes incomprehensible even though most of the words themselves aren't that obscure and the text is mostly legible when written with modern orthography.

> Besides, you can correctly pronounce about 90% of English phonetically. With German it's much more

This is what I'm talking about. Even you can't admit to being able to pronounce 100% of German words despite German orthography being constantly changed to fit pronounciation. It's akin to rehauling the codebase every year with some trendy framework, only to produce the same if not less functionality. Although at least you admit to not being able to pronounce certain words. I see far too many people obsessed with phonetic writing confidently mispronouncing every new word they come across.

> Good luck guessing even 5% of icons correctly that you've never seen before.

That's a strawman. Logography is not "icons". It's about making the writing system regular with morphemes not phonemes. Your rant about Steve Jobs and "icons" has nothing to do with any of that.