There, that is more like it:
So, Rands made a follow-up post with some neat home screens readers had sent him. I clicked through to the originating Twitter thread and found both some seemingly impossible icon layouts as well as their explanation: Makeovr. The service processes an uploaded image of your home screen, then allows you to place web shortcuts on your home screen with the appropriate section of your background image as their icon. Deeply clever and also clearly limited, it is the perfect kind of sleight of hand to be worth doing. To never break the illusion, you are recommended to turn off the background perspective effect and also enable reduced motion. I decided the first was enough for me, so I can notice the icons when exiting apps and similar. I also realized turning a plus-sized phone into landscape mode naturally and severely breaks the illusion, making the breakage on zoom effects feel less severe.
Fun times! And I have to say it makes a rather noticeable usability difference to have those icons in the bottom row. Perhaps Apple will one day change the icon layout to start from the bottom and build up?
Oh, and could new apps come dropping in from above, Tetris-style?