I don't know about you, but I find that one of the most satisfying points in an app's development is the first time I see its icon appear on the desktop or home screen of whichever platform it runs on. It seems that at that moment the new app is promoted to the status of a real-world application, becoming a member of the exclusive club of useful projects. My hard disk is littered with sketches, try-outs, and projects that for some reason never reached completion and, indeed, my home screens are equally cluttered by the generic app icons added by Xcode to every new project. It's the good ones that get to display their own icon.

So adding an icon is, for me, a sign that an app has progressed far enough that I might be tempted to actually show it to someone.

On the Apple Watch home screen, there is actually a further imperative to add an icon and that is the fact that there are no labels to distinguish one app from another. It's all down to the icon. If you have developed several...