> It's not a technical achievement(that took Apple 10 years to do), it's a design choice
That's the most poetic way of saying "it's not a bug, it's a feature"
Probably more apt to say, they didn’t want to.
Take two apps and switch their icons without the owner knowing it. Or put the same icon for every app. Make the icon even offensive. Then it becomes a bug.
It's not a technical achievement(that took Apple 10 years to do), it's a design choice(that Apple made then and now). It can have multiple motivations that we can speculate on, would have been great to have someone from Apple to give us some perspective.
>iPhone owners are willing to spend $28 for a icon pack, a very nice one, but still an icon pack.
There are multiple games that make billions of $ by simply selling cosmetic items, this is very similar. It also has a a version in the physical world, people pay a premium for stuff with a special visual design and no functional advantage all the time. Handbags, clothes, cars, jewellery, movie merchandise(like Darth Vader helmets etc), houses, paint, books, computers - you name it, people actually pay for design.