Very interesting article on how apple’s icon and style guidelines shaped the look of app icons, I especially liked this part:

The shape of apps is a squircle. And it has been proven to work for everyone. Companies can use their logo as an app icon. Designers can create something specifically for the platform. And both of these get to look like an app. Whether people consider the squircle a container or a canvas, this uniform appearance communicates its function: a squircle represents an app, just like how a piece of paper represents a digital document, or a folder represents, well, a folder. Image

Semantically, there’s something really beautiful about that. As an icon designer, I appreciate that different types of things have visual distinction.