Well, there's three differences.
First, and most important:
Until we get to lock the home layout, you can accidentally drag 9 things around your desktop, instead of 1, for 9 times the fun!

The others are more desirable; you can lay things out arbitrarily, say vertical instead of horizontal; or cleverly integrated with your wallpaper -- I used to do that on PCs when I had too much time.

Also, you don't need an item in the menu to launch it from home...

I'm really a big personal menu fan... just give me 5 personal menus I can throw up from 5 shortcuts, and I'd be happy.