You are looking at it wrong. Also: You are wrong.

The iPad already supports gestures. Three gestures replace all you need the home button for (one or two small and insignificant exceptions, but those would be easy enough to add).

Those gestures already declutter the interaction considerably. They make for a much smoother experience than that clusterfuck which is the home button.

It’s a nice fallback, so I’m not sure whether it’s a good idea to remove it, but I haven’t touched it in ages (it’s always not where I expect it to be, anyway).